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Help! I've fallen (into my dissertation) and can't get out!
Sunday, August 22, 2010
10 words
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Two Places at Once
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
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Lady Scientist
Lady Scientist is the pseudonym of Amanda, a (hopefully) soon-to-be finished biochemistry graduate student. Growing up in a smallish, southernish town she struggles to prove that you can be both a lady and scientist. Follow her adventures as she navigates her two-body problem, science, and life.
My posts are presented as opinion and commentary and do not represent the views of LabSpaces Productions, LLC, my employer, or my educational institution.
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"My New Favorite Toy" or "Why You NEED to Win the iPad from LabSpaces"
From Superbug's Zazzle store. I'm beginning to think I should pick up about a half dozen of them to wear at all times.
What I wish I knew before I started writing...
(1) How lonely it would be. I’m the type of person who really doesn’t like writing. That means any excuse I can have to not write, I take. A random signature? Sure. Need help setting up an experiment? I’m so there. Need me to pick up an order that came to another building? Yes, totally. Ergo, I have to spend most of my time alone to avoid distractions.
(2) That I should have started writing during my first year of graduate school. I could have started writing my intro chapter then and just been updating it now. Unfortunately, I didn’t do that. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who has done that. If you are doing this/did this, please introduce yourself in the comments. :)
(3) The perfect is the enemy of the good-- or even just progress. I tend to get caught up in crafting the perfect sentence. I feel like every word I place on the page should inspire choirs of angels will descend from the heavens to sing its praises. When in reality, I could just put words on the page that approximate what I want to say and then edit them later.
(3b) Corollary: Spending a half hour editing one sentence is not a good use of my time. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough.
(4) How inadequate the whole process makes me feel. I had been feeling pretty good. After many obstacles, I was able to successfully complete Damned Yeast Project, I went on a successful job interview, and Advisor was brain storming with me for ideas for his new grant. I felt that I had this stuff down. Little did I know that the dissertation writing process would be a kick in the teeth. Suddenly, I’m failing-- or at least I feel that way. I worry over writing this entire dissertation. I fret over aims that never got completed. I think I just haven’t done enough. None of these things are true. I know this intellectually. I will finish my dissertation. My aim is complete enough. I’ve worked my butt off and I have things to show for it. Yet I still feel inadequate.
I think if I knew at least some of these things before I started writing, well, I'd still be miserable. But at least I would've been prepared to be miserable.
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Regarding the inadequacy, I felt the same way to some extent. My "main" project-which was the focus of my NRSA fellowship-only took up one chapter. It just kind of fizzled out from an interest and novelty perspective. A semi-related project (from which the main one originally sprung) suddenly became much more interesting in the end, and I wished I'd had more time to work on it. At some point, you hopefully accept that this is the way science always is, and you move forward.
On the writing perfection: I had to have things to take me away from the writing portion so I wouldn't get so hung up on little things. I would set goals (either time or section completion) then take a break to read Harry Potter :) Or I would go for a run or workout, during which the hypoxia would often reveal the phrase that had been hiding from me for a while.
Don't worry! You can make it!
I too felt the inadequacy - but saw the dissertation as a culmination of my work as a grad student in training. The dissertation is supposed to show how far you've come and that you're thinking about the great things that you are going to do in the future.
Good luck! And try to see the finish line. soon it's all over and done :)
Guest Comment
I feel your pain. I second the idea that you need to just go with the idea that you're writing a crappy draft and then start worrying about making it sound pretty once you have a complete draft. And besides, your advisor and anyone else who edits your dissertation may want you to move sections around to make things clearer to them - remember we who write the damned thing know what's going on better than anyone else - so while the meaning and flow might be clear to you as the writer, someone reading it with an outside perspective might disagree.
um, I guess I'm saying try not to obsess about it 
Apparently the best way to write is to get it all out on paper and then edit it. I have the same problem that you have though, which is consistently going back to it and trying to "improve it".
Not particularly comforting but it is not read by millions of people so it doesn't really have to be a masterpiece!
I'm a big fan of getting it on paper and then letting someone else look at it. That way you aren't a week out from your deadline and figuring out that a section only makes sense in your head.
Join me in the #NaNoWriMo experience - sure it is for writing a novel but you could use your thesis. I like one of their tips: visualize your inner editor and then send him/her away for a month.
if you want to join me, I'm signed up as genegeek. I can be found here but their site is very slow today.
Good luck with the thesis writing. Once I realized that only 7 people would ever read my thesis, I wrote much faster. Although I think the first 5 or 6 pages are probably a true masterpiece... they took me as long as the following 3 chapters.
I was totally the opposite. I absolutely loved writing my dissertation. For me the struggle was those years of bench-work, troubleshooting, and repetitive experiments. I was sad when my dissertation was completed. It took two more years of experimentations before I got the data I needed to start writing again as a postdoc.
I think it is a shame that students are not encouraged to peer mentor one another in writing process. I learnt a lot as a new student from reading and commenting on my labmate’s dissertation. I learnt a bit of science and I began developing a sense of what was expected of me. He got an insight into what parts he had not explained effectively. You know what you are trying to get across, but it takes an outsider to point out that they are confused before you realize a particular paragraph is not as clear as you thought.
However, when it came to persuading fellow students to read my draft dissertation they acted like they were doing me a huge favor! Yet now I suspect those who were not interested are complaining that they are clueless as to what is expected of them or how their own dissertation should be taking shape!
However much you think you are struggling just remember that your mentor is not going to let you fail now. Ask for help and advice if you need it. I put a lot into mine because it was a labor of love, but your dissertation really does not need to be a masterpiece – just readable.
Guest Comment
Sometimes, we learn things the hard way! Just like writing, if we haven't tried writing dissertations or thesis the hard way we wouldn't know how difficult it is. Good thing, readers who haven't tried it, is now informed the things they should know upon starting.
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