This year’s cohort of students haven't submitted their dissertation yet, but the work on next year's dissertation has already started. I always allow the students to design their own topic, and I tell them that already towards the end of their second year. If they want, they can do that work over summer. And I have sent that email out.
I needed to first think about the message I would send. Last year, the workload associated with this got completely out of hand. So I made sure the form they have to fill out is even more detailed, forcing them to think about their proposal in more detail. And I have limited the number of attempts to 3. Last year I had too many students who, if I didn't approve of their proposal, would barely change anything and just resubmit. That takes way too much time.
I already have the first proposal in! So it has started. I didn't approve of it the first time around. I wanted to know a bit more about the precise nature of the data, and the intended analysis. And a bit more about the rationale. But I think this student will manage to address that successfully. We'll see! I hope that this year I will find the Goldilocks point of a fair number of students getting the OK to do their own topic, without causing me to have so much work on that I end up teetering on the brink of a burnout. We'll see!
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| A sponge; the topic of the first proposal. Pic by Nick Hobgood |
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