I plan to submit my doctoral dissertation on September 1, exactly 3 months from today! There’s lots of work to do, but I’m still on track!

The thesis committee for my defense – with 2 “opponents” (as they say in Norway) and 1 coordinator, all holding PhD’s – is now in place. These experts have agreed to evaluate my dissertation and ask critical questions at my defense. Thank you! We’re shooting for November 25th, so save the date – you can attend either in person or digitally. 🙂 (Just so you know, Tromsø is not known for great weather or much light in late November…)

When presenting my research at the LILAC conference in Manchester in April, together with Tove, I got great questions and good feedback. This was a “dry run” of my defense presentation, so for the first time, I felt like I could possibly get through that day intact.

Before submitting, I have to complete the manuscript for the fourth article and finish writing my extended summary/synopsis (“kappe”) for the entire PhD project. I’ve started both and should be able to finish in 3 months, if my neurons cooperate. The last of the data I need – the longitudinal group’s bachelor’s theses – will be available on June 9, but most of the statistical analyses are done otherwise. I’m writing the fourth article together with my 3 supervisors, and if I haven’t said it for while, they’re the BEST! 🙂

I had originally planned on longitudinal research where I followed one cohort of psychology undergraduates over 3 years, but I ended up with only 33 students who I had enough data for! Ideally, I wanted larger sample sizes and some significant results (that they actually learned something about information literacy), so this led to a rethinking of the research plan. We decided to include cross-sectional data (from different students at the same point in time), in addition to the longitudinal data (from the same students at different points in time). You can’t just mix these data together because that would mean counting the same people twice, so I ended up comparing results of 2 studies – one cross-sectional and one longitudinal. This meant more data collection and analysis, of course…

I’ve realized in the past years that this type of rethinking and altering of the research plan is a continuous process, right until (nearly) the end. People don’t answer surveys year after year, even when offered rewards. Pandemics happen and students change course. So what do you do? Find another solution!

Here’s an interesting finding from the interviews. One student, who’s quite interested in avalanches – as one should be if one skis in the mountains in this part of the world – said that being information literate could make the difference between life and death. You have to know where to find reliable information about what’s safe, otherwise you could be buried in tons of snow.

With that inspiration, I’m now mentally prepared for a summer of hard work and challenges (and midnight sun), and I’m off on the final stretch! 🙂