The debate rages on (and here, here and the original) about doing my dissertation, well at least it is raging in my mind. There are a large number of factors outside of the actual work involved in doing the dissertation vs doing two more courses. Anyhow here goes and I suspect that this may get rather long.

One of my friends who is a couple of semesters behind me in Macquarie (selected Macquarie on my recommendation) has never intended to do the dissertation. He just wants to get the parchment so that it will help secure a future and better jobs. He does not see himself as an academic and rails against the strict stylistic requirements when writing papers. I previously wrote about that as well

However I have come to the realization that I truly dislike the rigidity of academic prose especially the need to write in overly wordy, pedantic sentences when there are much clearer easier ways to express your thoughts. But of course if you write like that no-one takes you seriously. The more cryptic and enigmatic your style the better a writer or researcher you are. I don’t buy it.

Today I was talking with a colleague about this decision and he said that for him it is an easy choice. He would choose to do the course work as it is much easier and quicker. He says this from experience having completed a distance degree from a different university that required dissertations - no option to complete by doing extra course work. He said that he really did not enjoy doing the research and is much happier now that he is finished.

On the other hand comments from readers in all of the above linked posts suggest that the dissertation option once completed is worth the effort. The effort required is definately going to be a lot more than what I would need to do if doing course work.

There are a number of reasons why doing course work would be better for me. I will finish the degree faster and recieve my parchment in time for hiring season next fall. However if I do the dissertation I should finish in November but will not recieve the parchment until much later and the hiring season is November/December. I should have no problem getting a job, but do not want the hassle of explaining that yes I have finished the degree but no I haven’t recieved the parchment yet. Admistrators are notoriously dense and untrusting about such matters. If you don’t have the paper, you haven’t graduated.

Additionally my family, professional, and personal life have all been suffering during the course of my studies. My wife often wonders if I even know we are married. She has repeatedly told me that I am married to the computer or at least married to the chair in the computer room. Because I spend so much time in the computer room studying and working on essays my daughter is somewhat distant in her behaviour towards me. Last month when it was bedtime and I tried to put her to sleep should would yell at me to go to the computer room and basically didn’t want to do anything with me. However since I finished studying 2 weeks (almost 3 weeks ago) she now asks me to help her sleep and is constantly wanting me to play with her. Quite clearly the lack of attention she recieves is not fair and she cannot understand it. (If you want to see a picture look at this entry on my Korean learning blog.)

My teaching has definately been substandard. I have not been satisified with my results or my lesson plans at all. In particular this semester everything has generally been a disaster. Lessons that were dull and boring. If not that then underplanned and finishing 15 or even 20 minutes early - I did stretch some of them but then that adds to the dullness of the lesson. Basically a lot of just following the textbook with very little creativity on my part. However, since I finished my last essays, my teaching has been more inspired, more fun, and definately more creative with better results and happier faces in the classroom. I have more time and energy to put into my classes. 2 weeks ago I started building a gameboard in photoshop and just finished playing it with my students this week. it was incredibly successful, I’ll write about it in a future post, but write now I’m working on a potentially marketing through one of my Korean friends. I have several ideas for different ESL board games, but due to a lack of time and energy I haven’t been able to do anything about that. If I wasn’t doing graduate studies I could potentially have 4 or 5 more games already completed and ready to be published if they are as successful as the one I just finished. To summarize my teaching has been very poor because I didn’t have the energy or time to properly plan lessons. Is that fair to my students or employer? No.

My personal life has definately taken a beating as well. When your coffee drinking habit reaches 6 grandes (what’s wrong with a grande? here & here) a day you know you are in trouble. Again I have cut my coffee consumption down to 1 tall coffee a day. Also, I have now been able to spend some time reading fiction, specifically fantasy my favorite genre. I’m currently in book 3 of The Rune Lords which is a great concept and fairly well written. There are also a number of other projects that I would like to do including improving my photoshop skill, spending more time with photography and improving my Korean skills. Actually the Korean skills are very important to me and the first thing I did upon finishing the recent essays was to start a group blog for people learning Korean and I signed up for Korean lessons starting yesterday. If I was finished I would be able to do all this and more. These last three points are in reverse order of importance - i.e. personal life is least important and family life is most important.

Arguments for doing the dissertation are also persuasive. I believe the research topic I am interesting in has value and will be beneficial to me as a teacher. There is also the matter of this being the mainstream approach to completing a masters degree. I can foresee in the future being asked about my dissertation and having to explain that I did not do one, will this lower the value of my degree to future employers - potentially yes. But I do see that even having completed it by distance could affect perceptions of it’s value.

There is the further issue of closing doors. I’m not currently planning on going on to a doctoral degree, but who knows it is possible I change my mind in the future. When I graduated with my B.A. I had no plans for graduate school and now I am almost finished.

The question comes down to does the long term benefits of doing a dissertation outweigh the short term benefits of doing extra course work?