The lost year

Hello, Dissertators. Are you as discombobulated as I am? I’m staring at my screen, trying to figure out what to type. I feel as if I have been ill for a year (although I have not). In January of 2020, my cat died. Then in March, Covid-19 swept up the world in fear and anxiety and death. Then in January of 2021, my mother died. Every time I think I’m going to emerge from the fog and regain my sense of self, something happens to push me back under.

I don’t want to make this blogpost all about me. I know you have suffered too. Last year was rough, and we aren’t in the clear just because we have a new calendar. How are you making progress on your scholarly pursuits? Seriously, how are you doing it? I want to know. If you have some tricks for surviving the apocalypse, I’m interested. Meanwhile, I am using a three-pronged method recommended to me by other scholars: first, recognize my fears; second, reframe my experience; finally, relinquish my death grip on outcomes.

Recognize my fears

I’ve been trying in haphazard fashion to write the next book in my Desperate Dissertator Series, Choosing Methods. It’s a deep, rich, interesting topic. Lots of dissertators could probably use some guidance in this area. I sure could have when I was a dissertator. However, the book is emerging in fits and starts. I circle around it like a plane coming into PDX but I can’t quite seem to land.

I’ve made a little progress. I’ve reviewed most of my sample of dissertations and added data to my spreadsheet. I’ve done some analysis. I’ve set up some charts. I have an outline. I’ve fooled around with the book’s format (my favorite part). I haven’t been idle.

However, something always interrupts my forward motion… my cat dying, Covid-19, my mother’s decline and death… For a year now, I have always found a reason to spend time on other equally important but more urgent things. However, my cat is gone, my mother is gone, and so far Covid hasn’t caught me, so what gives? Why am I falling behind? I realized my biggest enemy was fear.

Today, I sat down to make a list of my fears. Quite often I can come up with a long list, everything from I am afraid I have toxic black mold in my kitchen to I am afraid aliens will soon be stealing my luggage. That pretty much covers all possibilities. Not that I plan to do any traveling soon, but you know.

My question: What fears are preventing me from finishing the book? This morning, I stopped doom scrolling my newsfeed and started typing in my virtual journal.

Fear 1: I’m afraid I’m not smart enough to write a book about choosing methods.

Fear 2… hmmm. That is it. I really have only one fear. I’ve been away from the topic for so long, I no longer feel connected to it, and so I begin to doubt my ability to write about it. I feel like an impostor. What do impostors do? They bury their heads in social media and avoid doing the hard work of showing up for the writing.

I remember when I was working on my dissertation proposal. I had no experience with dissertation-level research. Like many dissertators who don’t receive much guidance from mentors, I decided to toss everything at the wall to see what would stick. (I hoped my Chair would sort out the gems from the garbage.) Along with the kitchen sink, I proposed two theories, a mixed-methods approach, four subsamples … anything I could think of, I threw it in the proposal. Silly, right? Well, I didn’t know any better, and I assumed more in this case would be better—or safer. That is, more likely to lead to my desired outcome of getting approval for my proposal.

We don’t know what we don’t know. That is a truism if ever there was one. I learned by doing and eventually crossed that magical “phinish” line. Similarly, in the matter of writing this book, odds are I will know more about choosing methods if I get busy and start writing. Writing is a direct antidote to my fear.

Reframe my experience

I’m not a big fan of positive affirmations. Saying to myself, you are smart and you are successful when I’m not feeling it has never worked for me. I used to post sticky notes everywhere, little pink and yellow squares with pithy sayings on them. Within a few days, they became invisible. My eyes stopped seeing them. It’s like trying to catch errors after reading a blogpost for the umpteenth time. My eyes just skip past all those typos and punctuation problems, la la la.

We see what we want to see, or we see what we expect to see, and we stop seeing what has become commonplace. The only sticky note I keep now is the A-B-C-D reminder: Aim high, begin low, climb slowly, and don’t give up. I placed that note next to a photo of my mother. She’s sitting at a table at the Olive Garden with her chin in her hand. The sun is behind her and she has a “What the hell, who cares” grin on her face. That is the attitude I want to cultivate. Like, yeah, go ahead and eat ten more breadsticks, who cares? You only live once.

What can I glean from this insight? Someone suggested I reframe my perception of 2020 as a fallow year, a year to rest, a year to plant seeds in preparation for a new beginning. That sounds overly optimistic to me, but what the hell. It’s better than affirming what I suspect is true, that everything sucks before the Universe swallows me whole. Thus, my position is, I don’t have to reframe my hellish year as positive, necessarily, but I have the option to consider 2020 a neutral year of nitrogen fixing. Maybe I’ll bloom soon, maybe I won’t, but I’m open to considering the idea. Let’s say, I’m not ruling out the possibility of progress.

Relinquish my death grip on outcomes

I have long operated on the belief that if I can just manage and control what happens, then I won’t need to be afraid anymore. I forget that I do not control outcomes. My job is to do the work and make it visible—that is, offer it to those who could benefit from my contribution.

I frequently forget this small but important fact of human existence, that we don’t control outcomes. I catch myself on the sharp horns of desire and start thinking just because I am desperate, I somehow can manage and control what happens—as if the depth of my desire actually matters.

I can influence outcomes but I cannot control them. Neither can you. Between cause and effect, there is a moment in which anything could happen. Honoring that moment brings me more peace than trying to force outcomes to fit my preconceptions.

I compare this idea to gathering data in qualitative interviews. Many times, I have edited dissertation proposals in which the authors proposed interview questions that were destined to produce bad data. For example, When did you first realize that your cat was editing your dissertation proposal while you were sleeping? I understand the temptation to ask questions from our own perspective. It usually stems from a desire to cling to a particular point of view—a tenderly held, persistent belief about the topic.

For instance, I really wanted to hate for-profit career colleges (I was employed by one at the time). I had to do a little bracketing (epoché, you might see it called) of my preconceptions to make sure my opinions weren’t influencing the words of my interview participants, both during the interviews and during my data analysis.

In other words, let data emerge. Let your participants’ data be the amazing revelatory fountain of knowledge from which you will gratefully drink.

Summary

Now that I’ve written a little bit about what scares me, maybe I can feel slightly less scared. Now that I realize I can reframe my experience, I can be less attached to my cynicism and despair. Now that I am reminded I can’t manage and control what happens, no matter how hard I try, I can become more willing to take action and let the outcomes simply be. Action is the magic word. It’s a new year. Time to get busy.

November 11, 2019November 11, 2019

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.

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)

July 22, 2019July 22, 2019

Giving up on your dissertation is not an option

For the past thirty days, I have been writing a long project. My goal was 50,000 words. I’m happy to say, I exceeded my word count goal within the allotted time. While I was writing, I hit multiple walls, contemplated giving up several times, and eventually came to understand that this was a job—a 30-day temp job.

Writing at this intense pace reminded me of writing my dissertation. I don’t have any magic medicine to offer you to help you accomplish your gargantuan dissertation task. However, I can offer you some insights from my writing process. In this post, I break down the thirty days into four phases.

Phase I: Denial: Surfing the pink cloud

When I started writing on Day 1 of my 30-day writing project, I was overflowing with enthusiasm. I had a good idea (it came to me in a dream). My outline made sense. My ducks were in a row, my planets were aligned, my support team members (friends and family) were shaking their pompoms. . . . What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing! I was eager to get started, and away I went. I dove in with conviction that this project was going to be great. Not just good, but great. After all, I’d had a dream about it! You can’t go wrong when you dream about your topic, right?

For the first two weeks, I wrote like a fiend, like a maniac, like a writing machine. I hardly took time to eat or sleep. I was on fire with the zeal of the writer who has grabbed a great idea by the tail and wants to cage it before it slinks back into the wild—or wherever it is ideas come from.

When I embarked on my dissertation, I had some similar pink-cloud moments. I thought I had a great idea. I studied all the articles in my field, I read all the books. I had a vision. My support team was in place, my direction seemed clear. I figured I would be done and defending in no time. Piece of cake.

Phase II: Horror: Bashing into the wall

Somewhere around Day 15 of my 30-day writing project, I hit the first wall. I’d just read what I’d written. I had the sinking realization that the structure of the project was flawed. My outline had steered me wrong! I started frantically rearranging sections according to a new outline. My daily average word count dropped like a rock. I saw my word count goal slipping away.

After crashing into the first wall and surviving (somewhat bruised), I clawed my way back on track, recouping my average daily word count. The next wall loomed in front of me a few days later. After reading what I’d written to that point, I realized, the structure was still wrong! Oh, the horror. At that moment, I felt like abandoning the project. I couldn’t see my way through. What had seemed like such a clear path from beginning to end had led me off the cliff into some snarled undergrowth. I was tangled in confusion and indecision. Which way to go? I couldn’t climb out of the ditch.

When I was working on my dissertation, I hit my first major wall when I was writing my dissertation proposal. I had a new chair; she was less enthused about my approach compared to my previous chair. I wrote draft after draft and couldn’t seem to get it right. Nothing made sense anymore. This was my long dark night of the soul. I could have quit, but I am not a quitter. I put my head down and kept trudging forward, which means I kept reading, writing, thinking, and writing some more.

Phase III: Acceptance: Realizing the impossibility of the task

Around Day 20 in my 30-day writing project, I was back on track with an outline I hoped would work, feeling extremely battered and not at all cocky. I didn’t know if I would be able to achieve my word count goal. It felt impossible. It probably was impossible. Yet I was not willing to give up. I could still see the bones of my project underneath my fumbling cloudy writing. I could still hear it begging to be born. I kept writing.

At that point, I took the leap of faith. I didn’t know what would happen or how it would happen if I finished my project; I just knew I had to keep going—even if I couldn’t fly, even if I crashed at the foot of the cliff (metaphorically speaking). I wanted my pink cloud back but I was older, wiser, and humbler now about my chances for success.

When I was working on my dissertation, I crossed a similar threshold of acceptance. I thought there was a real possibility I would run out of time in my program. If I ran out time, I risked being dismissed from the Ph.D. program. Everything I had worked toward would have been lost. I’d invested years in this impossible journey. I closed my ears to my fears, hunkered down, and kept writing.

Phase IV: Commitment: Showing up for the work

Finally, I came to understand that I had committed myself to a 30-day temp job. Even though I was my own employer on this project, so to speak, I was required to suit up and show up, get the work done for the day with a minimum of drama, and come back the next day to repeat the task. At that point, the glamor had evaporated. The bubbly enthusiasm of the pink cloud was gone, but so were the fears: that my idea was dumb, that my project would never work, that I wasn’t good enough to succeed.

The fears were replaced with a deep sense of satisfaction with the process itself. Regardless of the outcome, I was having a blast puzzling out the best structure for my project. I was a detective following the clues. I could have fired myself from the temp job at any time, and once or twice, I almost did. But had I quit, I would have missed the gift of working like “a digger on the railroad,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, to bring my project into being.

There was a point in my dissertation writing that I knew I was going to make it. My idea was solid, my approach was logical, my data were robust, my analysis was thorough, and my write-up was valid. From that moment, it was as if I had crossed the field of poppies and I was running along the yellow brick road toward the Emerald City.

The approvals unfolded quickly. The defense happened. The pdf of the final manuscript was submitted to ProQuest. Some months later, my diploma arrived in the mail. I have it around here somewhere, I think. It’s a symbol, it’s evidence that I successfully navigated the long doctoral journey. I gained so much more than a diploma. I learned how to be a writer—from writing my dissertation.

What I learned

Other dissertators have different experiences. Some move along briskly, others not so much. I was a nontraditional dissertator at an online university. I received little support from my mentors and peers. I fell in multiple ditches, bashed into many walls, clawed my way out of brambles . . . it was not easy.

Nor should it be easy.

We build character by setting goals, making commitments, and showing up to fulfill them. We can change our minds, and sometimes we should. There’s no shame in pivoting away from a project that won’t help make the world better in some way. But sometimes the way to success is to roll up our sleeves, pick up that shovel (metaphorically speaking), and get busy digging that railroad.

Today I can say I dug my own personal railroad: Eighty-thousand words in thirty days.