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Davé's Dissertation & Thesis Tip

by Ronda Davé, PhD

Right Brain/Left Brain

Thinking Through Your Thesis

The best thesis is one that not only reflects your ability to think, but changes it. This is true not just because doing a thesis teaches you to corral all your mental resources in pursuit of a highly sophisticated task--analysis and synthesis of information--but because it also teaches you to think in ways you may not have thought before.

How so?
Take right brain/left brain differences. Many people who do a thesis are left-brained word-logic wizards who understand verbally how to get from idea A to idea B. Other thesis writers are right-brained to the bone, needing visual guideposts, diagrammatic structures, visual stimulation, and other non-verbal, non-linear ways of understanding.
Sometimes if you're stuck on a thesis problem, you can get unstuck by thinking about it in your non-preferred way using the side of the brain you haven't been using to solve the problem.

Let's say you're a left-brainiac having difficulty organizing your review of the literature. You've cut and pasted until you've lost track of the flow of ideas, don't know how they're connected, and don't know where your ideas are headed.
It may be time to come at the problem sideways. Maybe you just need a big blank butcher paper on which to make a conceptual diagram. Conceptual diagrams are great when you're trying to show the links between your ideas. You can write the ideas in their own circles and then start adding post it notes for all the authors supporting each of your ideas. This shows you where you do and don't have theoretical support from the literature.

Using different colored post-it strips to indicate your ideas might also help. --You can use the same colors on the diagram as you do on the manuscript if you have a cheap inkjet printer.

It's not really important how you "whack the other side of your head," what's important is to realize that you're only "stuck in a rut" on one side and you have a whole new side to use for problem solution.

Going back and forth between right-left approaches can improve neural connections between the two lobes. You can actually improve your ability to think by solving problems using both sides of your brain.

 

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