In the last couple of months of completing my law thesis I found
myself struggling to put things into the simplest terms. All the ideas I
had been researching and writing about were coming together like the
pieces of a puzzle, but I kept wanting to re-explain everything in great
detail in every chapter, and sometimes even within a chapter. The word
count was growing every day, but my arguments and conclusions weren’t
necessarily getting any clearer.
I asked a colleague to look at one chapter in particular for me, and the feedback she gave me was gold: write in your own voice.
I was writing from fear
There is a tension inherent in writing a PhD. On the one hand, it is
an examination of your ability to undertake research independently, and
write as an academic. On the other, you have to show you have read all
the literature in your field, and can cite the most authoritative
scholars. The temptation was to spend a lot of words proving that I knew
my stuff, that I could rehearse the arguments of those authoritative
scholars. But in fact I was writing from fear: a fear of needing to back
up every claim and argument with the voice of a well-known scholar – or
preferably several. If someone had said it before, then it was safe to
say it myself.
But what I was creating was more like an extensive, impressive research report, rather than a thesis of my own.
The word “thesis” comes from the Greek tithenai, which literally
means “to place” or “to position”: my thesis is my position, my point of
view, my stance on a certain issue. If I am not able to convey what
that is in my writing, then I am no longer writing my own thesis, I am
writing the theses of the giants who have gone before me without adding
anything to them.
Confidence is essential
Particularly in fields such as law, the humanities and some of the
social sciences, where research is not necessarily a matter of gathering
data or conducting experiments, but rather of gathering positions, and
conducting thought experiments, it can be harder to make a distinction
between our use of existing knowledge and our own original contribution
that builds on that knowledge.
Without sufficient research or evidence, the claims and arguments we
make may come across as naïve or ill-founded. Yet without the
confidence to step out beyond the safety of endless footnotes and the
words and voices of big-name scholars, we risk not reaching the level of
academic independence that doing a PhD requires of us.
The great challenge in the final phase of a project that has
consumed my thinking for the past few years is: how do I find my own
voice in all of it? How do I find the academic self-confidence to really
give a voice to my own thesis, my own position and stance? And indeed,
how did the giants of my field become the authoritative voices that we
all cite? By developing their own voice.
To defend our claims, we have to find our own voice
Somehow translating this to my own academic writing proved to be just
as much of a challenge. The moment at which we are asked to defend our
thesis in front of a committee of professors, to defend our arguments
and claims, is the moment at which we literally must find our voice and
express it confidently. The award of the doctorate degree, and the title
Dr, is a symbolic recognition of our full membership in the academic
community. In order to rise to that challenge, it is necessary to find
your voice in your writing, to formulate your own position, your own
thesis, which you are capable of – and confident in – defending.
My colleague had given me the key to a door that opened before me in
the last throes of writing and editing. These final weeks have become
really enjoyable, even with the pressure of the final deadline getting
closer and closer, because I have given myself full permission to
articulate my own thesis, my own position, my own voice. And the final
result is a manuscript that is truly mine, and a piece I feel worthy of
submitting as I ask for admission into the academic community as a
fully-fledged, independent member. A member who has a voice of her own.
Recommended PHD Thesis Writer
