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The Doctoral Student, the Advisor, the Advisory Committee, & the Academic Editor – Part 4
Editors often feel as if in a battle: deep in the trenches, straight in the firing line. And truth be told, editors like to be in the backrooms, quietly working away.
Why the battlefield? Well, doctoral students and advisors often expect miracles from academic editors. Good editors are extremely reliable, but they are only one cog in a very complex wheel and have no say over what a school requires.
I’ve borrowed some thoughts from a university to their students. The sections in [] are my additions. This combination can vary from university to university, but the point still is that there are many official people involved.
Levels of Help:
The Doctoral Student, the Advisor, the Advisory Committee, & the Academic Editor – Part 3
Anyone who has written anything for public consumption knows that one edit is not enough. Editing is like an onion or a ladder. One edits till it reads well. The more one strives for excellence, the more one needs to peel another layer/edit to get it ever refined. Or another image. One edits and get to an acceptable level. If one wants to improve the quality one needs to climb the ladder and have repeated edits.
Students have one professional edit, make changes, and think the work should still be perfect. It’s not and even one change or non-acceptance of even a small part of an edit can mess up a perfectly good edit. So if you are looking for anything close to perfection, pay for repeated professional edits. As I always try to remind students: writing is a dynamic process and not a static process. Layer by layer; step by step.
Kinds of editing: content editing and copy editing:
The Doctoral Student, the Advisor, the Advisory Committee, & the Academic Editor – Part 2
You are the author of your dissertation or thesis. If you do the preparation work well and focus your topic, if you know you are adding to the existing body of knowledge out there, you can weather a difficult advisor and advisory committee.
Some thoughts about a dysfunctional help:
Too much help
Let me just list two points about what the over-involved person might do:
