There is a process to making a PhD happen. The first thing to do is have an idea. Not just any idea, mind you, a good idea. An idea that you think could change the world, or at least your small flat corner of it at any rate. An idea that you can't get out if your head, and one that you, most of all, think is cool, or amazing, or interesting, or even, awesome.
The next step is to find a professor that is interested in your idea. It's important to find a school at which you could thrive too, but find the professor there that is interested in exploring this idea of yours. Check this professor out. Do a background check as if you are the FBI and they have applied to work there. Have they ever stolen someone's work and presented it as their own (or has there been a claim that such has happened)? Who are their current students and what are they working on? How long have they been at the job? All of these things are important. One, if they've been on the job ten years or more at this university, it is unlikely they will leave you in the middle of the PhD. Two, if the other students are working on similar PhD ideas, you can talk to them about yours and bounce ideas off of them. Three, if the professor has even had allegations from former students it is already an issue, and one that you want NO part of.
The third step is easy. Get accepted to the university and professor of your choice.
Fourth step. Change your idea because your professor has a better one for you, and you write that. But keep your original idea in the back of your brain, and write some papers on it while you are writing the monograph known as your thesis.
Fifth step. Add resolve. Make a schedule, do an outline, keep it up for 3 or 4 years straight. You are now working on a paper that you are somewhat interested in, that will maybe change the world but will most definitely rock your own little flat corner. Your first book is going to be terrible, or more terrible than you dreamed it would, and no one will read it. Don't worry, everyone's is and no one reads them (except Stephen King. The man first started writing The Gunslinger in 1970 at age 23. His first published novel was Carrie in 1974, that has since gone on to have movies and a Broadway musical written in just his first book's name. We can't all be Stephen King.) Write your first book/ thesis about something you're okay with screwing up. The world changing idea will be your magnum opus. Mr. King did not publish The Gunslinger until 1978. He waited until he knew the idea had festered long enough. Become a better writer first.
Sixth step. Finish it and move on. Don't let it sit by while you casually write a blog about the process. Write the damn thing. Get your PhD and pay off your loans. Pick at the great idea and don't ever let it scab over.
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All this is not to say that this particular cautionary tale has happened to me exactly. I don't think anyone has stolen my ideas yet. I didn't investigate the person who got me into this university and she left before I'd even met her. No one here is doing the same investigative work I am, so talking with people in depth about my work is an impossibility. The thesis I'm working on is not the one I wanted to do at the beginning. I will finish it, and have used stories of famous authors and theatrical practitioners as inspiration to keep myself on the right path... or at least a path, with forward motion, that sometimes veers into a bog that you can only see five feet in front of you and you are pretty sure is completely filled with poisonous snakes, bugs that'll suck the life from you, and there is no way you come out the other side without being completely covered in shit. But, hey, at least your putting one foot in front of the other and you haven't died yet.
"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action." -- Hamlet (III.i)
Year 3, Day 248 - Words written: 4,000 last month... 4,000 this month... 4,000 next month.
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