Concentrate on following Natalie Dee’s advice instead of writing this weekend. Celebrate one of the precious few working holidays we have in America.
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Discovery
Many times this summer I have admitted a kind of mental exhaustion with poetry, a fear that after seven years (and how many drafts of that one chapter?) I have ruined a perfectly good hobby.
I even told the Future Mister Doctor that I was afraid if I taught poetry classes for a living that I wouldn’t be able to think of enough interesting things to say–a fear that I certainly never had as an undergraduate, when my hand shot up dozens of times per class period.
And yet, to paraphrase Keats, the ideas in the mind are never dead. Here I am, about to enter my eighth year of graduate school, battling weariness at every page. And there are still new ideas coming. Even this summer, which I have described as a period of stagnation, I have had major insights, major discoveries. Stagnation has in fact been punctuated, all along, with flashes of thought that excite me.
I experience these flashes as relief–not dead. not dead. But in fact, I should expect them. They are going to continue to arrive, in steady (if not completely predictable) increments.
Typically, I make resolutions at the beginning of the school year involving organization, accomplishments, and work habits. But I have a new and better idea this year: resolve to trust your brain. If you keep working, it will too.
Writing–7 days Exercise–5 days (I’m still on track–planning to go to yoga this afternoon and something with the Future Mister Doctor this weekend.)
Posted in Fear
Skimming and Skipping
I have a hard time not reading every word of everything I start reading, and that’s a real liability when it comes to scholarship.
I’ve been practicing skipping as sort of a warm-up to developing the skill of skimming. I now skip the makeup articles in Real Simple, since I have never worn makeup and don’t ever plan to start. And I’m working on skipping articles in trade magazines–things like The Chronicle of Higher Education. I was advised, and I think it’s good advice, to read The Chronicle as preparation for going on the job market. And indeed, I feel that I have been getter a more complete sense of the profession from reading it. But sheesh, it is long. And it comes really often. Then there’s Poetry magazine. I really do not enjoy it, but it features articles pertinent to my dissertation often enough to make it worth my while. Except for the lame poems–lame poems are actually never worthy my time. Now, I read the first six lines or so of every poem and then (mostly) skip!
Still, just because I’d planned on reading it today, I read an essay that was almost an exact duplicate of a chapter in the book I read yesterday by the same author. Why I did not recognize the obvious need to skip this reading is beyond me.
Wait, no it’s not! I was just scared to start writing. Aha! The FEAR strikes again, this time in the form of re-reading something that was a struggle to read the first time through! And the sad thing is, I read that book twice four years ago in preparation to write a book review. (I really did need to re-read it once though, I swear.)
Writing–4 days Exercise–4 days This experiment is going great so far! Exercise really does give you energy. Today I went running first thing, then did a ton of cooking and cleaning in preparation for the Future Mister Doctor & my first wedding anniversary, and then wrote for two hours! And look at me now, posting to my blog! Whee!
Public Commitments
I just watched Julie & Julia, which I loved–and it reminded me of the light-hearted and funny book by Julie Powell. I decided to try something from the blog/book/movie and make a public commitment. It’s not quite as dramatic as cooking through the recipes of Julia Child’s cookbook, but still. As Marcee pointed out in her comments to my freewriting post, sometimes a public audience makes all the difference.
I’ve accomplished a lot this summer–wrote a new and dramatically improved introduction, traveled over 5,000 miles by car and visited over 50 loved ones, started a new business with my husband, helped my parents find a house to rent in Austin for the winter–and I like the variety of those accomplishments. But now I’m craving normalcy and dissertation progress.
So here’s my commitment: to write 21 days in the next month (by Friday, September 11) and to exercise 21 days in the next month. Why 21 days? Well, as Joan Bolker points out “writing every day” can mean different things to different people. My “every day” excludes weekends and national holidays (in this case, Labor Day).
Joan Bolker advises a pages-per-day method (you’re done when you’ve written a certain number of pages) but in my revising phase I’m having trouble knowing what can happen in one day. I’m re-writing parts of Chapter 1 from scratch, which sometimes involves stopping writing to research. Other parts of the chapter need mainly stylistic revisions. So I’m going with the butt-in-the-chair method: 2 hours per day to work on revisions specifically (in other words, no e-mailing dissertation support group or advisors, no meetings, no background reading, no blog posts).
As for exercise, I’m committing to 20 minutes per day. And yes, the exercise part of the plan is completely related to making progress on my dissertation. The health of body and mind is something I’m convinced that anyone concerned about productivity should be paying attention to.
Don’t worry–every post this month is not going to be related to this commitment. But I will monitor my progress in my posts this month like this:
Writing–0 days Exercise–0 days
Posted in Dissertation Drafts, Strategy
Passion
As a kid, I was kind of a quote-hound. As a cynical academic, I can kind of see how an inspiring quote has only a very limited ability to change one’s life. Also, I tend to quote things like, “it jarred my slats” from L.M. Montgomery’s Jane of Lantern Hill that I find amusing but mystify the people I’m talking to.
Anyway, I cracked open the September issue of Real Simple this morning and saw a quote that seemed pertinent to my dissertation this morning:
Nothing great has been and nothing great can be accomplished without passion.–G.W.F. Hegel
Yes, I thought to myself. I need to get some passion going. Then I did a double-take and flipped back to another quote a few pages earlier:
One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdowns is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.–Bertrand Russell
There are a lot of contradictory adages out there that have a ring of truth. While some dissertators I know draw a lot of comfort and even strength from a mantra of some sort, it’s good to be adaptable.
For example, when I told the now-Doctor Gale that “There shouldn’t be all this craziness,” she used it as a sort of grounding tool while she was revising her dissertation. I was a little surprised that what I’d said seemed so meaningful to her, but when she repeated it back to me a couple of months ago (I didn’t even recognize it as my own phrase) it seemed like a crucial idea to hold on to. OMG, There really SHOULDN’T be all this craziness. Wow!!!
There’s only a little of summer left, so maybe now is a good time for all of us to assess whether or not we need more passion for our work or more vacation in the next few weeks. I fall into the passion camp at the moment, but I know there’s some of you out there who haven’t let yourselves take enough of a break this summer. There’s still time!
Years-to-Degree
Female Science Professor strikes again!Her post “Years-to-Degree” made me happy. I privately determined that I would graduate in six years when I began graduate school, and I saw no reason why I wouldn’t be able to. Even though at orientation they told us that hardly anyone graduated in six years, I figured I was quicker and better than most people and I would be able to do it. As FSP points out, there’s many many factors that determine years to degree. Among the ones she listed that slowed me down: “extent of research experience prior to starting the graduate program” (almost none), significant events (a wedding in my case), and nature of funding (teaching-based funding).
But here’s my favorite part:
3. When a colleague and I looked at the dataset and applied our qualitative and totally subjective evaluations as to which students were our most ‘successful’ (as in smart and hard-working, got awards/fellowships in grad school, published, got jobs after graduation etc.), we saw no trend in years-to-degree. Some ‘successful’ students zipped through the PhD program, finishing in 3-4 years; others took significantly longer.
Posted in Uncategorized
Part of the Process
As my friends I enter our eighth year of graduate school, our emotional issues relating to our dissertations are met with two kinds of responses.
Of those without Ph.D.s, would-be sympathizers often say things like, “Why would you put yourself through this?,” “It’s just a job,” or perhaps even “What the f*&# are you crying about now?”
Those on the other sides–the ones who have earned doctoral degrees, just nod wisely and say “it’s all part of the process.” My friend Jason, who has an M.D. and a Ph.D. thank you very much, claimed that the Ph.D. caused many more tears than medical school.
At this point in my career, my commitment to enjoying graduate school seems somewhat laughable. Some days I fail to honor that commitment. And yet, universally, the doctors I know say they went through the same problems. Crying about graduate school is not only well within the “normal” range of behaviors, it’s downright pervasive.
The Future Doctor Anderson hypothesized to me that the reason we cry in graduate school has to do not so much with inherent emotional weakness as the fact that in order to graduate, we have to rely on our perfectionism (self-criticism), desire to achieve (fear of inadequacy), pride (shame) and determination (willingness to beat one’s head against a wall). In other words, what makes us upset is very closely related to what makes us succeed.
It is almost impossible to remember that “it’s all part of the process” when you’re gulping back sobs in your cubicle. But striving to keep that perspective is the only way I’ve found to get back to work after my emotions spend themselves.
Posted in Process
Dating
This morning, while searching for a file on my computer, I congratulated myself on having a good naming system.
My research involves a lot of small articles and sound clips–I took notes on over 100 items per chapter. Each item (and my notes on it) is saved in separate file, each looking something like this: “2009.07.27 The Title of the Article.” Each chapters files are in a separate folder.
Maybe a lot of people out there organize their files in this way, but I’ve noticed that many people use underscores (_) instead of spaces in document titles, and many avoid punctuation. I’m pretty sure some of my students didn’t think you could use periods in file names.
The reason I use dots to write dates in year-month-day order is so that I can arrange a folder alphabetically and everything will line up perfectly chronologically. If the month was listed first, everything in January would line up together, regardless of year. That’s also why I type “07” instead of “7” for the month–so that October, November, & December don’t mess up my ordering. One could also use this system for drafts of chapters, and always know which is the most recent. I date photo files this way too (because I always want to know when a picture was taken).
I can imagine other equally good systems, but it’s important for anyone, regardless of occupation, to have consistent file-naming practices. Once you get in the habit, it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to title something–and it saves countless moments of frustration later on.
Posted in Organization
Freewrites
Before I started writing my dissertation, I found that freewrites were about the only way I could accomplish anything tangible. I did a lot of reading and a lot of thinking, and the freewrites allowed me to record my thoughts a couple of times a day (on a good day). I did very little re-reading of this writing–but the act of writing helped keep me moving.
Some people are proponents of the “write without letting your pencil leave the page until the timer rings” freewriting method. I got along better when I had a specific topic (a book I’d just read) and simply tried to type quickly until I ran out of steam — usually around ten minutes. I let myself pause instead of making myself write “I don’t know what to write” because I found that if I wrote continuously, a bunch of complaining would seep into the writing that was actually not emotionally helpful to put on paper.
Once I started researching my specific chapters (instead of the general reading I did at first), I stopped needed freewrites so much–I typed notes about my sources (with any additional dissertation thoughts, related or unrelated, in parentheses). And I typed my chapters. But I didn’t need to do the free-form, no-planned-direction type of writing for a least a couple of years.
All the sudden, with a complete draft of my dissertation done, I find myself turning to freewriting again at the advice of my Dissertation Support Group. And I’m reminded that freewrites can be good for getting unstuck any time. At the very least, some writing is happening.
I never want to freewrite–I always want to do the “actual” writing that other people will see as part of the dissertation document. But even at this late stage, sometimes I really don’t see another way to get the project moving.
Time Management & Travel
I am embarking on a truly excellent adventure this month: a working roadtrip. The plan was simple: visit a bunch of family & friends all while working as usual. We planned to be on the road four weeks.
You might be laughing right now, and indeed, it hasn’t exactly gone as planned. (Witness the lack of blog posts in the last few weeks.)
Let me be clear: seeing said family & friends (and thirteen states while we’re at it) has been awesome. We’ve had so much fun with everyone. It’s the work part that has been difficult.
But I’m not ready to give up on this idea–in fact, we’re already planning another version of this trip for next summer. And I would add in my defense that after seven years in one city (working on one project) I needed a change of scenery pretty badly.
So for those of you who are as committed to traveling as we are in my family, let me share what I’ve learned.
- Give your work good PR. I freely admitted my burned-out state and reluctance to work, and as a result few of my hosts/hostesses took my schedule seriously. My husband on the other hand, has made his job sound not only important but also exciting and lucrative. He’s gotten a lot more space.
- Instead of telling my hosts I needed to work for 4 hours, as I’ve been doing–I should have told them that I needed to write five pages (or some such thing) before hanging out. In this way, I could have cut out some of the lingering breakfasts that I felt were sucking away precious energy.
- I would have stayed in hotels a few more times. It’s cheaper to stay with friends, but a little more down time would have helped keep me energized at working times.
- I should have left the house to work, which I didn’t think of because I generally like to work at home, in my pajamas.
- I should have realized that most of the people I know do not work 9-5! I imagined having a house to myself all day, and that has happened exactly never in the first three weeks of this trip. It was relatively easy for my hosts to make free time in their days, which wasn’t expected and should have been accounted for.
Becoming Doctor Jones 