There are many ways a dissertation is like a sweater. First, they both take a long time to make. Second, both involve periods of boredom, uncertainty, and confusion. Patience is required to finish either one. Third, both a dissertation and a sweater benefit from an initial planning period. Fourth, despite your careful planning, both will necessitate flexibility and a willingness to change course as the project develops. Fifth, you will likely, at some point, find yourself redoing large sections of both. Sweaters and dissertations are also different in certain ways. While you could wear your dissertation when you finish it—you could probably make an entire suit out of it—it would be a bit unusual.
Like many other creative practices, there are lessons for writing a dissertation that we can learn from studying the process of knitting a sweater. Today, I want to consider one particular phase of the dissertation and sweater making processes: finishing.
In knitting, the term “finishing” refers to a specific series of practices that complete the sweater or other knitted item. Much like a finishing school for humans, the process of finishing a sweater adds that extra element of polish and sophistication. Without these final touches, a sweater might, at best, appear a little sloppy, or at worst, literally unfinished, lacking integral elements, such as a collar, that make a sweater a sweater. On the other hand, someone might purposefully design a sweater without a collar. An artfully unraveled punk pullover would look wrong with a polished folded collar, just as a classic polo would be incomplete without one. This is the core concept I want to discuss today: like a sweater, the final sections of a dissertation involve choices that will have a major influence on how your overall product is perceived. There isn’t one correct choice for concluding every dissertation. The finishing touches you choose should be based on your discipline, field, and methods. However, not thinking about those sections—either ignoring them completely or just picking a method randomly—risks undermining the time and thought you put into all the rest.
For a dissertation, finishings include things like the conclusion, a coda or epilogue, appendices, and acknowledgments. The choice to include these sections, or not, and how to structure them, shapes how your dissertation is encountered by your reader. Of these sections, the conclusion is the most necessary and influential for shaping what your reader takes away from your work. For any piece of writing, why leave that to chance? While this is something you have likely heard before, it can be difficult to fully appreciate when you are in the middle of the dissertation writing process. This is where the metaphor of knitting a sweater can be a helpful reminder.
Knitting a sweater takes a long time. During that time, you are attending to each individual stitch, watching each row and each motif as it takes shape. That close attention means you appreciate the fabric in a way no one else quite can. You made it with your own two hands. Its value is undeniable to you. From that perspective, it can be easy, when the end is in sight and you have finally finished the body of this monumental task, to be tempted to use the easiest or fastest finishing process. After all, to you, the biggest task has already been achieved, and these are just the details. The body of stitches or words you have created is so beautiful to you and the allure of being done so powerful that it can be tempting to finish it any old way.
However, like a collar on a sweater, a conclusion gives the dissertation added structure and shape. A knitted collar can tighten up a loose neckline, smoothing out the small corners created as you knit the body. In the same way, the conclusion offers an opportunity to pull together ideas from throughout the dissertation, showing how they mutually reinforce each other and create a harmonious whole. The conclusion is not just a reiteration of the key ideas from each chapter. A collar requires different stitches than the body of a sweater because it has a different job. Likewise, the conclusion, by bringing together ideas from all of your chapters, should express something further that could not be said without that synthesis. For many readers, a quick skim of the introduction and conclusion determines whether they will read the full piece or not, just as the collar is one of the first details a casual viewer will notice. Providing a clear synthesis of your chapters will help to convey the significance of your work, motivating readers to engage further.
As when knitting a sweater, when writing a dissertation, it is all too easy for the value of your work, the beauty and interest, to be deeply apparent to you, because of your closeness to the material. You have written every word, after all. But the conclusion should not be an afterthought. It is that finishing touch that will showcase the larger pattern of the dissertation for your readers. As with choosing a collar for a sweater, the shape of the conclusion should be based on the body of the dissertation. A three-paper dissertation will benefit from a conclusion that draws out common themes and questions from your three studies. A more sustained study, on the other hand, might benefit from a conclusion that looks outwards, connecting your argument to larger trends, debates, or questions.
Understanding what your dissertation is already doing well can help you to identify what additional information or context would create a beneficial frame for the work as a whole. For this reason, it can be helpful to take some time away from your writing before approaching the conclusion. Give yourself time to appreciate what you have written before you commit to a particular finish. Getting this complete view of your work will help you to see what kind of conclusion your work calls for and what would tie it all together. But don’t worry. If it still isn’t quite right, you can always unravel and try again. That’s the beauty of stitches and words.
