This thread is created for those of you who had experience in writing thesis for Masters and PhD. How do you write the thesis quickly? What are some of the problems that occurred when you wrote the thesis?
Any help/ guidance from you guys are much appreciated

After reading numerous recent threads started by you, I am under the impression that this thread was created for yourself to find the express way to your PhD. Even so, there is nothing wrong in collecting your ideas and developing your writing process, or constructing your first draft and completing your final manuscript. More importantly, what is your purpose of studying for a doctorate?

On the whole, you are a noble student with the pride of a Doctor's daughter. And at the same time, you are on your lonely path when you see your lab mates in white coats under attack by the microbes. But to you, perhaps they are not lab mates at all. They may be mere strangers accidentally brought together in the same lab. Without any hesitation, you plunges into battle to obtain your doctorate.

The only reason I am doing a Doctorate is because I am very interested with research. I know there are people out there doing a doctorate because they want to be considered as smart or respected but that doesn't really apply to me. There are also people out there doing a Doctorate since they cannot find a job without a PhD but I've already collected my 1 year experience working in an industry and I like it a lot. That's why I decided to continue my PhD since it really CLICKS with me. However, I need guidance a lot in a journey to get PhD as I am like a baby in postgraduate studies. I also don't want to waster my time doing PhD for 5-6 years since there are a lot more things I want to do in my life. PhD is not the ONLY ONE I want. Besides, I enjoy writing and reading a lot.


Tell that to my mum since she's the one to earn that degree.

I also have 9 years of industry experience, but still interested to further my Phd soon

read tons of published papers about a topic...it ease up in writing thesis

Give a lot of commitment to the process. often times, students think that the battle is won before writing the thesis. i have seen several cases where the students have published quite a number of papers, and in one case, has even completed his 1st draft. unfortunately, getting a job/going back to work or staying away from the lab (and the research atmosphere?) during this time sort of takes the wind out of their sails, and they ultimately were unable to complete their postgrad studies.

You write it quickly but if your supervisor or examiners are slow in reading your work...guess what will happen?

But do they have time frame to read your thesis?

But do they have time frame to read your thesis?

How to write faster ah?

Read through the articles fast....pay attention on the important points and skim through the rest rather than reading every single page of an article.

Think fast.

Then write fast.

LOL....

Yes they are given a specific time frame to examine your work. But in practice, sometimes they just spend more time to complete examining your work. It happened to me and my friends have similar experience too.

Publish papers. The paper that was written can form part of your thesis indirectly and examiners will love you cause they don't have to scrutinise your already-peer-reviewed work.

Ask the seniors to help!!! it always work!!

Based on my experience, the fastest way of writing thesis is to focus on publishing papers 1st.
[phD students in UM are required to publish 2 ISI papers 1st before they can plan to submit their thesis]

After publishing that 2 papers (related to your field, that is), its more or less just copy and paste + a little bit of elaboration to finish up your thesis writing. I spent alot of my time instead in doing paperwork for thesis submission and also polishing (putting in figures, formatting etc.) the thesis

Good advice~
Its best to learn from other's mistake rather than to go through them yourself
But always be sure to be appreciative of your seniors' advice and guidance

1. having enough of references to support our write up
2. commitment commitment commitment
3. having the ability to write well? some people have problem in expressing their thought through writing
4. start writing from the beginning-never accumulate your work
5. have a good proposal so that prolly some part of it e.g. introduction and literature review can be used for thesis-writing
6. get hold on thesis of those having titles / scope / field as you

As an experienced postdoc in biological science, I'm sure you have lots of valuable advices to prevent some impending pitfalls. Since Madonna Britney has to learn to publish papers, her concern is probably back to square one, “How to publish research papers quickly?” Perhaps you can tell what needs to happen for publishing papers quickly.

Thanks for the input bro

Whether one can publish paper quickly depends on a lot of factors i.e. supervisor quality, facilities, helpfulness of lab members etc. and even luck! haha
Most of these factors are not really in our hands anyway, so what we can do is try to improve ourselves

Apart from dedication and hard work, a postgraduate student should read more articles related to his/her field, so that he/she will have a better idea on what to write and focus on for the paper. This is especially true for those with poorer command of English
And the other thing is to try to publish paper as soon as possible. I noticed that most of my colleagues tend to accumulate ALOT of data (even more than what's required for a paper) and have yet to start writing anything. This may be because of:
1. Supervisor being "greedy" or "pessimistic". 1st timers (us) wouldn't know how much is enough for publication anyways so we listen to our supervisors, who are not always correct .

2. Poor command of English/ Scared of writing. This appears to be true among my Chinese friends who seemed to have a harder time expressing their thoughts and ideas in papers. I've noticed that the Westerners can simply write ALOT out of something simple, whereas we write very little out of ALOT of data

My advice is to write early. Don't worry too much about language since you could always ask friends/supervisors or even pay for proofreading anyways. What's important is the data, which will undoubtedly "expire" if not published ASAP. Its a competitive world
As for how much data is actually required for a decent paper; it will be hard to "estimate" for the 1st paper (especially if the supervisor is not being helpful), but it can only get easier as one publishes more papers. My advice is to try consulting seniors or other supervisors who are more helpful, they will show you the way

Just my 2 cents~

Hi Tanji,

(1) How many postgraduate students (by research) in Malaysia? Suddenly, I've got an idea.

(2) I noticed that you have been consistently giving lots of practical and valuable advices to the research students. Not to mention that you are also Dr Notebook.

(3) If you write a 100~150-page self-help book in this topic and this book is priced under RM 20.00, most of them will benefit from your Midas touch in a lot of areas, i.e. academic, time management, communication skills, research skills, software & equipment, ethics, publications, working with RTM2, traveling, etc.

(4) Plant a tree, write a book, and have a child... that's what Jose Marti said when he was asked what every man ought to do before he dies. You worked on seaweeds (Kappaphycus and Eucheuma Sea Bird's Nests), didn't you? Because writing a thesis is not the same as writing a book, therefore, please consider the idea seriously.

(5) After publishing the book, you can get married to your girlfriend and have a child then.

Gotta agree with Critical_Fallacy! I'm supportive of this idea haha.