The Dissertation Feedback WorkbookWalk in with an agenda. Walk out with a record.
A committee meeting lasts an hour. What happens in that hour, and in the two days after it, decides whether the next three months of your work go in the right direction. Most students walk in with a draft and walk out with a feeling. This workbook replaces the feeling with a record.
Available on Amazon • Paperback • 114 pages • 8.5 x 11 inches
The meeting is an hour. The next three months depend on it.
The Problem
Most students walk into a committee meeting with a draft and walk out with a feeling. Comments come from several people at once, some contradict each other, some are suggestions that sound like requirements, and "tighten this" means something different to everyone in the room. Two weeks later, nobody remembers the same meeting.
The Solution
The Dissertation Feedback Workbook is built around the meeting, not the manuscript. Every committee meeting gets the same eleven pages, in the order you will need them: set up, prepare, capture, recover, sort, resolve disagreements, plan, confirm, and check back two weeks later.
Three parts and three appendices. Every page meant to be written in.
114 plain pages designed to be filled in by hand, 8.5 x 11 inches, black and white. Purchasers may photocopy the worksheet pages for their own use.
Part 1: Set up once
A page for your chair and each member and what they care about, an expectations conversation, a scope agreement, an AI-use agreement with your committee, a recording-consent script, and a bank of questions worth asking in any meeting.
Part 2: Six meeting cycles
A two-page prep sheet, a numbered capture grid (who said it, what they said in one line, Required / Suggested / Unclear, and where in the document), a debrief page, a triage page, a page for when members disagree, an action plan, a 48-hour confirmation email template with a one-page summary, and a two-week check-in.
Part 3: Running logs
Logs that carry across meetings: conflicting feedback, decisions, a scope ledger for every "have you considered adding...", revision rounds by chapter, an advisor contact log, an AI-use log, a citation verification log, milestones and forms, and method rationale cards that double as defense preparation.
Appendix: Twenty-two common troubles
Conflicting feedback, vague feedback, a silent advisor, moving goalposts, scope creep, harsh delivery, a member who wants a different dissertation, and more, each with what experienced academics recommend.
Appendix: A glossary of committee phrases
Decodes phrases like "needs more work" and "tighten this," and the softened language that hides a hard message.
Appendix: Responsible AI
A responsible-AI checklist with a disclosure template, to go with the AI-use agreement and log in Parts 1 and 3.
Three rules do most of the work.
Required, Suggested, or Unclear
Mark every comment as one of the three, and ask about the unclear ones before the meeting ends, while the person who said it is still in the room.
Wait 48 hours before you sort
Feedback sorted while it still stings gets sorted wrong. The debrief page catches what you heard right away; the triage waits.
Write the record yourself
Within two days, send a short numbered summary of what was decided and ask for corrections. Several graduate programs now require exactly this, and the student who writes the summary is the student whose understanding becomes the official one.
For any field and any committee structure.
Thesis and dissertation students
Master's and doctoral students in any field who meet with a chair, an advisor, or a full committee and want every meeting to end with a written, agreed record.
Any committee structure
Chair and members, supervisor and co-supervisor, or a panel with external examiners. US and UK terms are mapped on the first pages.
Written from the student side of the table
Written by Angel Reyes, a current doctoral candidate who has sat on the student side of the table, for students who would rather walk out with a record than a feeling.
Walk In With an Agenda
Eleven pages for every meeting, logs that carry across all of them, and twenty-two common troubles with what to do about each. Walk out of your next committee meeting with a record instead of a feeling.
Paperback • 114 pages • $19.99 • Available Now