After my proposal defense, my advisor told me that he prefers to see dissertation drafts in units of first and second halves. Just, whenever it’s ready. “Students keep asking me to read each chapter, and I will, but you don’t have to do that, AV.” You playin, right?
If you know me (or, I guess, yourself??), I’m completely neurotic about all such things academic, especially something like, say, my dissertation. While I appreciate the vote of confidence, I also appreciate my predispositions toward both procrastination and panic. I looked at him with shock and awe (read: sheer horror) and assured him that he would be receiving every single chapter from me (and that I’d be looking forward to feedback on each?!). Should I laugh or cry?
It took me a day and a half to organize a dissertation timeline. I’ve (only?) had three panic attacks or so. My first attempt left me graduating late 2017. Uh, no. The second time looked good until I realized (and only did so thanks to your posts, paige and erin!) that I had planned zero time for receiving any edits or feedback, much less incorporating them into, say, the version that will actually allow me to graduate. The third time — the one I will be utilizing — sets a pace I’m not completely sure I can achieve.
my life in due dates.
I know that creating such a plan is the system that will get me across the finish line, hopefully with some semblance of sanity in tact. But it was just a bit jarring to see my life for the next two years reduced to two pages of due dates. Enough to seriously entertain the thought that there isn’t enough time. A beginner’s lesson in submitting to the fact that there are several things that will have to be “good enough.” I love my project (even though there’s way too much of it) and of course I’m going to try to do what I refer to as my “good good” writing (the 8-days-out-of-the-month perfectionist in me won’t allow anything else), but I’ve also officially lowered my expectations. Otherwise I’ll be in dissertation purgatory for the next 4 years instead of 2 (or, by technical calendar count, 1.33 … oh dear).
C's Get Degrees 
This is an amazing document! I think my first chapter took 3 times as long as the second one–its something of a learning curve. I also suffer from no imposed deadlines. For a while I felt like I was kind of being shorted, like my adviser should be harder on me, push me to finish stuff, or care enough to impose a deadline. But now, nearing the end of this ordeal, I’ve grown into the independence of it. I mean, who wants to function that way long term–with the boom bust cycle of deadlines that are all externally put on you? Unfortunately we are grown ups who decided to write these monstrosities of scholarship; no one really cares as much as we do and its up to us to get it done.
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I kind of went Excel bonkers. Inspired by a post from The Professor Is In, I mapped a five year plan (full of hypotheticals, of course), which includes my dissertation progress in detail. Now to execute …
In the midst of this, I’ve realized two things. One, the value of disciplines who have their students do a chapter meeting as opposed to just a proposal defense. Looking at our English and Lit friends, I think the method in those departments sets you up much better for writing, with a committee giving you feedback on an actual document from the start.
Two, I think you’ve said it exactly. This monstrosity is on me. I know I want independence, but I want feedback as well as some regular affirmation. And I’ve got to find some balance on that latter end. My advisor ultimately there for anything I need, but I’m going to have to be preemptive about finding readers, “assigning” chapters to various cmte members and others (to the points in your other post), and kicking my own ass.
The truth is, no one is going to do it once I have a job. I’m being treated like something more of a colleague, so I need to act and write like one. In the longer term, really for the best.
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YUP. This document is very impressive, and is probably something we should all be required to do as we sit down to “write the dissertation.” I am with Paige, my first chapter took way longer than the others, though chapter three has been killing me in terms of time-sinking. The more I do of this, the more I appreciate the value of having to write a dissertation independently, it really is the penultimate exercise in the education of a PhD student. You are on your own, and you have to battle your own demons as you go. The biggest demon for me has been my need for regular affirmation, usually from an external authority. While that is totally rationale considering that I got to this place in part because of my love for pleasing wise academic authority figures, it also has to stop, because I am an adult woman, and hypothetically in a year could be employed as a professor.
My biggest advice for people starting out on the writing journey, which I’m not sure I have shared here before, is to seize all opportunities to present your work, and to use them as hard deadlines. I’ve done this both at UNC and Duke and also at small conferences that were cheap and easy to get to, and it has really helped me to stay on track, especially because this is my research, and I want to look good when I talk about it so I really have put the effort into making those conference/campus presentations useful for me.
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Nice advice, akeenvision! Thanks for sharing!
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