So, here are some of the problems that plague me in my dissertation writing. I had originally written "guilt" in the title, but that's way too strong, and I'm not really "guilty" for having been born with certain personality traits. Of course I still have to learn to deal with them and overcome them at least as far as writing the dissertation is concerned. I realize that some of these things are problems for most people, not just who need to write a dissertation, but I still want to address them.
Problems from "outside"
- I'm away from campus.
I've moved 3 and a half years ago. It takes me 6 hours to drive to campus. I've been there only 3 times to address dissertation problems
- I don't get electronic feedback (I have to wait for it to come in the mail).
This makes it harder mostly because of the time. My advisor says he'll annotate electronically the latest drafts, but he didn't want to do it with the earlier ones. In addition to this problem one reader has asked for hard copies, but I really can't afford to print them out at home. Our wonderful department secretary has told me she can print them out for me. YAY! That'll be such great help!
- No $ for childcare and preschool for the boys.
This is a hard one and I've already addressed this problem briefly in a previous post. That's where my parents come in to help.
As you see, I have help, or solutions even, for some of the "external" problems, but the "internal" ones are harder to deal with.
"Inner" Impediments/"Impairments" -- personality wise
- I'm a "habit adverse" person.
I used this expression once in a comment to Academic Coach, and Mary liked it. This is a serious problem for me, which makes me literally unable to follow most of the advice of great books such as Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day (Bolker). I can't stand routines and planning of my daily life, I love to be spontaneous. I have to admit, though, that having scheduled things, like classes to teach or attend, is helpful and feels "healthy" to me, so that means that I should have something to structure my life.
- I don't like to set goals, make resolutions, plan my course of action.
This is part of the previous one, but I decided to make it a separate item. Basically, I don't like to make resolutions and then not to keep them. I'm smart enough not to set myself up for disappointment, since I hate to be disappointed (who doesn't? ;). Of course I do love to plan for future events, travel, parties, vacations, etc, but planning on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, particularly for the dissertation is hard.
Last year and the year before I did set up deadline for myself (I even had them in my sidebar), but that's how they worked: I sent my advisor whatever I had achieved by the deadline. That worked great, but that's not what I need now, that I need to turn in completed drafts of chapters. I know I'll NEED to set goals and fulfill them if I want to finish.
- I need external pressure and deadlines imposed by other people.
This is an obvious consequence of the previous item and this time (as in the past year of working: Sept 05-Aug 06) , my only external deadline comes from my parents, who will be traveling to China in May and want me to finish before then. Being able to participate in the commencement would be a great deadline, but I'm so discouraged because I have only two months to get done (defend and submit the diss to the graduate school) that I'm just thinking it's not going to work... I feel sad about that, but I know it's "my fault" that I may not participate. I feel stupid, but just that fact that I depend from other people's feedback and willingness to work with me so I can reach the deadline stops me cold in my tracks. Fear of failure again... (but I didn't even talk about this issue yet!)
- I'm a huge procrastinator.
The less said about that the better. I just hate that about me... and I know that most people have this problem. I guess it's just a "human thing" and those that don't suffer from it are the exception, the "super humans" or whatever.
- Dispersiveness
A kind of "ADD" that's part and parcel of my personality. Of course I don't really have ADD, but sometimes I feel I do... I just can't concentrate on something for long, I ADORE multitasking and I'm pretty good at eat. It doesn't help much when cleaning the house and writing a dissertation, though. That's why the house is generally messy and I haven't finished yet.
- Perfectionism
HA -- that's a big problem. I have to convince myself that I have to stop fine tuning my research results and feeling guilty about all the sources I haven't read and work on turning it a "defendable dissertation" regardless of whether it's all I wanted it to be or not. It's very hard not to follow my perfectionist vein in every step of the process. (My perfectionism even prevents me from posting more often here. If a post is not finished to my liking, or doesn't have all the photos that I want to include, it takes a long time to be posted).
- I'm afraid of failure, so have problems with receiving feedback.
I'm the kind of person who loathes being criticized and/or reprimanded, scolded. I always try to do everything right because of that, little things like, e.g. not making turns in other people's driveways , or other things. I just feel completely devastated if I'm reprimanded for anything, no matter how little and silly.
This makes receiving feedback something EXCRUCIATING for me. I feel bad about that... I mean, is this caused by my "pride" in the "excellence" of my work? I always did well and excelled, and:
- I've never been taught to rewrite or edit and I don't like to do it.
This is probably related to the previous one. I think I've gotten much better on this since I started, but it's still hard for me. I value every single word that I write, it takes so much for me to sit down and write them in the first place that it's very hard to have to cut lots and lots of things and edit my writing. (Blogging has been helping me with editing -- I always go back and edit my posts... oh, well, it's tied with the "perfectionist" thing, I realize. If I'm a perfectionist, it editing and rewriting shouldn't be a problem for me, should it? Go figure).
I'm sure I may have forgotten some things, but I wanted to put this out there. As Cloudscome commented in the previous dissertation post, blogging can be very helpful. By the way, thanks for your support everyone! It means a lot to me to know other people are out there rooting for me!
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5 comments:
Not having electronic feedback sounds like the first layer of hell! (Whereas electronic feedback and not in person feedback is purgatory) Yuck!!
I suffer from many of the maladies you describe. Especially the distractability. And the difficulty of imposing self-structure.
It's hard with kids, too.
Nothing very smart from me. Except, Go you!
é Lilian...I'm really of any help as that's all I am as well...
Não só em relação ao mestrado/doutorado mas tb a fazer exercício, comer decentemente...enfim...
so, I guess the best I can do is just cheer you up, você vai conseguir!
I have many of those same "inner" "impediments" too. I am very much habit averse and I found it extremely difficult to implement Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day too. I felt with my diss that I not only had to write the damned thing but go through an entire regimen of personality change too. Which sucked.
It's very hard to write the diss away from your institution. We moved out of the state immediately after I turned in my proposal, and while I knew that would make thing more difficult for me, I had no idea how much of an impact it would have.
I used to think that my diss avoidance was largely about being afraid of failure. More and more nowadays, I think what I'm more afraid of is success.
I can't offer any feedback except that most of this sounds perfectly, distressingly familiar to me.
I wish my thoughts were more coherent than that. Sigh.
Yeah, I can relate to a lot of this too. But I think a lot of it is sort of inherent in the system (lack of support or clarity at the writing stage of graduate work), so try not to blame it all on your own personal situation or personality. (I know that's easier said than done.) Something that helped me to finally sit down and clear space and set up schedules was asking myself how long I wanted to live in the void--the waiting part of my life where I spend months (ok years) NOT being paid well and NOT being happy and NOT being appreciated because I am not finished with the degree and so can't move on.
Once I became really clear on my desire to finish (and was able to proclaim this to the world), it made the commitment and planning easier somehow.
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