Is a dissertation really a noun or a verb?

Question:

How do you make room in your life for what is potentially the largest writing project you’ve ever faced?

How do you allow yourself to feel a proud ownership for your research before it’s gotten the official seal of approval (known as a Ph.D.)?

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These are the questions I sometimes think about at moments like this. My dissertation file is literally open on my computer, yet I am working on a blog post instead. Almost six months after passing comps I am not nearly as far along in my writing as I expected to be. But I have been writing. And the fact that I have not met my own expectations is not unexpected. In academia we pride ourselves on meeting or exceeding expectations, and our own expectations for ourselves are no exception. I have told several students over the years that expecting too much of yourself can be better than expecting too little. I’ve reached a moment in which I face my own advice.

Another dissertating friend’s comments a few weeks back reminded me of the psychological barriers our own expectations for ourselves can create in an endeavor – the dissertation – that is often almost entirely self-driven. The book Finish Your Dissertation Once and For All! How to Overcome Psychological Barriers, Get Results, and Move on With Your Life by Alison B. Miller was recommended.

It is a useful book, and I can relate to why my friend found it helpful. For reasons completely separate from the book’s quality, I found myself focusing on only the Table of Contents, Preface, and Introduction. The author points out the myriad ways that our own expectations about what a dissertation is, how much work it will entail, who will approve or disapprove of it, how much of our precious time we spend closeted with it, or how much it occupies our thoughts can cause us to psych ourselves out from actually working on it. She is right. Without reading any further into the book, what helped me the most is the very idea that I am the one who has the most control over the process.

My committee’s advice will be invaluable, and the university’s seal of approval required, but their challenging comments and suggested edits will ultimately only matter if I do the writing. The training wheels are off now. I took the courses, I discussed new ideas with new colleagues, I connected those ideas and presented them at conferences. I studied for four months, wrote for four days, passed comps. My dissertation is a honing process, a polishing process: for me as much as for my writing. I am learning to become a writer now, and that does not happen overnight. It can be encouraged along with a schedule, certainly, but it is not a product, and it doesn’t receive a grade. This small but powerful realization leads me to my answers, for now.

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Answer:

I decide that I am now a writer: writing something everyday is my job, and for the foreseeable future what I write will be about Dr. S. Josephine Baker and early twentieth-century New York. My dissertation is not a project, nor the biggest project I’ve accepted to date, but a gateway into a daily practice of writing that I hope to continue in the future, no matter the twists and turns of my professional life. To make a nod toward one of my favorite poems, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, this albatross is a companion rather than a burden.

I acknowledge that the entire process of writing, editing, fielding committee members’ comments, and eventually filling out graduation paperwork is what will make me an expert in my topic of research. Feeling ownership for something that demands personal attention, creativity, imagination, sweat, and eye strain is a given. It is mine to accept, mine to shape.

 

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