... corrections of thoughts ...

... er... i think there have been quite misunderstanding from my last blog, especially to nong nong.

Erm... I'm not sure if you were thinking I could just graduate with that one paper I got published. It's not that na. This is just an extra work from the full dissertation. A MUST for Ph.D. graduate is the dissertation that contains your original thoughts on research work. To my best knowledge, speaking of disseration, there are a few types.

1) the book style that contains several chapters speaking ellaborating the one main theme you want to convey.

2) the combination of journal publications from the similar topics and bind them together with introduction and summary chapters to make all goes in the same flow.

For Japanese univesities, they rely heavily on journal publication. To be able to file for graduation request, you need to have a certain number of journal publication along side your dissertation. This number varies from department to department, from professor to professor.
If you talk to P'P' in the scientific area and you hear them say 3 papers, it usually means they need to publish 3 journal papers and they can bind them in a dissertation in (2) style and file for graduation request (and usually can graduate without problems).

For my case, according to the graduation guideline from my department, I need to have my dissertation + ONE journal paper which if not already published, the manuscript needed to be accepted for publication. That was why I was so happy I got my paper accepted and counted toward graduation requirement. I KNEW even with that, I still need to write my dissertation -- not yet being able to graduate der~.

I thought further that I could write my dissertation like the way P'P' can, i.e. focusing on writing 2 more papers and bind them together, then I will be done. But no, I was told I cannot. I need to go with (1) style and not with (2). And on top of that, my professor prefers us to write THREE journal papers. So meaning that the workload I estimated was not totally right. I found out later from my senpai that ONE of the three journal papers MUST BE in Japanese! So there!

I understood absolutely well why I need to get all these works done for graduation requirement though. Things in social science aren't quite relying on facts like scientific stuff. So thoughts on the same topics vary from people to people. If you go up defending your paper without a backup of any publication, you leave your paper quite a large loophole to be attacked and there is a high chance you will not be able to graduate. So the journal paper will help give your paper strength, to confirm it is something widely accepted as contributions to current researches. Of course, three papers speak better than one. And my professor gives a further sight on graduates' chance of finding jobs in Japan. For foreign students, he encourages us to write a paper in Japanese, so we would be able to say that we have some proficiency in using Japanese. Plus, if we do researches in English and in the field not necessarily related to Japan, then the question of why we need to be in Japan will appear. So yes, all the required works have explanation in themselves. I don't have objections to that. Just that all these are out of required elements I prepared for. (อุตส่าห์เช็คมาอย่างดีกับระเบียบของคณะ... อาจารย์ดั๊นนนไม่ตามคณะอีก แต่ถ้าให้เลือกก็ทำตามอาจารย์อยู่ดี เพราะว่าถ้าไม่ทำเนี่ยะ.. โอกาสเจออะไรแบบตอนดีเฟนด์ธีสิสป.โทอีกทีก็มีเยอะมากๆ ไม่เอาอ่ะ.. เจอครั้งนั้นครั้งเดียวพอละ)

Anyways, I think things will be alright. It was like a shock to me when I first heard about it. Now I think I'm coping with it alright and starting to have a clearer picture of which path I need to follow. So now that we all know my requirements, let's wait and see how I can accomplish them together. :)

...and I had it all wrong! -"-

What's about? ---> SCHOOL!!!!

Well, I have been misunderstanding about the criteria to graduate with Ph.D.! I million times checked the syllabus and it said aside from your Ph.D. dissertation, "you are required to have ONE paper publication with a refereed journal". But know what??? NOOOOOOO....... IT IS NOT SO!!!!!!

Well, I was trying to come up with more ideas for what I can do for my future research that would also fulfill the graduation requirement. I came up with 2 options of how to write my dissertation.

1) Get 3 paper published, put them together, write an introduction and a summary to bind them together into one dissertation.
--> I have been rather lucky to have my edited master thesis accepted for a conference presentation and also selected for its proceeding publication. I just need to write 2 more papers and put them together.

OR

2) Write a book-style of dissertation comprises of many small chapters explaining the flow of the whole HUGE research.
--> meaning I need to detach my master thesis into small pieces and add extra researches on each point of the contents.

The two ways are rather different, so I went up to my professor without any appointment, just to get things straight so I can move on working for the research. And guess what??? What I thought was pretty much not what things actually are!!

FIRST:: NO, it's not ONE paper you are required to publish during your PhD course. It's ONE every year!!!! Yes... so I need to publish 2 more to meet graduation criteira!!!

SECOND:: NO!!!! You can't bind the three papers together and make it your disseration. You need to write the whole dissertation in a book style cuz it's actually a requirement to get it turned into a book after you acquired your PhD title!!! <-- but my prof said not that many people can accomplish that.. so well.. we don't have to look to the book publication yet.

I'm not that surprised it turned out this way for dissertation style though cuz I know most of the places require you to write it in a book format. What I'm kinda shocked is that while you have to write your dissertation like that, you have to put them in small papers for journal publication. And it's not only one as I expected. You need THREE of those! + alpha conference presentations. Ouch... !!

Anyways, just put it on the blog to remind myself what I need to get done.

Off to work now ==33