hello and welcome to an introduction to dr. Wendy Carter’s practical steps to completing a master’s thesis and dissertation workshop for master’s thesis and toriel dissertation students the following short video provides a few highlights of dr. Carter’s dynamic and motivational workshop the full audio workshop is one hour in five minutes in length and can be accessed at dr. Carter’s website called ww2 Donnelly finished comm if you’d like to have dr. Carter conduct the same workshop at your institution you may email her at dr. Carter at tada finally finished comm or call our toll-free at one 800 695 calm her workshops were so successful that students said they got more out of dr. Carter’s one-hour session than their semester long courses on completing a thesis or dissertation students came back to her workshops time and again sometimes to bring her friend sometimes just to get themselves motivated again or just to say hello thus students began asking dr. Carter to produce an A to Z process for planning organizing and completing a thesis or dissertation dr. Carter produced such a process in the form of an interactive cd-rom which he calls tada which stands for thesis and dissertation accomplished in addition to the CD students have access to tada methods journal and a free monthly newsletter all available through her website students can complete their degree either with the interactive CD or by a dynamic workshop presentation or both either way it’s all about getting finished therefore dr. Carter decided to call her web address tada finally finished comm there you have it so call dr. Carter at one eight hundred six five five one three eight or visit her website at wwlp.com the title of the talk is practical steps to completing the master’s thesis or dissertation I’m going to tell you how to finish today how many of you are masters to Wow how many of your PhD how many of you have actually selected a topic good how many of you are at the proposal stage these are my qualifications I put my qualifications up there not to impress you but to let you know if nothing else if I don’t know anything else I know how to do school I know how to get in but more importantly I know how to get out I did this as a single parent if I can do this you can do this too this is my model of good dissertation is a done dissertation notice it doesn’t say the best dissertation a good dissertation is the dumb dissertation and understand that your family will be more supportive and understanding if you have a real deadline then next spring next fall because let’s face it our family doesn’t understand what it is that you’re doing and you will be lucky if they really really care let’s say that you decided from today you want to finish in December 13 2006 okay and done this is why you got to pick a day because that means you have 757 days to get it done there are days that you won’t be able to right now I tell people I suffer from depression I used to watch television and that’s how depressed people handle stress they watch TV and I knew that I used to like to work in a clean environment and so I would actually clean my house during the commercials now you know TV there’s plenty plenty plenty of commercials so that at the end of a show I would actually have a clean house and then I could work and so understand there are things that you can do I did the graduation thing but you all know graduation doesn’t really mean anything right I did that cap gun all all of that when my dissertation wasn’t done but you know families really don’t understand that right y’all should graduate yeah yeah yeah whatever I use this system to get finished so I’m not telling you something that I didn’t do that you can do as well 15 minutes a day it doesn’t take very long the proposal basically is sort of like a contract between you and a faculty it’s basically saying if you do this we will give you the degree but if you do something else different there are no guarantees if you do something else different you’ll have to write a different proposal how should I prepare for my defense remember I said I call the defense a hazing process there was a student that I was coaching one time and he said well you know that the card it says here on the sheet of paper it says it’s the presentation I almost started laughing and almost the point where I was crying you have to be more prepared than they are and you are they won’t let you defend until they think they’re ready to pass you they won’t even let you set a date unless they think you’re going to pass I understand that you are the expert you have been doing this month month and you know more than they do on this subject how do I choose a topic this is where some people actually the research shows that students take two years to select a topic you don’t have that kind of time that’s why you’re at this workshop what’s the role of the adviser some of us have high expectations of an adviser understand that the role of the adviser is if they do nothing else but read your dissertation and give you feedback they’ve done their job the adviser is a the chair of your committee the adviser is the person who will write your recommendations for the rest of your life the adviser is the person who can stop or push you forward in this process I’ve been telling people you have to find someone with some power you have to be nice to the staff because the staff will lose your stuff on purpose if you’re not right there are the ones who might tell you about a fellowship or not they might tell you about a deadline or not and so you need to be nice to the staff you’re asking people to help you so you need to make it as convenient as possible and be as nice as possible when you’re trying to get some help from somebody else and that’s it all I can say is thank you for additional help information and support go to the website above click on contact us and send your questions of dr. Carter for prompt responses you will see that the tada cd-rom provides all the additional information that the workshop students requested dr. Carter compiled in one resource tool research and other templates checklist motivational tools interactive calendar budget tool writing strategies Kate Saddam methods journal and a whole lot more one of the many students use dr. Carter’s workshop into the thesis and dissertation accomplished cd-rom user testimonial you I developed this workshop somebody because these are the things that people don’t tell you how to do right there’s no class that you can take there isn’t any advisor telling you how to do it and so I developed the workshop from the workshop I developed a CD that has more information on how to do this process people learn in different modes some people learn by just hearing me some people learn by just seeing it but then I noticed that people come back to my workshop over and over again just to get energized again when I present at the National Conference on sleep I came to your workshop last year because I went home and I was energized and I was so I just needed that boost again again that’s another reason why we put on and see these Laker kind of sorta take me with you and so what does she say okay she said do this is this the business what else can I do remember you can get additional information by calling dr. Carter toll-free at you you