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THE ALL-BUT-DISSERTATION SURVIVAL GUIDE™
The All-But-Dissertation Survival Guide™ focuses on ways to help its
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Devoted to providing practical strategies for completing
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE - May 2, 2007
1. A Note from the Editor
2. Inspirational Quotes
3. "How To" Advice on Writing A Dissertation
By Catherine Field
May 2, 2007
A Note from the Editor
Tracy Steen, Ph.D.
Ah…the good old days…the days when all you had to do was take
a few tests and complete a few manageable assignments, and that was it--You
graduated!
It's that time of year again. Thousands of undergrads will be graduating
in the next few weeks. A very select number of them will be entering grad
school, eager to follow in your footsteps. It may seem like ages ago that
you were one of them, college diploma in hand, fresh-faced and jaunty (or
whatever). Looking back on those days can give you a fresh, realistic, and
even celebratory perspective on your current ABD status.
You have moved so very far ahead of those neophytes now just entering grad
school. Despite some hard work remaining, the end of your academic journey
is in sight. In fact, it's not a stretch to suggest that you are still experiencing
the aforementioned good old days, for you have progressed along the grad school
route all the way to the final hurdle, and you're on your way to an even bigger
graduation than before. It's not only feasible, it's going to happen!
It happened only a few months ago for Dr. Catherine Field, and in this issue
she shares her story. Be sure to read her account below. It's heartening to
hear from someone who has "been there and back again and lived to tell
the tale" (Dr. Field's own words to me as she first related her experience).
And take a look at this week's Inspirational Quotes--thoughts that will help
you make all of your days your "good old days."
Inspirational Quotes
"Even the woodpecker owes his success to the fact
that he uses his head and keeps pecking away until he finishes the job he
starts."
-- Coleman Cox
"There are no short cuts to any place worth going."
-- Beverly Sills
"The winner's edge is not in a gifted birth, a high IQ, or in talent.
The winner's edge is all in the attitude, not aptitude. Attitude is the criterion
for success."
-- Dennis Waitley
Basic "How To" Advice on Writing a Dissertation
Catherine Field, Ph.D.
This advice is gathered from my own experience with a dissertation and from
two of my favorite books on writing (Joan Bolker's Writing Your Dissertation
in Fifteen Minutes a Day and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird).
I also did an informal e-mail survey of several of my friends (from private
and public universities) who recently finished their dissertations in the
humanities (and got jobs!!), and I asked them what they thought were the most
important things to know about writing (and, even better, finishing!!) a dissertation.
What follows is our advice to you. As you'll see, there isn't anything here
that is especially "original" or that you probably haven't heard
before, but what is here is what we think are the most useful things to know
as you write your dissertation.
Cultivate a writing practice or a set of practices that will help you become
the writer-researcher that you hope to be. These practices can and will
vary, depending on your semester (and life) schedule, but the important thing
is to find a writing practice that works for you and then stick to
it.
This disciplined, habitual, focused practice is what will help you most as
you move toward finishing the dissertation. Or as one of my friends (who did
her Ph.D. at a university in a cold, northern climate and then got a tenure-track
job close to the beach, and therefore evidently did something right) states:
Write every day (even if only for ten minutes and even if the "writing"
is only touching a part of the dissertation, writing in a dissertation journal,
or tweaking footnotes and/or bibliography).
This is classic advice, and it is beautifully argued in Joan Bolker's essential
guide, Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day, a book that I
returned to over and over as I did my dissertation (and, to be honest, it's
book that I return to even now, as I approach new writing projects and as
I revise my dissertation into a book manuscript).
Writing every day will keep you intellectually and emotionally close to your
project and, of course, it is through the act of writing itself that you will
eventually be able to reach the finish line. Through daily writing, you will
develop strength and stamina, and, what's even better, you will free the voice
within you to say whatever it is you have to say.
Write first. On those days that you can arrange your schedule to do
your writing first thing in the morning, you should do so (and on the other
days, squeeze the writing in wherever you can).
By "first thing," I mean before checking e-mail, talking
on the phone, reading your favorite on-line blog, watching TV, exercising,
or prepping for teaching. Before all those other pressing things that you
absolutely need and want to do, put your writing first because the writing
is what you truly need to do.
"First thing" for me meant getting up, having breakfast, doing
a brief meditation, and then sitting down at the computer to write in my pajamas--without
making the bed, washing the dishes, returning phone calls, or doing e-mail.
(It's better to fall a little behind on e-mail and finish the dissertation
than it is to stay on top of e-mail but never finish.)
Incidentally, I should also say that I doubted this advice to "write
first" (since I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a morning
person), but I decided to try it. I completely surprised myself by finding
that not only could I write in the mornings, but I also did my very best writing
and thinking at that time of day.
Sort of hidden but not-so-hidden in this piece of advice is the idea that
writing should be central to your existence. Put writing first whenever and
wherever you can. This act alone will help you finish since by putting writing
"first," you commit yourself to doing it and then somehow you do
it.
Lower your expectations. "The dissertation won't be and doesn't
have to be
perfect…," as one of my good friends (recently voted "Professor
of the Year" by his undergraduate students) puts it. So free yourself
from perfectionism, and just write.
Try writing what Anne Lamott calls "shitty rough drafts" (messy,
ungrammatical and often slightly incoherent first thoughts on your topic),
and go from there. Get something on the computer screen, revise it, move on
to the next chapter, and then finish. Better to have written an imperfect
dissertation than to be forever writing and never finishing an imagined "perfect"
dissertation (which, I can tell you for a fact, does not exist). As another
friend (on a year-long fellowship at a research library in California) states,
"The best dissertation is a done dissertation."
Find the right places to write. For me, those places
included my desk at home (where I sit as I write this mini-essay to you),
a desk on the second-floor of the university library, and a table in the reading
room of my main research archive. These were quiet places where I knew I had
to sit down and face my project, and usually, when I did sit down, the writing
came.
Cognitive research shows that one of the best ways to train someone to do
something is to get the person to associate doing a particular behavior with
repeatedly being in a certain place. What you want to do is find a place (or
places) where you can cultivate a writing habit, even (best case scenario)
a writing addiction.
Go to conferences. Whether you go to present a paper or to listen to other
papers, just being at the conference will further ground you in your
own research (as you think about your work in relationship to and in dialog
with others' work), and it will help you further construct (and be comfortable
in) your emerging identity as a scholar who has something to say.
It will also give you a chance to talk with other people in your field (whether
senior scholars or graduate students) and to ask them for their advice about
(or response to) ideas in your dissertation. As an added bonus, you can also
ask them about their own experiences with writing and research.
The year before I finished my dissertation, I asked everyone I knew, including
very senior scholars, how they went about the process of writing. In this
way, I discovered that while everyone struggles with writing at various points
in a project, the successful writers figure out strategies to get past the
hurdles and just get the article/chapter/book done. As you write your dissertation,
you will be figuring out your own strategies, or as my advisor told me, "You
are discovering how you go about writing a book."
Meet regularly with your advisors, even when you haven't done the work
or even when you feel embarrassed to contact them because you haven't seen
or e-mailed them in a ridiculously long time. One of my friends fell out of
touch with her advisor for almost two years and her dissertation stalled.
However, once she did get in touch with him, she was able to write again and
then finally able to finish.
There is something about the act of just seeing the other person (or persons)
officially involved in your project that will help make the dissertation feel
more "real" as opposed to some amorphous, imaginary thing that may
never be written (which is how I felt about my dissertation about ninety-percent
of the time). After meeting with your advisor, you will be more energized,
focused, and ready to do further work on the dissertation (unless, of course,
the advisor turns out not to be a true, supportive advisor and instead is
quite the opposite--on this point, see below).
Limit your contact with negative people. Such people can be emotionally
draining, and they can stifle your ability to able to think, create, and write
(since after spending time with them, you are too worn out to do anything
except sit on the couch and watch episodes of the Take Home Chef on TLC).
This advice also goes for negative advisors. If you have a difficult advisor,
you should consider finding someone (anyone!) else to work with.
It does not matter how well-known your advisor is in the field--don't
pick fame over collegiality. It's always better to work with someone who is
invested in mentoring you and seeing your project through as opposed to someone
who is weirdly hostile or passive-aggressive or apathetic, which, unfortunately,
describes a number of senior and successful people in academia.
Instead, find the person in your department who is known for helping students
finish and get good jobs. This is the person you most want to work
with and this is the person you should ask (beg even!) to take you and your
project on. If he or she is unavailable, ask if he or she could suggest any
other collegial people in the department with whom you might work.
Writing a dissertation is one of the hardest things you'll ever do, and you
will be much more likely to finish if you work with someone committed to seeing
that you and the dissertation make it safely to the finish line.
Find a support group of people to help you get through the dissertation,
whether these are other graduate students, friends, writers, a partner, a
dissertation coach, a therapist, or a spiritual guru. Find those individuals
who will support you in the long, but very rewarding process of writing a
dissertation.
Try to do less worrying and more writing. Just sit down at the computer
and see what will happen. If you sit down every day at a certain time, when
you know you have to write something. . . usually, something
will appear.
As Marie Ferrarella (a bestselling romance novelist) observes about writing,
"In order for the magic to happen, you have to be there. That means planting
yourself religiously in front of your computer and working. If you write it,
it will come."
Keep the faith. If there is one thing that I could have done differently
as I wrote my dissertation, it would have been this: to have been much more
confident in myself and my ideas and to have been much less worried about
being "right" or "legitimate" in what I was saying.
I've heard that women tend to be more self-conscious in this regard than
men, but I think, in general, that it's hard for all graduate students (regardless
of gender) to feel secure in their research and writing since, by definition,
you exist in no-man's land at the university--no longer an undergraduate but
not yet a professor.
Writing a dissertation always takes longer than you want it to and longer
than you expect, but eventually, if you keep the faith and write first, you
will finish.
Remember to care for the Self. Do some physical exercise every day.
There is something about moving the body (even if it is only for a quick walk
around the block) that can help you intellectually move through your writing
and your project.
Try to eat a well-balanced diet since nourishing the body will also help
you feed the mind. (I found that somehow I always worked better after I had
stocked the fridge--so even when I felt super-pressed for time, I found a
way to squeeze in a trip to the store or the corner market to grab a few essentials,
like espresso and chocolate.) And say "no" (or, at the very least,
"I'll have to check my schedule and get back to you," and after
that, then say "no") to anything and anyone that might get in the
way of doing your writing.
Last, but not least--Remember to try to own your writing and to
keep it joyful. If it's not fun, why do it?
Writing a dissertation can involve a lot of agonizing, suffering, anxiety,
and worry. However, if you can keep returning to those things/thoughts/ideas/questions
in your project that make you happy, curious, intrigued, energized, you will
somehow find the most elegant sections to work on and develop. And as you
develop and craft responses to these sections, you will be doing the right
kind of work, work that will lead you to wherever it is you are supposed to
be.
As one of my friends (now teaching at a private Midwestern university and
revising his dissertation into a book manuscript) advises:
So, go now, and sit down at your computer. Write, write, write, and find
the joy.
Catherine Field graduated with her Ph.D. in English from
the University of Maryland in May 2006. She is currently revising her dissertation,"'Many
Hands Hands': Early Modern Englishwomen's Recipe Books and the Writing of
Food, Politics, and the Self" into a book manuscript, and she has just
accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor in the Department
of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. She spends
her free-time writing (what else?!), traveling, cooking, and baking (her latest
kitchen triumph was making a Chocolate Guinness Cake for Saint Patrick's Day).
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Dr. TRACY STEEN, Editor, ABDSG
Tracy Steen, Ph.D. , is a clinical psychologist and dissertation
coach in Philadelphia, PA. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan
and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in positive psychology at the University
of Pennsylvania. Dr. Steen draws on her research background in positive psychology
in her coaching work with writers, helping them to remove internal obstacles
so they can find more engagement and flow in their work. You can contact Dr.
Steen with questions about this newsletter or about coaching in general at
tracy@mentorcoach.com. You can
also visit her website at www.tracysteen.com
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BEN DEAN, Publisher, ABDSG
Ben holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.
He began writing the ABDSG in 1997. Over the years, the ABDSG has provided
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