#dissertation anxiety

[travellinghistorystudent]

Y’all, check in with your ABD friends who are supposed to be doing their research this year (you know, before the pandemic hit). We are not okay. 

[trivialqueen]

Had a dissertation dream nightmare and now I’m *WIDE* awake. So if you need me I’ll be reading until I fall back asleep or get this historiography synthesized. 

So the dream, cuz it was surreal and anxiety inducing: I’m sitting in the Early American Seminar, which is a UVA (and related scholars in the area - aka me) grad student based paper workshop that meets every other week. And in the dream I’m at the seminar and I hadn’t read the first paper but I was like nbd I’ll still pay attention and try to comment on the second one. I look down at my laptop, I look up from my laptop - MASSIVE time skip and I legit think, holy shit, did I fall asleep. As I’m trying to figure out if I did or not I hear the voice of a faculty member from my department in Missouri start talking and I look over and not only is he there but my advisor is sitting next to me. I turn to Jeff, my advisor, and whisper OMG why didn't you tell me you were going to be here!! and He turns to me, looks me in the eye and says: “I’m not.” And then the cat started meowing and I woke up.

[lalaithl]

It is important to learn to trust that with time and consistent effort you will be able to make revisions, figure out how to write something that you could not express previously, and improve the quality of your work. Creating a well-crafted product does not usually happen in one or even several work sessions. You may end many work sessions feeling confused and uncertain. But if you can maintain tolerance for the ambiguity of the research process while being consistent in your efforts to read, analyze, clarify, revise, and improve your work, you will eventually have a product you can feel good about.

Alison Miller, Finish Your Dissertation Once and For All, p. 118.

Progress, not perfection!  But while this statement feels true, I'm not sure what the difference is between this state of affairs, and being stuck.  Maybe she's saying that it's OK to be stuck as long as you keep swimming.

[lalaithl]

Inspiration and motivation rarely come from inaction. Every day that you intend to work but do nothing puts you at risk of becoming disengaged from your dissertation and makes it that much harder to get started in your next work session. It is often the act of writing, making discoveries, articulating and connecting ideas, or analyzing data or sources that will inspire and motivate you.

Alison Miller, Finish Your Dissertation Once and For All, p. 116.

[lalaithl]

Letting go of perfectionism ultimately means that you need to find a way to trust that your writing and your dissertation are evolving over time. Your work on any given day may not seem satisfactory, but if you hang in there, keep writing, revising, and integrating the input of others (e.g. your advisor and committee members), you will eventually have a product of sufficient quality to earn a doctoral degree. It may be a messier road than you might like, but a messier road may be a quicker and actually less painful road than a perfectly paved one.

– Alison Miller, Finish Your Dissertation Once and For All, p. 113

[lalaithl]

Writing a "perfect" dissertation will not lead to redemption where all concerns and feelings of inadequacy are permanently banished from your life. You will just earn a PhD and believe that your next endeavour needs to be even more perfect.

Allison Miller, Finish Your Dissertation Once and For All, p. 111

Youch, that's hard but true.