I am currently in my 8th year of graduate school (6 years as part of the Ph.D. program) working towards getting a Ph.D. in Geography. I’ve spent the last three years writing my dissertation - the last two years being the most difficult. It’s been difficult because I work full time as a community college instructor. The only free time I have to spend on the dissertation is on weekends and during breaks. But because work is often busy (50-60 hour weeks are not uncommon), all I want to do with my free time is relax and not have to think about “it.”
I am almost finished (to defend, that is). Most of what I have left to do is primarily cosmetic - editing, reformatting and displaying charts/graphs, etc. - but I do have one section of the dissertation that my advisor wants me to go over again and redo so my conclusions are stronger. Nothing major, but at this point in the Ph.D. process I’m mentally exhausted.
That being said, anyone care to share their Ph.D. dissertation experiences or provide me with some good motivational advice/strategies that will help overcome my mental fatigue and “get it done” as soon as possible?
In the meantime, I’ll be over hear muttering to myself…
Many schools have a limit on how long your coursework remains valid. If you wait too much longer you may find yourself forced to retake Geography 301 or some similar horrible thing.
Also, the sense of accomplishment you get when you actually finish, as opposed to being, yet another, ABD is wonderful.
Damn! You’re like, 99% done!!! I feel hot burning seething envy.
That finish line is SO close. You can do this last little bit. Think about what it will be like to have your life back. Think about what it will be like to not have that monkey on your back, that constant sense of “Oh god, I should be working on that damn dissertation.” Think about the bliss of getting done with grading, turning on “Hard Copy,” and not having that ugly little voice saying “Shouldn’t you be fixing that typo on page 287?”
I’ve got a year to go. We’ve got a 7-year limit, and like you I’ve been working and stuff. I just had to go through what Squink described: had to beg and plead for an official time-to-degree extension, otherwise they’d have made me reapply to my program. I wouldn’t have had to redo my coursework, but it would’ve meant unwelcome hoops to jump through.
I posted a somewhat similar lament a week or two ago, bemoaning the fact that I was too brain-dead to finish my master’s thesis. But I heard today that my second reader has approved the paper, and now all I have to do is the same kind of stuff that you need to do, getting the margins right and so forth!
What helped me to break through the mental fatigue was, oddly enough, shaking up my schedule. I took an afternoon off work and wrote from 2-7 p.m. instead of the usual 6-11. I got up really freakin’ early a couple of mornings and put in two or three hours before work. Somehow it helped me get going that it wasn’t the same old, “get off work get something to eat and be glued to the computer for five hours” routine.
A master’s thesis isn’t on the same level as a doctoral dissertation, but Cranky’s right, that feeling of getting home from work and being able to goof off or watch TV until your eyes glaze over is wonderful.
Good luck! You’re almost there, and you’ll make it!
Go, go, go. You will not believe how good it feels to see those signatures on your title page.
I set myself a deadline–I was going off to my first academic job, which included having to live apart from my husband for a year, and I decided there was no f’ing way I was going to start my first real job with my dissertation hanging over my head.
It went down to the wire–I was already driving across country when my husband handed in the final draft–but I did it.
So my advice is to set yourself a date. The rewrite you have in your own mind is probably much more elaborate that the one your advisor is imagining. Just give it a quick tweaking and a bang-up final paragraph. And make sure there aren’t any typos in the first page.
It took me five years of being ABD to finally finish the damn thing–and I have never been so proud of myself. Keep plugging along, eponymous. I like D Marie’s suggestion of shaking up your schedule. You might also want to try what I did, which was breaking the work left to be done into little tasks and checking them off as I did them. Just keep reminding yourself that the end is in sight!!
One suggestion I was given when struggling through the work-finish the doctorate business was to do something EVERYDAY. Complete something even if it is only to write a figure heading or to make sure your lit cite list is formatted right.
The other suggestion I got was to work only for 1 hour each day. It seems like too short of a period, but it all depends on how you use that hour. It is your hour and it is inviolate. Unplug the phone, get off the internet, turn off the TV and the radio and have the SO keep the kids at bay. Then start to write. It feels weird and unnatural at first, but you soon learn to use this hour efficiently. Do that graph or write that paragraph. At the end of the hour, STOP. You may find that you’ll get a lot more done during this one hour than if you sit with less-than-total concentration in front of the computer for 4 hours. You might stick this hour in front of your schedule, like D Marie suggests.
cher3 is right - you probably have less of a rewrite than you think.
We’re rooting for all you ABDs (and we’ll come kick your ass if you remain that way). Now why are you still reading this? - get to work!
You have my sympathy, eponymous–I’m 95% done on my thesis as well (though I’ve only been working 4.5 years). I’m pretty mentally exhausted too, not from the thesis but from recovering from mental illness, breaking up with my wife, getting ready to leave the country, struggling with a sucky job, etc.
But enough moaning about myself. I guess what you should try to do is take a break from the “thinking” part of the thesis for a while, and work on the “mechanical” work like formatting graphs and appendices. I’ve always found that when you’re mentally beat, nothing works on the “thinking” part. It’s always best to go back to sections which your supervisor has questioned with a fresh mind, and to be able to see it from his/her perspective. When you go back to the “thinking” part of the dissertation, try to ask yourself why your supervisor has raised the points and questions that s/he has marked. If you can answer that, then you can formulate an answer that satisfies his/her requirements without losing your own perspective within the dissertation.
I hope your supervisor/faculty has been as sympathetic as mine have been. Keep in there.
I can relate, Duke. I almost quit about 3 1/2 years ago after my marriage broke up, my mother passed away, and my being diagnosed with depression. I’m surprised I’ve gotten as far as I have.
To everyone else, thanks for the advice and encouragement. Once I get my Ph.D., I guess I can start throwing my “intellectual weight” around the SDMB…Naah
Granted, it was just a master’s degree but it took me six years… (in Cultural/Human Geography, by the way - what’s your area/topic?)
I at least didn’t get divorced in the middle, but getting married in the middle didn’t help, either. Nor did health problems, nor moving out of state, nor working, etc. At least I saved pregnancy for afterwards! My husband helped motivate me some, but it wasn’t enough to really get the last push going.
My final motivator? My advisor told me she thought I wouldn’t ever finish, and she wouldn’t grant me another extension because it basically wasn’t worth her effort (I’d had two extensions, at that point). I was furious (since part of the time waste had been doing what SHE thought I should do, and then being told that it wasn’t working and I should go back to looking at what I wanted to look at in the FIRST place). (and no, I don’t think she was just trying to motivate me…) I figured that finishing in spite of her negative expectation was my best nose-thumb possibility, even if not exactly revenge. So I finished (and she told me I did indeed do it all on my own - she didn’t help). Flying colors and all, kick-butt thesis presentation, big old party in Chinatown to celebrate. Grand total, 149 pages, including 18 maps and some additional drawings.
Still love the topic (the one I wanted to do), even after all that time on it. And proud as all get out that I did it, too. It felt WAY better than I anticipated it would feel.
Fury worked for me - hopefully just the anticipation of that really delicious feeling of being DONE does it for you!
I defended my Ph.D. a little over 6 years ago. If your post-defense career goes like mine you should have a world of motivation. Your professional life begins as soon as that defense ends and they say “Congratulations, Dr. eponymous”. Huge vistas of opportunity are open to you. Looking back, the trials of the pre-Ph.D. years were nothing compared to the rewards that I have experienced since.
