{"id":613,"date":"2010-10-07T01:28:48","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T06:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=613"},"modified":"2010-09-29T14:38:53","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T19:38:53","slug":"great-write-those-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2010\/10\/great-write-those-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Great! Write Those Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n<p><strong>I work with grad students who are writing their dissertations. Often the simplest advice and exercise is the most effective. Here is one of those exercises.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I work with graduate students in <a href=\"http:\/\/volgenau.gmu.edu\/\">engineering and computer science at George Mason University<\/a>. Most of the students are working on their dissertation proposals or dissertations. Many struggle with their writing. They are brilliant people, but the words don&#8217;t move from their brains to their paper easily or readily.\u00a0One of the more frequent stumbling points is deciding what to say in a paragraph. Since they are struggling, they usually try to say half a dozen things in one paragraph.<\/p>\n<p>Here is what I do in this situation.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Me: What do you want to say here?<\/p>\n<p>Student: Uhh.<\/p>\n<p>Me: Let&#8217;s try this.\u00a0Don&#8217;t look at your paper. Look at me. Please tell me what you are trying to write here.<\/p>\n<p>Student: Something brilliant, concrete, precise, specific.<\/p>\n<p>Me:\u00a0Great. Write those words.<\/p>\n<p>Student: You mean I can do that. I can actually write just what I want to say?<\/p>\n<p>Me: Yes, you have my permission to actually write just what you want to say.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The student usually sighs and smiles at this time. They then scribble notes with their pencil in the margin of their paper. Everything goes much easier after that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips I work with grad students who are writing their dissertations. Often the simplest advice and exercise is the most effective. Here is one of those exercises. I work with graduate students in engineering and computer science at George Mason University. Most of the students are working on their dissertation proposals or dissertations. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[128],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}