Can You Afford an Editor … OR ... Can you Afford NOT to Hire an Editor?
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Many graduate students fully expect to work with an editor; many have no choice. Others haven’t given it a minute’s thought or are quite sure that don’t need—or can’t afford—an editor. Rather, their main challenge is how they are going to afford tuition. Why would they seek to incur extra expenses on top of exorbitant school costs?
The question might be best asked in a different way:
Can you afford NOT to hire an editor?
Let’s look at what’s required of you in the space between not having started your dissertation to completing it.
Here are the basic steps:
1. Find an appropriate, relevant, and doable topic that will retain your interest for a long time. What are you interested in (passionate about) that hasn’t yet been studied, that will improve the world we live in, that can generate a substantive and robust literature review? Can you recruit enough participants, find relevant measures, or an existing dataset for your study?
2. Find two committee members willing to work with you over the period of time it will take to complete your dissertation. Minimal requirements: They will still be alive and not yet retired by the time you complete your dissertation (seriously), they have knowledge of your study, they can and will help you with the many steps required to complete a dissertation, they are approachable and personable and will have reasonable expectations of you, they will be responsive to your emails and requests for meetings. (Advice: Talk to A LOT of students who have worked with the faculty member before you ask them to be your chair and take their advice seriously.)
3. Find the time to devote to writing your dissertation. An essential component to writing a dissertation is carving out consistent time in your weekly schedule when you will have sufficient energy to work on your dissertation.
4. Find the motivation, tenacity, and stick-to-it-iveness required to complete this once-in-a-lifetime research project, after which you will have merited the esteemed title of Doctor of Philosophy. (It’s not rocket science, the dissertation, but it is a daunting task with inevitable ups and downs, and it freaks a lot of people out along the way!)
5. Find that you are able to compose 50-100 pages of text that synthesizes 50-100+ sources, writing in a cogent, logical, readable, and informative way that satisfies your committee. (A lot of writing, rewriting, momentary writer’s block!)
6. Find the measures, datasets, or participants you will need to conduct your study and then analyze, providing cogent arguments for your interpretation. (Oftentimes, this is the one step that holds you back because you have less control over it, having to rely on others.)
So where does the editor come into all this?
First, let’s look at the role of the editor. More often than not, the editor serves as an “extension” of the chair, there to help when the chair has limited availability and there to step in at a level the chair may be unwilling or unable to go to.
Few people experience the dissertation as a smooth ride. Things comes up, thing bring you down, challenge your resolve and commitment to the project. You may feel insecure about your writing ability or how to discuss the literature; you have issues with your chair.
The editor can support you in many meaningful ways besides the writing: Offering encouragement when you need it most, being a sounding board for your ideas, providing a structure to keep you on task, giving you invaluable tips about your writing—all of this before taking a red pen to your draft.
But the editing is always a crucial element: You provide the best draft you can, and the editor helps to improve your writing, molding it into a final draft that you can be proud of.
With an editor, the process will go more smoothly. The chair will likely be pleased, and you will get a sense of progress with an endpoint in view. And, within a shorter period of time, you will complete your dissertation, and you will graduate.
In short, the editor may help ACCELERATE the project. You will stop paying tuition sooner, and you may find you can better afford an editor than paying another year of tuition.
To recap:
Why you can’t afford NOT to hire an editor:
1. You want to complete your dissertation.
2. You want to be proud of your dissertation.
3. You want to stop paying tuition someday; you may find you can better afford an editor than paying another year of tuition.
4. You struggle with the motivation and the stick-to-it-iveness you know you need to complete your dissertation.
5. You have so many other things going on that you fear you will never find the time you need to complete your dissertation.
6. Your school simply does not provide the resources you need.
Besides all this, hiring an editor may have other amazing benefits:
1. You can learn a lot working one-on-one with an editor: improving your writing, gaining confidence, and learning strategies that will help you become more successful and positive about your writing that will last a lifetime.
2. There are many advantages and added bonuses to working with an editor:
§ Perhaps the most amazing thing about working with an editor is that you suddenly have an ally, you become a team of two. You are no longer alone in what can feel like a very lonely process.
§ You have someone to bounce your ideas off of and to help you articulate your ideas.
§ You have someone to reassure you when you are feeling especially low.
§ You have someone to provide you with a needed framework or schedule.
But once you decide to work with an editor:
Now it’s important that you find the right one, someone who is qualified, capable, honest, trustworthy, reliable, reasonably priced, committed to working with you, and pleasant to work with.
Kathleen Kline has been a dissertation editor for nearly 4 decades. She is the author of De-Stressing the Dissertation and Other Forms of Academic Writing: Practical Guidance and Real-Life Stories (available on Amazon), and she is the Director of the Writing Center at the Wright Institute, a professional psychology school in Berkeley, CA. Unlike many academic editors, Kathleen does not farm out your job to another less experienced editor. She is ethical, highly experienced, personable, and caring. She can be reached at kathleen.kline@sbcglobal.net or 510-339-1629. Her website is www.kathleenkline.com.