PhD proposal

I have finally came to the point in my graduate degree where most of my course work is finished and I have played with my experiments and now it is time to start into my thesis. This is a time where there is a shift in my education from the usual show up go to class take exams format, to a much more show up set up your own experiments, crunch your results, and write your thesis format. To kick it off I first have to write a PhD proposal. Unlike a Master's proposal which is basically a degree to prove you can do research in your field and write a nice thesis, “A thesis for the PhD must form a distinctive contribution to the knowledge of the subject and afford evidence of originality shown by the discovery of new facts and/or by the exercise of independent critical power.” Yikes! I have some serious pressure to preform.

I now have my committee, and in preparation for my first committee meeting I have to write this proposal and convince the members of my committee that I am researching something meaningful, that I can do research, and that I will be able to accomplish what is outlined in my proposal. It is a bit stressful and my running mileage has slipped as a result of the stress and time crunch of the approaching deadlines. I have been quite focused on my proposal for several weeks now and it is coming together but it is a battle. It will roughly be 20-30 pages when complete. I hope in the end that the proposal is well written, coherent, and accomplishes my goal of convincing my committee that I am worthy of pursuing the research and the subject I chose is worthy of pursuing.