Topics for dissertations: selecting the one for you

Writing a dissertation is hard to do. You’re going to be putting months of time and effort into your dissertation, with pages and pages to write and re-write and re-re-write. So don’t be silly and pick a topic that isn’t for you. Use these handy tips to help you pick the right one:

• Are You Interested?
• Are You Interesting?
• Focus on Your Strengths
 

• Are You Interested?

There’s nothing worse than spending months at a time writing a dissertation that you aren’t interested in. If you pick something that you’re not into now, you can be sure you’ll hate it by the end, if you even manage to get that far with it. You’ll find yourself doing a half-assed job and losing faith in yourself. So pick the one that’s for you, the one that stands out above all others.

• Are You Interesting?

The guys reading your paper are human, too, you know. They probably have spend a week or more reading a hundred other dissertations. So make sure whatever you choose to do isn’t the same as everything else they’ve read that day. Give your dissertation something different. Ask a question that hasn’t been asked before or find a new answer. Approach the topic in an unexpected way. You don’t have to completely revamp an entire department, or re-write the books, but you should certainly be different. Stand out from the crowd.

• Focus On Your Strengths

Don’t pick a fancy topic that you know nothing about just because it sounds great. It’s easy to get carried away with a topic, to overthink the possibilities, but stick to what you know, to what you’re good at, and you won’t go far wrong. Yes, you want to be different, for your topic to stand out, and you want to be interesting, for your dissertation to matter. But at the end of the day you’re trying to write a dissertation, not a novel. So choose a topic you like, that you think others might like, and that you have a good working knowledge of. You don’t want to spend half your time getting to know the subject matter before you even get a chance to write. Give yourself that leg up and focus on your strengths, then write that dissertation down!