The Angsty Dissertator

Still Feeling Defensive...

2009-10-02T15:40:00.001-04:00

So, just when I thought I was on the verge of determining a defense date, my advisor finally chimes in with her overdue comments on my chapter. She informs me that the defense will have to be pushed back by a couple weeks. This means I have to email the committee all over again and find another date we all agree on for the defense. That, and one difficult committee member is asking for extra time to review the dissertation. Not to mention an impending due date to submit my final dissertation in order to graduate in December.

But, I'm going to try staying ahead of the game as best I can. Over-preparing is my usual approach to stress. To this day, I still have never pulled an all-nighter!

However, I do foresee that things will be a bit more frenzied and stressful in the next month.

Feeling Defensive

2009-09-04T14:43:00.001-04:00

Well, today I have proposed to my academic advisor a date for my dissertation defense. It took about 3 weeks to hear back from the entire committee regarding their availability, and only a couple of dates seem to overlap. Maybe it'll work out just fine. ANGST!

Part of me wonders if the end of October is too early. That's only 6 weeks away! That means getting a draft of my dissertation to my committee in the next 3 weeks. Is that possible?

Ack!

Dissertation Haiku

2009-09-02T09:50:00.002-04:00

Here's my dissertation in Haiku:

Trauma Scrapbooking

How Do You Tell Your Story?

By Embellishing

There's something especially satisfying about boiling my project down to its most basic syllables.

Sorry, Trees

2009-09-02T09:15:00.001-04:00

I did it! Yesterday I printed a rough draft of the ENTIRE dissertation, including the front matter (such as foreward and the dedication - to my parents). I couldn't help but marvel at the sheer girth of the document.

And I printed it single spaced.

To save the trees. Poor trees.

I can't help it that I'm old-school and have to see my manuscript in print so that I can make sense of it. It's the only tangible way for me to get the big picture, which is essentially contained within a 200+ page document.

Someone I know who graduated and who felt terribly guilty about all the trees she maimed or killed while writing (and ostensibly printing) her dissertation decided to donate money to one of those plant-a-tree organizations.

I vow to do that as well. It's the least I can do to thank the trees for their donation to my cause.

Angst over Concluding

2009-08-28T16:17:00.002-04:00

Why is the dissertation conclusion so difficult to write? I am seriously stalled out. I've written FIVE chapters, close to 200 pages of well-researched, academic jargon that means virtually nothing to anyone else but me and the 5 professors on my dissertation committee.

So, why the faltering now?

Perhaps because I have a lot of other things going on. Packing, moving. Job applications, job interviews. Watching the fourth exciting season of Angel. I know, I'm behind the eight ball on that one.

It's been a challenge keeping one foot in the dissertation door, and the other on the way out into the "real" world.

It may also be self-sabotage. If I write the conclusion, won't I be finished?

And that means I do have to go out into the world and be an adult again.

Pooh.

2009-08-28T16:10:00.001-04:00

Just signed up for creating a blog post through email. Excellent. I'm lazy, so the less I have to do, the better.

The Phinish Line

2009-08-07T12:17:00.003-04:00

If it weren't for the amazing folks (or 'pholks') over at the Phinished website, I would not have experienced the level of productivity I have in the past several months (of not posting!). I have completed several chapters of my dissertation. In fact, I'm writing the conclusion as we speak.

I still have no idea what I'm doing, and it feels somewhat presumptuous to be writing 6 chapters of content from my imagination, but oh well.

Over the past few months, I've been following with satisfaction and relief several threads on the Phinished site, some of which ring so true to my experience. This website is a wonderful warehouse of ideas, survival tips, and resources for people trying to finish their masters or doctoral theses. You can chat live with fellow writers, make pacts regarding what you want to accomplish and when, etc. It's greatly alleviated the isolation of dissertating for me.

One person on Phinished recently bemoaned the fact that her (dissertation) writing isn't as good or original or as fresh as it was when she started grad school and wrote cohesive, sharp seminar papers (boy, can I relate to her!). This started a thread of people talking about how the process tends to beat you down. One person (whose thoughts often mirror my own) said:

1) Grad school has been very isolating, demoralizing experience for me.

2) I have become very self-conscious and I am constantly checking my thinking and reasoning against some higher standards (academic advisor? committee? that paper in Nature?).

3) I am afraid to speak for fear of sounding stupid... and i[t] looks as if I am also afraid to think - because every thought brings about a whirlwind of self-doubt followed by a paper-reading binge - none of which is conducive to original thinking or writing...

Ugh. It's like a broken record. I hear this over and over. Sometimes adding my own frustratrations and angsty refrain to the crowd.

I'm struck by how so many of my own personal obstacles were present before grad school; the process has just managed to bring them to the fore and/or exacerbate them.

I was angsty before, and now I'm just more (and perhaps now justifiably?) angsty.

The positive side is that grad school has also brought out all kinds of my strengths, too.

PC Load letter. What the fuck does that mean?*

2008-12-10T21:50:00.006-05:00

I am a graduate assistant. This is little more than a glorified errand girl. One of my primary responsibilities - no joke - is to keep the department photocopier and printer in tip-top shape. If not, I get hysterical emails from faculty alerting me to the latest disaster. Low toner! Holy shit, everything must come to a screaching halt!

The other day, one faculty member actually came into my office with a sample of the streaks the photocopier made on her copies. She couldn't just say, "the photocopier is causing streaks, so you might want to have it serviced." Instead, an email to me and to the department admin, along with living proof of the error, are just the beginning of multiple reminders of the grave problem befalling the department photocopier. This woman is actually the queen of too.much.information. Routinely, she'll catalogue for me her weekly schedule of traveling to and from campus from her home in New York (location changed for her protection). Included in these disjoined and totally awkward exchanges (she's what Seinfeld would call a "close talker") are detailed plans for where she sleeps away from home, which is apparently either at Shelly's house or at the Best Western. Strangely, her husband accompanies her to school, even attending the classes she teaches. One day while asking for five gently used red Bic ballpoint pens (no caps please), she informed me that her hubbie, who was currently grading papers for her course (and to my knowledge, who is not a professor) ,"just couldn't get out of bed this morning." Ew. TMI.

I guess what I'm getting at is that as I advance closer to the Ph.D., it appears my low-level administrative skills (and, apparently, my ability to accommodate petty, annoying requests) are greatly improving. I'm a master at ensuring there are sufficient staples in the three different staplers for the faculty. I can schedule a mean meeting on the fly. And photocopying? A total pro. All the while pacifying professors on the edge of a nervous breakdown because we are almost out of paper!

My ability to tolerate this job terrifies me. Sometimes I think I'm too good at servicing paper products and pissy professors.

*A little Office Space reference there.

Giving Sisyphus a Run for His Money

2008-12-04T18:42:00.007-05:00

I am on the verge of delivering my very first dissertation chapter to my advisor.

I'm kind of shitting my pants over it, though it masks itself in busy-work. Oh, I should just clean up the references. Wait, why don't I have this reference? If I have this reference, I should actually also include so-and-so. And then I should add some kind of salient quote by so-and-so. So then I spend way too long looking for the perfect quote, and when I find it (after being waylaid by a dozen other interesting ideas popping up in my incessant Google searches), I've forgotten where I wanted to include the quote, and why.

Such is the fate of a researcher - this endless seeking. The quest for the most timely information available, though, is a farce. By the time you screw up the courage to press "submit," and by the time your advisor gets around to (what she calls) "read" the chapter, followed by how long it takes her to get back to you with (what she calls) "feedback," you're completely screwed and you have to start all over again.

Answer: Anywhere I Can Do It

2008-12-03T16:46:00.004-05:00

Question: Where do you do your writing?

Or, to be more specific, and in order of likelihood (and, strangely, productivity): at work; name any local cafe, and I've been there, writing; on my bed; in my car (while at a stoplight or in the precious free moments before work); at the gym; in a library study carrel; and last but not least, in my home officespace.

I've stupidly carved out a little office niche in my bedroom. Needless to say, I take lots of nap breaks. It goes without saying, too, that I'm totally unproductive at home. I don't get it. I worked from home for nearly 3 years and was impossibly disciplined. I have no idea what changed.

Wait, I know. Back then, I was getting paid to write. Quite well, actually. Even got a 401K.

Now, I'm paying tens of thousands of dollars a year to either endanger other drivers or take naps.

A Little Primal Screaming with your Angst?

2008-12-01T20:16:00.003-05:00

In the last class tonight, students asked for a stiff drink after the professor had us write on index cards all our anxieties about grad school. Everyone kept saying that the 3X5" cards were insufficiently small.

Which is how we all feel about ourselves in grad school, it turns out.

For future reference (I will need it, that's for sure), here is the list, in no particular order, of recurring anxieties and fears referenced by my classmates:

not finishing
lack of money
don't know as much as I should
not getting job
public speaking
overall failure
not as smart as others
ideas are too obvious
colleagues will think I'm dumb
Imposter Syndrome

These were read anonymously. When Professor X read out my card: "Imposter Syndrome (being exposed for lack of knowledge)," she called unnecessary attention to my helpful description in parentheses. Scoffing, she said, "this person wrote a definition in case we don't know what Imposter Syndrome means. As if we don't know."

And then I felt the primal scream coming on.

Last Grad Class EVER. First Blog Post EVER.

2008-12-01T14:34:00.000-05:00

This is IT, I swear to you, dear non-existent readers (as this is the first entry in this newbie blog). My last grad class EVER. After today, I refuse to take any more university classes! Granted, this dissertating writing workshop had no required reading, aside from barely glancing at the excerpts my classmates sweated and angsted over. So it wasn't exactly hard.

But it was oh-so-trying in other ways. This class represented the epitome of the description of smarminess so often attributed to grad students. I have to agree with the icky generalization in this case. These students are over-the-top, orgastically in love with every idea generated in class (read: English majors). I can't take it anymore. Most of my graduate classes have been filled with chest-puffing smart-asses. But this one is just too much, too super-saturated with people getting WAY too excited about words. Every single word they utter is as if it is italicized.

After this delicious coffee, I will carry my mopey, silently brooding self to class and cringe everytime I watch these future scholars of America masturbate to modernist orality. Or whatever the hell these English puffs are going on about.