D is for… Dissertation!
Welcome to April, aka, Occupational Therapy Month! My next few posts will correlate to the letter of the alphabet that I’m on, and today is D. D could stand for many things in OT: Disability, Disorder, Doubt, Decorticate, Decerebrate… the list is actually quite long. However, since I’m trying to combine my life in academia with my life in occupational therapy with this year’s #abcsofOT, I went with Dissertation. So if you had any questions about this particular area of my life on campus, this should hopefully answer them!
So. A dissertation. What exactly is that? Per the dictionary, a dissertation is “a long essay on a particular subject, especially one written as a requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree.” The chapters of a dissertation generally follow the same format: Overview, Literature Review, Methodology, Analysis, Findings, and Summary. You must submit one of these before you can graduate with your PhD. Most doctoral programs actually grant you credit hours specifically for writing your dissertation; in my particular program, 12 credit hours are allotted, and it’s up to you and your advisor to decide which semesters in which those credits will be used. Personally, I’d love to have one entire semester simply to write, but Dr. Wang may have other ideas! Once your dissertation is complete, then you must defend it. This mental image legit gives me hives, but I try to remember that I had to defend my Master’s thesis, so this is just a bigger version of that. Right? Right?
Now, you are most likely saying, “Erm, what exactly are you going to do your research on?” Well... I’m still kind of working on that. I have a broad idea that has to do with patients who were hospitalized with Covid 19 and subsequently diagnosed with Long Covid. I have access to blood samples of some such patients, and my goal is to compare their blood titers and see how those levels relate to their self-reported performance of IADLs. Covid 19 research has gone gang busters over the last two years (obvi), and the relationship between Covid 19 and occupational therapy is still in its relative infancy. This piques my professional interest since it’s a diagnosis that I spent a decent amount of time working with during my hospital days, and it’s still relatively new! And you know I love anything remotely related to acute care…
As always, if you have any questions (or any advice, well wishes, or personal/professional connections that would assist in my dissertation research), please send them to thatot.momlife@gmail.com or DM me on Instagram! Thank you for following me on this journey!