As a graduate student, your knowledge and skills as an educator continue to expand and your intellectual pursuits in education take a new direction. KDP remains a ready partner with books and archived publications, networking and publishing opportunities, and financial support.
Denisha Jones

Teaching can be a lonely profession. KDP connects me to other professionals and allows me to network with those who want to be teachers or are already in the classroom. I tell my fellow members, like so many things in life, you get out of your KDP experience what you put into it. It’s not just what KDP can do for you, but what you can do for KDP. I’m grateful to have a strong relationship with a Society that has the prestige and resources of Kappa Delta Pi.
Denisha Jones, Counselor, Indiana University

The Graduate Student National Committee, founded in 2006, focuses on the changing needs of graduate students. The Committee is made up of both master’s and doctoral students from around the country. The Committee assists in organizing activities and workshops at Convocation and other regional conferences especially for graduate students in addition to advising Headquarters staff members on new services and benefits for graduate student members. Want to get involved or have a suggestion? Contact the Committee at membership@kdp.org.

Grad Lounge Grad Lounge Tip Archives

Tackling the ABD (All But Dissertation) Ghost!
Vicky Tusken

Stop WatchFull-time educators who pursue Master or Doctorate degrees face the constant dilemma of finding sufficient time for thesis or dissertation writing. Even with the best intentions and plans, chunks of time to devote to writing never seem to materialize. Most graduate students in education must juggle the responsibilities of their own classrooms with personal life responsibilities, which leaves little room for the challenging process of writing a thesis or a dissertation. How does one to get it done?

First, quit looking or hoping for that “magical” chunk of time to appear. It simply won’t happen. Instead, shift your thinking to setting aside a specific piece of time each and every day. It isn’t the length of time that is important; it is the simple fact you set the time aside: five minutes, fifteen minutes, a half hour, or whatever the day allows. Make the commitment to set that time at the beginning of the day and stick with it. Remember, it isn’t the amount of time, but the fact you set the time aside.

In Writing your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day, Joan Bolker fine-tunes the approach of writing every day with what she calls the “many pages method.” In other words, pick a reasonable number of pages and write that same number of pages every day. Begin, she suggests, by arbitrarily selecting a daily number of pages—between three to six pages—and then try to write that number of pages each day for a week. Through this process, she says you will “hit” the natural number of pages you can realistically produce daily.

Whether one uses the “time” method or the “page” method, the point is to stop waiting for hours of time to write. For most people, that simply won’t happen and, as a result, writing won’t happen. Make the time and use it every day; you will complete pages in the process. Set your timer today, and you can prevent being overtaken by the ABD ghost!

Vicky Tusken, Ed.D
7th Grade Language Arts Teacher
Geneva Middle School South
Geneva, IL