The “Rights” of Passage

Extract

You are feeling relief that your coursework is drawing to a close. You have become somewhat competent at going to class, discussing materials, and passing tests. However, you have a sense of dread that keeps creeping up on you every time you try to think of “the topic” for your dissertation. You look to the senior graduate students and even ask them questions about how they found their topic. Divine revelation seems to have hit them and you wonder when your turn will come. But they seem to be all-knowing, more like budding faculty now than one of you. So you try to fight the notions of self-doubt about whether you can actually find a topic and start the quest of finding someone to help you. You naturally turn to the professor whom you “know the best.” Is this the right choice? No one seems to know; you just have this sense that you want to complete the process as painlessly as possible. As questions swirl inside your head—from how to choose an advisor to what might be the right way to pick a dissertation topic—you may ask yourself what the process of writing your dissertation proposal will really be like.