All 3 Uses

dissertation
in
Along for the Ride
(Auto-generated)

At the time, he'd just found a publisher for his first novel, The Narwhal Horn, while my mom was pregnant with my brother and trying to finish her dissertation.†
Chpt 1 *
When I entered kindergarten, though, my mom came back to academia with a vengeance, scoring a visiting lectureship and a publisher for her dissertation.†
Chpt 1
And I have several articles expected by various journals, my trip to Stratford coming up, and, of course, entirely too many dissertations that clearly cannot be completed without a large amount of hand-holding.†
Chpt 4

Definitions:

(1) (dissertation)
a lengthy academic paper -- especially a scholarly work required for an advanced academic degree
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)