Breakthrough in Dissertation Writing

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that I'm not very good at receiving feedback (to put it very mildly). I dreaded having to go over the comments of my advisor and the one reader who had looked at my dissertation chapters until now.

This all changed when a third reader (who happens to be my former advisor) got into the picture two weeks ago. It was the most amazing and welcome breakthrough that has taken place since this whole dissertation journey started years and years ago. I was hesitant to write about this, but I think this is not a subject that I would avoid addressing with the three people I'll be writing about. So, if they ever come across this blog, it'll be OK.

"Historical Background"
All right. A few words into why I changed advisors to begin with. After I finished my comprehensive exams, back in the old days of 2002, I realized that my original dissertation project (in children's literature -- concentrating on books for girls) wasn't going to take me anywhere. Besides, my advisor was extremely busy and I had a hard time meeting with him and producing.

The project I now wanted to pursue (my current dissertation) had been fine-tuned three times since I had first started it in 1998 when writing a research paper. I had transformed it into a bibliographic research paper and then turned it into the only paper for my comps (My exam constituted of 6 topics -- 1 in paper form [could have been 2 or 3, but I didn't pull it out], 3 in written exams, and 2 topics exclusively for the oral). My new advisor, who was one of two faculty members in my dept. who worked in this area, was more readily available for consultation and meetings and I thought that he would be very helpful to push me forward, which he in fact has.

Current Advisor
This slightly humoristic, if a bit bitter, post (Keiko, you have to click, OK?) summarizes the kind of feedback I tend to get from him. This other post, from 2005 is a bit more candid and probably should be edited for a "safer" blog -- but I'll leave it as is for now, if you want to take a look. I wrote a looong comment on it too, sharing a few more (slightly unsafe) things about this whole journey.

If you don't want to read those posts (the first one is short and fun, though :) my advisor's feedback, in a nutshell, concentrates in the mechanics of writing, not on the content, the structure, the phrasing. This is not only in the case of earlier drafts, but for later ones as well. Part of the problem has to do with experience. He has directed plenty of M.A. thesis, but mine is one of the first Ph.D.'s dissertations that he's directing. And part of it is just his personality, his style, his way of reading, which concentrates on the little things and not on the "big picture."

1st Reader
This committee member has been reading my work since last year because she is the only one with an expertise in Brazil. We have a great relationship, hers was the very first class I took when I was still a non-degree student, and I took two other classes with her and was a T.A. for her class for two semesters, including my very last semester, when I was pregnant with Linton.

However, her feedback always scares me, since she can be very blunt, as in: "what’s the evidence for this?"/ "again?"/ "you just said this"
She also has problems with the ideology and language used by some of the authors I'm citing and basing my work on. E.g. one comment directed at one theorist: "Why the tone of accusation and exposé?"
Otherwise, her feedback is fairly useful, such as in: "too more repetition in this pages"/ "explain"/ "unclear."

Last November, when she was writing recommendation letters for my applications, I had to send her one of my later chapters, still in rough draft, and exceptionally she responded to it electronically. Some of the comments were helpful, if not directly useful, and went much further into "content" than my advisor's:
“writing will need more work; some of it is fine; all of it is clear; but too often it’s perfunctory, lacking in style”
And: “poor sentence; needs reformulating – you tend to stick too much info in each sentence, instead of using subordinate clauses, or semi-colons, or separate sentences.”

“what’s your point in mentioning the preceding details? If there’s no point, omit; just say ‘in her brief discussion' – but how ‘close’ can such a brief examination be??”

Logistical Problem with Previous Two Readers
I have been emailing new drafts of chapters to my advisor, but he prints them out, annotates them by hand and snail mails them to me! He says that he will annotate electronically the better polished versions of the chapters. I truly hope so!

As for the 1st reader, I have to send her hard copies of each chapter. Thankfully my dept. secretary has offered to print them out for me and put them in her mailbox - phew!

2nd Reader (Former Advisor)
This person has been one of my main mentors during graduate school. My interests are very similar to his and I took all of his classes. I also was his T.A. for a semester. Right now I feel a bit sad that he's no longer my advisor, but I know that I made the right decision, since I really care for the research that I'm doing. And besides, he's still in my committee and is helping me finish!

(I wrote what follows shortly after receiving his first email with an electronically annotated version of my first chapter, on March 20, 07)

He takes his analysis of my writing a step further than the previous reader, he actually notices the bigger “trends” of my writing that need to be improved, such as what he said in his email to me: “In the first 12 pages, topic sentences tend to rely on ‘is’ clauses, which describe an existing situation, but do not promote a looking forward, and do not shape an argument. This lends an unnecessarily static quality to the prose.”

Other comments in the text about this same problem:

“This has the same format as some other topic sentences, that of a list of Academy Award nominees.” (I thought his was hilarious!! And right on – note how my sentence began: “The writers chosen for the case studies are:”) – isn’t it just precious when one can SMILE with feedback? And not feel irritated like I did with my advisor’s minute corrections of punctuation and grammar or slightly devalued and criticized by the other reader?

“Here is another flat “is” declaration for a topic sentence at the beginning of a paragraph. It lacks the dynamic of an argument.”

“It would be helpful if you could use the active voice more than the verb “to be” with an adverb or adjective.”

And “Lilian, I notice here a tendency which I would like to see you curb. The tendency is to start the sentence with a kind of list, without projecting the line of argument.”

Oh, and he told me at the end of the email to give myself two hours to work on this and to CALL HIM ON HIS OFFICE if I wanted to! If that’s not good advising, I don’t know what else is.

Just what I needed. And more. I just hope it continues this way because… there’s just one “small” problem. He annotated 12 pages, there are around 250 or more to go. But maybe I can start revising them and following his advice already – particularly the point about the topic sentence with the verb to be – he will be more OK with the writing in later chapters. We’ll see.

Now I have to go back to work.
---------

After I wrote this, I revised the 12 annotated pages and sent them right back to him. He was impressed by how quickly I did that and sent it back to me the next day. He continued reading the chapter and we have been emailing annotated versions of my first chapter back and forth. He finished reading it and sent his latest annotations two days ago. I revised them today (adding several more paragraphs) and I emailed it to him two hours ago.

I've never felt so motivated about rewriting and editing. Just like Jo(e) commented on that first post I wrote about feedback, I needed to receive feedback from other committee members. I regret not having sent him my stuff earlier. I didn't do it because my advisor only wanted me to send "finished, polished" chapters to them. But little did he and I know that to get them polished in the first place I might need their help. I'm extremely relieved and think that now I can quickly finish.

My fourth committee member is going on sabbatical next year and won't be back until January. That means that I have to defend before the end of May. YAY! I can't wait. I think the day that this defense is set will be one of the happiest in my life. As I've written here before, I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel until the date is set.