Hey dissertators, take a break to enjoy the season

Take a break from the holiday madness to breathe, reflect, and regroup. Here is a selection of Love Your Dissertation blogposts to motivate you to get your proposal or manuscript to the next milestone so you can earn your Ph.D. and get on with your career.

Feel like you can’t? Get busy and get it done

Ask my mother, I bet she will say I was born moaning “I can’t!” Rarely is the problem as simple as I don’t know how. I get paralyzed by my fear that I will fail. Here’s what to do when you are struck with a case of the “I can’ts” as you are struggling to get your dissertation proposal approved. [July 2017] Read more

Should we finish everything we start?

When I was a teenager, I would start sewing a garment, make a total mess of it, realize the endeavor was hopeless, and consign the pile of abused fabric to the trash in disgust. What might I have learned from the debacle if I had kept working at it, seeking creative ways to turn my mistakes into something useful? [September 2018] Read more

Perfection is the enemy of the good enough

Have heard your dissertation chair say, “Good is the enemy of the best,” and taken that as an exhortation to settle for nothing less than perfection? Sometimes I thought I wrote something that was perfect, but even a few hours later, I discovered typos, grammar errors, and faulty reasoning. Maybe it is time to let go of our obsession with perfection and focus on doing our best. [October 2019] Read more

Perfection is not required, but persistence is essential. Take a break from the writing. I hope you get as much writing done as you can stand while still enjoying a peaceful holiday season with family, old friends, and new friends.

Life is more than a Ph.D., my dissertator friends. I hope you take time now to be present to the magic in the moment. Don’t look back later with regret that you missed opportunities to be with loved ones. We never know when they may be gone.

Why they call it the “terminal degree”

Back in March of 2012, when I was working on my dissertation proposal, I frequently wondered if I was going to survive writing my dissertation. When people asked me how things were going, I used words like fiasco. Debacle. Nightmare. Train wreck. I was just beginning to understand the true meaning of the phrase terminal degree. The terminal degree is the one that makes us stronger—unless it kills us first. The dissertation journey is not for the faint-hearted. However, if you are working on your dissertation right now, take heart: You can survive this. I learned three valuable lessons from my dissertation journey. I share them with you.

1. Don’t worry if you can’t remember everything

I enrolled in an online doctoral program at a tiny for-profit research university in December of 2005. By 2012, I had written hundreds of papers, large and small, and read a thousand articles by hundreds of scholars. I had valiantly completed and submitted umpteen assignments to dozens of faceless mentors in scads of virtual course rooms. Like the shelves in my basement, my 56-year-old brain was crammed with poorly packed, improperly labeled knowledge. Almost as fast as I learned it, I’d forgotten most of what I had learned.

Knowledge evolves. Knowledge waits for no one, especially not tired dissertators. Ninety-nine percent of the course assignments I completed were based on obsolete textbooks and five-year-old journal articles. New theories, methods, and technologies were constantly emerging (e.g., e-commerce). In addition, because it was the 2000s and not the 2010s, much now-essential knowledge was missing from my marketing curriculum (e.g., social media).

Knowledge is obsolete before it is published. In that sense, acquiring book knowledge is like buying a new car: Knowledge loses at least half its value the moment we exit the course room. A newer shinier bit of knowledge is always glittering around the next corner. Eventually we discover earning a doctorate is not about acquiring knowledge. It never was. I don’t bother trying to retrieve things I “learned” during my course assignments. It’s like expecting new-car smell when I get into my old Ford Focus.

2. You can succeed with mediocre research and writing skills

You don’t need to be a great researcher or writer. I thought I did. In fact, I thought I was. Even as I was studying obsolete topics such as e-commerce and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, I consoled myself with a belief that I was honing my research and writing skills. I admit, I’ve always been a little smug about my ability to find and describe arcane stuff about which nobody cares.

Modern academics don’t need research skills. We have Google. We don’t need writing skills. We have Grammarly. Moreover, the gatekeepers who approve dissertation proposals and manuscripts seem to focus more on adherence to templates and formats than they do on content and scholarly excellence. Of course, I’m biased by an information deficit: as an editor, I see only a tiny fraction of the social science dissertations trickling out of U.S. higher education institutions.

To broaden my perspective, I study published dissertators to understand what they did to succeed (i.e., what they got away with); then I write books to help dissertators who are struggling to get approvals. My intention is to reassure you that research and writing can be much less daunting than you anticipated or feared.

You might be pleased to know I’ve seen many errors, large and small, in published dissertations. I’m trained to catch format and style errors so of course I see those. However, every now and then, I’ll run across text like this: [expand on this section]. Just like that—an insertion of a direction to the dissertator to do something before submitting. Clearly, sometimes dissertators (and their reviewers) fail to catch and remove embarrassing text; thus, these errors become a permanent part of the academic record. Just as all my incorrect dois are captured for posterity in ProQuest Open Access. Hey, it happens. In my case, happened. I can’t go back and change the past.

3. You will learn how to survive

Long after it was too late for me to quit on my dissertation, I had the disheartening realization that when I finished this degree, I would have a smattering of mostly useless knowledge and lots of practice researching and writing on a topic few people cared much about, including me. Was that it, I wondered, after six years and $42,000?

Pursuing a doctorate is about developing survival skills. That sounds melodramatic, doesn’t it? What kinds of dangers could possibly threaten a doctoral candidate? It’s not as if we are lost in the woods.

The dangers that threaten us are the internal monsters that lurk in our minds: boredom, doubt, anguish, impatience, resentment, and despair, to name a few. I’m sure there are more. Like sturgeon, we will survive by settling for good enough instead of aiming for perfection.

Pursuing a doctoral degree is like giving our internal saboteurs a grenade launcher and hanging a target on our back. Now I understand why so few people seek doctorates. Not every crosses the finish line. Those who do share a special bond—a unique form of misery that gradually transforms into a triumph unlike any other.  

Summary

Don’t worry if you forget most of what you learned. If your research and writing skills aren’t perfect, don’t fret. You are learning how to survive the pitfalls of the dissertation journey. Once you cross the finish line, you will realize you now know the secret to overcoming just about any challenge: Show up, do your best, and don’t give up.

Go ahead and plan, dissertators, but don’t get too attached

Navigating our dissertation journey requires a lot of planning. Most of us have massive handbooks, daunting rubrics, and detailed templates to guide us through each document milestone, from concept and proposal through manuscript and defense. However, planning requires a Jedi mind trick I call detaching from outcomes. We are used to planning everything in our lives, from budgets to babies, but we sometimes forget we don’t control what actually happens. Nevertheless, we still need to plan.

Failing to plan (probably) is planning to fail

“Failing to plan is planning to fail” is an aphorism attributed to Benjamin Franklin. In my ruthless pursuit of robust scholarship to support this blogpost, I scanned the “apothegms and proverbs” in the U.S.C. Publishing Company’s 1914 excerpts from Poor Richard’s Almanack. The Almanack is a collection of Franklin’s sayings, written between 1732 and 1738 under the penname of Richard Saunders. For more, click here.

I lost myself in the list of pithy aphorisms but did not find a quote about planning to fail. (It was certainly entertaining reading, though. One of my favorites: “The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but still ‘tis nonsense” [Item no. 502]. Ouch.)

Social sciences dissertators, especially those who attend doctoral programs at for-profit online universities, are besieged with rules. These rules help us plan our academic strategy. However, at for-profit universities, learners often don’t get enough guidance from Chairpersons and other mentors. (I say this based on my experience as a former doctoral learner at a for-profit online university and as a current academic editor). Thus, handbooks, rubrics, and templates are essential to the dissertation planning process.

Some examples of planning

Even before I passed my comprehensive exams, I started planning. First, to get a handle on the massive project in front of me, I went through the dissertation handbook and made a list of all the tasks required to complete each milestone document and task, from concept paper through defense and publishing. Next, I identified the subtasks under each document milestone. Finally, I set up an Excel spreadsheet, entered all the tasks, and estimated how many days each task would take.

Here is one of my many timelines.

In the early months, my timing was ridiculously wrong. As each term progressed, I revised my timeline, and eventually, it became quite accurate. Without that timeline, I would not have realized I was on track to run out of time in my program. Crisis averted, thanks to planning.

As an artist, I’m all about visualizing things. I can spend all day visualizing, but not a lot of time getting things done. I’m a dreamer, less of a doer. I know this is my weakness, though, and I mitigate it with planning. Here is one of my many attempts to visualize my research study.

Research plan-Love Your Dissertation

This plan, neatly executed in PowerPoint, was a total pie-in-the-sky dream, a hallucination of a ten-month mixed methods study lacking any basis in reality. Hey, we all start somewhere. Not only did I fail to include turnaround time for my many reviewers but I also assumed I would have little need to revise my writing—because it would naturally be perfect. I was wrong on both counts. My reviewers enjoyed at least fourteen days to return my latest train wreck, sometimes more, and I needed much longer than I anticipated to make the (ridiculous) revisions they demanded.

Detaching from outcomes

I learned a valuable lesson from this iterative process. Submitting and revising, submitting and revising—the seemingly endless cycle eventually drove the arrogance out of me. I learned to write my best work, submit with a realistic amount of hope, and detach from the outcome. I learned not to assume my writing was so stellar, my idea so ground-breaking, my research approach so unique, that they would have to grant me immediate approval, showering me with accolades and dissertation of the year rave reviews. Dream on!

Finally, I realized I had to let go of my unrealistic expectations if I wanted to earn the Ph.D. After I got over feeling personally bludgeoned by the submission and rejection process, I began to hone my detachment skills. This personal improvement effort is now standing me in good stead as I submit queries and receive rejections from agents who could help me publish my first novel.

Showing up for the work

It’s easy to submit once and loftily detach from the outcome. One rejection is tolerable. We’re tough—we can take it—once. However, the persistence to repeatedly take it on the chin and bounce back up to keep fighting separates the professionals from the dilettantes. Thanks to the hammering I received from writing my dissertation, I am now equipped (and mostly willing) to enter my writing into the broader arena and let the universe decide the outcome.

I admit, receiving rejection after rejection is disheartening. However, all those rejections are evidence that I’m in the game. I’m not on the sidelines. I’m showing up for my work. I’m learning that it doesn’t matter how discouraged I feel sometimes; all that matters is doing the work. I consciously try to compartmentalize my discouragement so I can get on with the business of writing. Feeling disappointed is only useful if it spurs me toward positive action.

Letting go of perfection

A component of detaching from outcomes is a need to let go of perfectionism. Perfectionism stifles creativity; moreover, perfectionism can hinder realistic planning, thereby bringing our forward momentum to a standstill. I have a perfection monster screaming inside me at times. I’ve learned to acknowledge my desire to be perfect, laugh at the monster, and move on.

Writers rarely write perfect first drafts. The first drafts of my dissertation milestone papers were wretched on multiple levels: scholarship, methodology, APA style, grammar . . . you name it, I butchered it. After my dissertation was approved and published, I found myriad grammar errors. I discovered I had typed a shocking number of my dois wrong because I didn’t know then that I could copy and paste them from the pdf files I was citing. Sheesh. Talk about humiliating.

Now I know to focus on making progress rather than bludgeoning myself with the impossible goal of achieving perfection. Hey, we are all human, by nature imperfect. If we already know everything, what’s the point of doing research or sharing what we’ve discovered with the world?

Summary

I encourage you to honor your dissertation journey by making a plan and showing up for your writing. Practice detaching from your desire to achieve perfection. Perfectionism is a waste of your precious life energy. Instead, submit your best, learn from your mistakes, keep writing, and let go of outcomes. The life lessons we learn from the tedious, frustrating dissertation journey may not be evident while we struggle to reach the finish line, but I promise, you will reap the benefits for the rest of your writing career.

Sources

Franklin, B. (1914). Poor Richard’s Almanack (pdf version). Waterloo, IA: U.S.C. Publishing Company. Available through Google Books: https://www.google.com
/books/edition/Poor_Richard_s_Almanack/o6lJAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 (Original work published 1732–1738)

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