You and Your Doctoral or Thesis Writing Team: Part 16

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Students who expect too much from academic editors: reason 4

The lazy advisor and advisory committee

The very people allocated by the university to help you often expect the editor ‘to fix’ everything. Or worse, they like to shift their responsibility, when they should be helping. Even with all the help available, the doctoral road is seldom linear. There are always bumps in the road, constant rewriting, and delays. Students and faculty know this, and to expect an editor to make the process completely linear is unrealistic. A good editor will smooth the road, but bumps there will be. Simply how the process works.

This is more difficult to work around because it is not strictly speaking in your hands. You may or may not have had a hand in choosing your faculty help. Either way, there are no guarantees the relationship will work. Essentially you need to be an informed and confident student to weather this difficulty. You must know enough to keep to not allow a advisory member to shift work or blame onto an editor. This is a big no-win situation if the editor is the fall person.

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Spoonerism

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I came across this recently and was reminded about the fun I had in the classroom with spoonerisms. Of course, you’d be just fine if you never heard about a spoonerism, but hey, fun is important. At least this brings the odd smile to one’s face.

When I’m tired I tend to fruit salad my words and out comes … spoonerisms :oops:


spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:

The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

Some examples:

  • We all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish ["half-formed wish"] inside us.
  • A well-boiled icicle ["well-oiled bicycle"].
  • It is kisstomary to cuss ["customary to kiss"] the bride.
  • Is the bean dizzy ["dean busy"]?
  • When the boys come back from France, we’ll have the hags flung out ["flags hung out"]!
  • Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].


A little bit of history. Spoonerism comes from the name of the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), a kindly but nervous Anglican clergyman and educationalist. All the above examples were committed by (or attributed to) him.

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You and Your Doctoral or Thesis Writing Team: Part 15

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Students who expect too much from academic editors: reason 3.

The ill-equipped or ill-advised student


Students sometimes just are not aware of the levels of help that the university should extend to them. As academic editors, we see this with campus-based and online students. It is clearly the student’s job to find out exactly who should be doing what to help. But it is equally the faculty’s role, to facilitate the student in understanding who is available to help, what resources the university has on hand, and what to expect.

Not any different to the lazy or insecure student. You must get down to finding out what is available to you. You are not alone in your studies. The school gains as much as you do when you graduate successfully. So make them work for the right to include you in their stats and thus get additional funding and be able to advertise how successful they are at producing graduates.

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You and Your Doctoral or Thesis Writing Team: Part 14

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Students who expect too much from academic editors: reason 2.

The insecure student

If for any reason a student is unsure of his or her content or writing ability, the student desperately looks for someone in the doctoral chain to give reassurance and do the work for him or her. As a student, content is your preserve. You have chosen your topic. You need to refine your topic. Your university faculty team need to assist with the molding of your content. To some extent they can also help with the editing. The tidying of the writing can be improved by a good academic editor. Please note, I said improved, not written by the editor. You provide the goods, the content; the editor will help hone the end product.

Again understanding your responsibility, knowing what is required, and becoming confident with the process will give you the freedom not be a needy student looking for confirmation outside of yourself when you should be focusing within and simply using all the available help as sounding boards.

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You and Your Doctoral or Thesis Writing Team: Part 13

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By now you should have a good idea of what help is available to you as a master’s or doctoral student both from your school and from online services. You should also be clear what is your responsibility. Yet we repeatedly see perfectly intelligent doctoral students expecting academic editors to be miracle workers.

From experience there seem to be a number of reasons. Let me discuss the 4 obvious reasons in the next few blogs. These are not judgments, but rather observations. Most of them are within the power of the student to change if wanting to.

So to get started. Students who expect too much from academic editors: reason 1.

The lazy student

Writing is a dynamic process, ever-changing, and hopefully ever-improving. I find myself saying that over and over because I believe in it so much. A student who just wants a quick fix, as if producing a product rather than dynamic research work, wants someone else to do much of the work. Who better than the academic editor? And when their quick-fix approach backfires, who better to blame than the editor.

The solution for a student is of course to understand your role, the school’s role, and the outside editor’s role and then confusion can never exist.

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You and Your Doctoral or Thesis Writing Team: Part 12

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Learning where to find the right help

 

Okay, by now you should have a clear idea of what a university can offer and hopefully what your university does offer when embarking on the doctoral or master’s road. One usually chooses one advisory’s team (advisor and 2 committee members), but even that does not guarantee a smooth road.

The trick is to know what each person should be providing. Students seldom get all the help that the university should be providing, but you should know where to look for the help. That way you can avoid the disappointment of looking for help in the wrong place, from the wrong person. Do not expect your advisor to write your thesis or dissertation. Do not expect your academic editor to be a miracle worker. Be decisive and choose what you wish to include in your paper when you get conflicting advice from the various levels of help. And do not allow faculty to shift their responsibility onto the editor.

How can you be confident about finding your way through differing opinions about what you should do? Equip yourself to understand what each person can offer you. Learn to do some basic self-editing to bring all the ideas into focus. Need help understanding how to self-edit? Download your own handy copy of the Language Online 21 Proofreading Tips to help guide you through trying times. Be sure to print the guide and have it on hand. And when you have competently completed your share, hand over to a good academic editor for some editing TLC.

Click on cover to request your copy: 

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Words within Words

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Different word game, and so easy for some and difficult for others. Our brains are all different.

Inside each set of the following words, there are a pair of smaller words. By putting & between them, lo & behold, you’ll make a familiar phrase. For example, “Thighbone/Swallowtail” conceals “High & Low.”

  1. Skyrocketing/Trolleyman
  2. Thermometer/Apoplexy
  3. Delaware/Bordering
  4. Surprised/Trashiness
  5. Throughout/Stumblebum

Continue reading →

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You and Your Doctoral or Thesis Writing Team: Part 11

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Understand who could and should be involved with your thesis or dissertation.

 

I’ve borrowed some thoughts from a university to their students. The sections in []  are my additions. This combination can vary from university to university, but the point still is that there are many official university appointed people involved. And one academic editor who should in no way be directly involved with the university. Helps keep some of objectivity in what is an intensely emotional process at times.

Levels of Help

“During the dissertation review, you will benefit from perspectives and recommendations from 8 levels of review:

  1. 3 committee members[: an advisor and 2 committee members is often the combination]
  2. 1 academic reviewer
  3. 2 IRB reviewers [the AR and IRB combination varies from school to school]
  4. the APA editor [often a statistician can also be included here]
  5. the dean’s review


The purpose of these reviews is not punitive, but is intended to increase your scholarly writing abilities and to ensure that the dissertations produced by students … are scholarly in form and style.”

Out of the 8 people supposedly involved with an edit, 7 are from the university. That means only the academic editor isn’t. Each one has a clearly defined role within your studies. And the definition of what an editor must do is very clear in the use of the above example of an APA editor: language, punctuation, academic style, school’s style (if provided), and APA formatting. Essentially this is what I call an academic copy edit. The term “copy” is terminology from the publishing world and means your paper.

So now you know what to expect and from whom 8-) .

Next up is how to use that help wisely.

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More Authors and Books

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Back to braingle and more famous books and their authors. I love when I don’t always get all the books or authors. See if you are better at it than I am. One could easily make up a ton of these.

Same formula. Letters have been taken from each book and each author.

From the letter list below fill in each letter to give the names of the books and authors.

An-e-s and D-m-ns
D-n -ro-n

Pe- Se-at-r-
S-ep-en K-n-

C-r-nic-es of N-r–a
C – L-wi-

A F-re-e-l to A-m-
E-n-st H-mi-gw-y

A M-sq-e of Me-c-
Ro-e-t Fr-s-

T-e Hu-t for R-d Oc-o-e-
T-m C-a-cy

Bl-ac-e-s
Jo-n Gri-h-m

Continue reading →

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You and Your Doctoral or Thesis Writing Team: Part 10

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Choose an editor soon and wisely

 

Academic editors often feel as if in a battle: deep in the trenches, straight in the firing line. And truth be told, editors like to be in the backrooms, quietly working away.

Why the battlefield? Well, doctoral students and advisors often expect miracles from academic editors. Good editors are extremely reliable, but they are only one cog in a very complex wheel and have no say over what a school requires.

It is a good idea to choose an editor right at the beginning of your writing process and work together for the full number of years it takes to complete your studies.

A good editor will want to know what a school requires so that school guidelines can be included in an edit. Nothing more satisfying for a flexible editor than providing a student with an integrated edit that includes the basics of good English, academic style, strict formatting (like APA), and a school’s house style.

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