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INSIDE THIS ISSUE - April 7, 2008
4. Many Free Workshops for ABDSG Readers!
April 7, 2008
A Note from the Editor
Tracy Steen, Ph.D.
"Life is less about the hand you're dealt than how you play it."
I encountered that philosophical thought this morning while trying to accomplish some multitasking that included a scan of the local newspaper. The words immediately caught my eye, and I paused to read the column closely. In a detour from her usual political punditry, columnist Susan Estrich was recalling an unhappy episode that occurred years ago, during the process of her college applications, when thin envelopes of rejection arrived from her first choices while a fat envelope of acceptance arrived from her very last choice ("the one my mother made me apply to").
Despite her bitter disappointment, the author went on to great success in life. She writes that her experience at her last choice taught her excellent work habits and increased her confidence in her academic abilities. Though her life at the time was not progressing as she had planned and dreamed, she played the hand she was dealt and came out a winner.
Most of us have been there with our own tales of thin or thick envelopes and can readily sympathize with the writer. And although the anxiety of those college application days is long past by the time one reaches ABD status, on some level there can seem to be an ongoing replay of sorts. You now have an even bigger goal, and once again you want to move ahead according to a specific plan for your future, yet obstacles can arise to frustrate plans and cloud the future with uncertainties.
Of course, that's not just true of the dissertation process; such is life. Obstacles arise, but they are there to be overcome. And though some people seem to get a smooth ride--the fat envelope--most of us don't. The good news is that in the long run, it really doesn't matter.
As Estrich points out in her column, you don't have to get the fat envelope in order to succeed. Although I don't know the circumstances in which you began your academic journey, I do know that every ABD has already succeeded. You have been accepted into a doctoral program (congratulations!) and have completed the course work that demonstrates your ability to do the various kinds of academic tasks required for a dissertation. Now all that remains is to do much, much more of the same. You have shown that you are capable and motivated. You have what it takes; just continue to play the hand!
If one of those impediments along the way to your dissertation can be traced to your committee, Dr. Mary Renck Jalongo may have some solutions for you. Her guest article appears below in this issue. Be sure to read "Working with Your Committee: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Sources of Conflict.
Inspirational Quotes
John Amatt
Adventure isn't hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is
an attitude that we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life -- facing
new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the
unknown and, in the process, discovering our own unique potential.
Thomas Edison
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were
to success when they gave up.
Abraham Lincoln
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important
than anything else.
Working with Your Committee: A Behind-the-Scenes
Look at Sources of Conflict
Mary Renck Jalongo, Ph.D
As just about everyone who attends college knows, many higher education faculty members have strong opinions and are not afraid to express them. One of the more worrisome aspects of completing a dissertation is what happens when important ideas and healthy egos all start bumping into one another within the confines of a small committee.
Dissertation lore is replete with stories about committees that deteriorated into feuding factions rather than functioning as a collegial group to guide a novice researcher's study. Although it is possible for dissertation committees to go awry, a couple decades of working with a large doctoral program suggests that, more often than not, differing perceptions of the quality of the work and contribution of the study underlie most of the conflict. What follows is sound advice on how to avoid it.
"My committee had philosophical differences."
Before you put people on a committee together, figure out how professional,
open-minded, and well-adjusted they are. They do not need to be best friends,
but they do need to be willing to work together.
One helpful strategy is to identify your chairperson first and then discuss the composition of the committee with him or her before you do any further inviting. Another consideration in committee member choice is how much support they have for your project. If someone has total disdain for qualitative research, you probably don't want that individual chairing your ethnographic study, for example.
The stories spun by failed writers of dissertations often make much of "philosophical differences" between and among dissertation committee members that derailed their study. Such disputes have more to do with standards of quality rather than petty disagreements. Usually it comes down to one or more committee members who are saying, in effect, "I realize it's not a very good dissertation, but can't we cut the student a break?" while one or more other committee members are saying, in effect, "There's no way I'll be signing off on this document." Stated plainly, the work is in troubled waters, but differences of opinion exist about whether the student is managing to stay afloat or is dead in the water.
"I got contradictory recommendations from various members of the
committee."
Another common lament of ABDs in the throes of dissertations is that the committee's
recommendations are inconsistent. Actually, this is to be expected. One reason
for having a committee in the first place is to provide a chorus of opinion
rather than a single voice--it is the doctoral equivalent of the medical second
opinion, and just like the second opinion, it is designed to prevent major
blunders.
Scholarly work is all about cautiously interpreting results, viewing work from differing perspectives, and responding to peer review. When grappling with advice from more than one individual on how to strengthen the document, the first step is to go through the manuscript one page at a time and look at each committee member's comments on each section. Often, what appeared to be incompatible in terms of recommendations is simply an indication that the section in question was not clear.
If advice still seems to be in opposition, try to figure out how you might revise in a way that would satisfy each person. If suggestions truly are in direct contradiction, figure out how wedded each person is to the recommendation. Start with the chairperson. Let it be known diplomatically that there was a mixed message, and your chairperson can help you to work it out.
"My committee failed to give me the support I needed."
Research on completers and noncompleters of dissertations suggests that an
internal locus of control is correlated with successful program completion
(Green, 1997). Any doctoral candidate who expects the committee to tell him
or her exactly what to do and how to do it is headed for difficulty because
a dissertation is not a homework assignment.
The best committee members are busy professionals and active scholars, not hand holders. Do not try their patience with half-baked ideas and displays of confusion. Demonstrate that you are a capable scholar and competent professional, too.
Let them see you at your calm, cool, collected best. Resist the urge to e-mail or call when you feel overwhelmed or frustrated--save these conversations for friends and lovers. Bear in mind that your committee is a group of academic advisors, and reserve discussions of dissertation angst for trained therapists (or at least for those who are unlikely to broadcast it).
When you think about it, a doctoral degree is a warranty, of sorts. That Dr. warrants not only that you know your subject matter in depth, but also that you are capable of planning and conducting research in a relatively independent fashion. True, the dissertation committee can function like a set of training wheels, but your program did not do its job if, at the final stages, you did not ride off with those training wheels removed.
"They said there were too many errors in the document, but they
should have caught them!"
Just in case your committee is too polite to say it plainly, you are responsible
for the document. When a student submits a document in rough draft form, one
of my colleagues can sometimes be heard to grumble, "I have my degree
already." If mistakes exist when all is said and done, it is on you,
not on your committee members. Every one of those errors you allow to slip
by is like coffee stains on a resume, diminishing your reputation along the
way.
The committee members' role is to respond to the content, not to spend their days pointing out places where you, in haste, ignored the green and red wavy lines of your word processing program's grammar and spell checker. Above all, do not think of your committee as your short cut. When my students say, "I know this is a mess but I'm just going to send it to you and you can sort it out," my reply is, "Please don't."
Presumably your committee consists of a respected group of scholars; therefore, their own writing projects provide ample opportunity to proofread, track down missing references, and correct manuscript formatting. If you try to foist your share of the tedium of scholarly work onto them in the interest of saving yourself time, don't be surprised if they balk and squawk, in private or in public. Remember that the day that you enrolled in the doctoral program, you signed on to become a scholar, and with that role comes the obligation to correct your own mistakes.
If you are like most doctoral students, it will not be enough merely to pass the dissertation defense. For scholars who care about their reputations, nothing short of outstanding work will do. Admit this to yourself from the outset and accept that it will take more of your time and effort to achieve that outcome.
One of my advisees was very discouraged at her proposal meeting because the
committee asked her for more--clearer writing, a stronger theoretical base,
and a better data collection plan. I simply said, "Years ago, when other
doctoral students found out who was on my committee, they said I must be a
masochist, and you probably heard some similar comments about your own committee.
I wanted people on my committee whom I could not bear to disappoint, people
who would not allow me to produce a bad study. I can tell you that I never
regretted those choices--although there were moments when I questioned them."
Interestingly, after this advisee completed her defense, her committee members
concurred that they had been genuinely dazzled by the quality of her conceptualization
and the rigor of her work.
It's all about what psychologist Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi refers to as "flow"--the
psychology of optimal experience. In a nutshell, he contends that the best
results emanate from situations in which high ability is coupled with high
challenge. Conversely, high ability/low challenge (e.g., seeking out the "rubber
stamp" committee) tends to result in boredom while low ability/high challenge
results in frustration. Since doctoral students rarely are in the low ability
category, the recommendation is clear: Match your high ability with the high
challenge of a demanding committee, use their discussions and recommendations
to set your mind racing about even better ways to achieve your goals, and
take a preventative approach to conflict by producing work that is unquestionably
of high quality.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience.
New York: Harper/Perennial.
Green, K.E. (1997). Psychosocial factors affecting dissertation completion.
New Directions for Higher Education 25(3), 57-64.
Mary Renck Jalongo, Ph.D,. is director of the Doctoral Program in Curriculum and Instruction at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the author of over 20 books, and a journal editor for Springer International.