Facing the facts:1. It’s a lot harder to write a dissertation than it appears…and to think you mocked those 7th and 8th year students when you were a first-year.
2. It’s really easy to fall into writing an undergraduate research report without really noticing it.
3. There’s a little voice in your head that says, “write faster, write better,” and most days, you want to tell that voice to fuck off, but sometimes you just listen to it.
4. You worry constantly that if it’s this painful to write a dissertation, you’re never going to be able to write the book and get tenure.
5. You’d like your advisor to sit next to you at the computer each day and hold your hand.
6. You potentially have another 22 months of feeling exactly like this.
7. You’re going to get it together today. Right now. This moment. Together.
3 comments:
i thought of #1 last summer a lot. and yet i still mocked them mentally. it seems so ridiculous that it is hard. but it is. good luck today. i think it's just getting into the writing and thinking every day, and sitting in the muck for a while. but what do i know. i'll be a 7th year next year.
How many chapters have you written and how many more do you need to write?
I hope the perfect is not becoming the enemy of the good.
#2 follows me around like a shadow. It haunts every word I write, in fact. But it also provides the answer to #4: remember when those undergrad papers were brutal? But now you "accidentally" write them. This writing thing, while never that easy, gets better! As for #5...well, it's good to know exactly what will make the dissertation so scary.
And #7 goes without saying...you've totally got it together!
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