i blinked and the semester was “over”
the semester has ended and all that is left to do is grade students' final papers (due tomorrow) and finish my dissertation proposal so i suddenly thought "perhaps it's time to update my word counter!!" and whoops i wrote 16,558 words over the past month THIS IS WHY I WANTED TO WORD COUNT OH WELL
HELLO ALL 💕
dissertation status:
i received my feedback (full approval!! qualifying paper = passed!!) on november 1st!
on the one hand, the feedback was beautiful and helpful and inspirational and constructive. on the other hand, getting all the feedback on the 1st was not conducive to preparing a proposal defense (paper and slide deck) for the week of november 11th, which would have required formally inviting the tentative members of my hopeful academic committee to actually serve on my committee by sending emails out the week of the 4th… so my advisor was like, “yeah, no, let’s do early spring!” so my dissertation proposal is tentatively scheduled for mid-march and i shall formally invite my committee members to join my dissertation committee in mid-january!
this timeline is not the one i’d hoped for, BUT since i already have half my data collected, coded, and analyzed (which is what i’d partially done for my previous paper and what i finished doing this semester with my research assistant), i’m in a funny situation where half my dissertation is already written. so although i would have LIKED to have been “all but dissertation” (ABD) status by now, i’m still on track to defend my dissertation in february 2025. 👌💕✨ meanwhile, my ABD cohort member is only going to start collecting data in january and she joked like, “kris, of the two of us, re: our data collection and analysis progress, who is ACTUALLY ABD here?” and i was like, “you right, you right, i must CALM DOWN.” 😂 january 2024, it is!!
tomorrow, i have my final meeting with my competent, astute, observant, organized, creative, enthusiastic, quick-learning research assistant. 😭
she was so good! i’m so sad that our time together is ending, but i’m so happy to write her letters of recommendation and help her update her badass resumé and see her move onto the next stage of her academic career!! i’m so happy to have been a part of her learning journey and i know we’ll stay in touch as she enters grad school and wherever she ends up next.
and NOW i have to find another one for spring. 😂🫠🤞TENTATIVELY OPTIMISTIC.
the manuscript for my non-fiction book (based on my dissertation research but for a mainstream audience!) continues!
i’m so so lucky to have my advisor. all of our advising meetings revolve around three goals:
publishing my dissertation,
publishing 1–2 academic journal articles on said dissertation topics, and
publishing my non-fiction book for gen audience.
she is advising on ALL THREE PROJECTS. how would i possibly be able to do any of these things as well as i am doing them if not for a stellar, trustworthy, competent, long-term/endgame-planning advisor?? choosing a university and a department and an advisor is the number one most important part of picking a ph.d. program, i will die on this hill.
on that note, a few thoughts about completing a ph.d. program…
here is what i have learned about writing a doctoral dissertation during the first three or four months of writing said dissertation; some of these learning points align 100% with pieces of advice that have been passed down to me from friends, colleagues, advisors, mentors, and postdocs, and some of these are “things that i thought i knew but experience is the best teacher,” and some of these things are just Unexpected Pearls of Wisdom™ :
not everyone finishes their ph.d. program. for the first three years of my ph.d. program, i felt like the foreboding statistics about ph.d. program attrition rates (e.g., dropout rates for programs in the u.s. across the fields of engineering, life sciences, social sciences, mathematics and physical sciences, and humanities range from 36–51%, young et al., 2019) was more urban legend than reality—something that happened at other schools to other departments with other ph.d. students.
but as my cohort(s) cross(es) the bridge from “student” to “candidate” and inch closer and closer to “all but dissertation” (ABD) status, i have started to feel the truth in the urban legend: people leave doctoral programs for all sorts of reasons, including personal and professional, which is what you might expect—such as realizing that the current program (/advisor/area of interest/stage of life/etc.) isn’t the right fit for that person at that time in that stage of their career.
i was less prepared, however, for people in my program—friends and classmates and colleagues i have grown close to over the last four years—failing out of the program due to failing their milestone requirements (e.g., qualifying papers, dissertation proposals), even after two attempts. i was not prepared for them to receive termination letters from the program director with heart-wrenching peer reviews on the limitations and flaws in their papers and with the departmental decision that, ultimately, they have failed to meet the requirements for continuing the program. just this past week, multiple friends have been terminated on the basis of a lack of demonstrated capability to complete a high-quality, rigorous, cutting-edge dissertation project that meaningfully contributes to the literature in a reasonable amount of time. it’s heavy.
in the past year alone, i have seen five of my friends and colleagues—from multiple disciplines and areas of expertise—be asked to leave the program or choose to leave the program as 3rd and 4th years.
some have viewed it as an opportunity for a fresh start and a “reset” to pivot to a different lifestyle entirely.
some slip away quietly and avoid all calls and texts and linkedin messages, even a year later.
some go out angrily and bitterly, and, unfortunately, burn down every bridge in the process, creating resentment on both sides, all the while sadly never realizing that the reason their appeal to the graduate school failed is, ultimately, at the core, for the same reasons they failed their qualifying paper in the first place.it is REALLY hard to finish a ph.d. program and write a dissertation, and it requires such a unique set of skills, not least of which is “you have to actually want to finish your ph.d. program REALLY REALLY BADLY.”
so much of my ability to stay in this program and be on a trajectory toward successful completion of my dissertation and program has less to do with having any sort of Brilliant IQ™ and much, much more to do with having transferrable skills, like:
high emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills, particularly with faculty and advisors;
great public speaking skills and confidence and Presence with which to share my research with Peers and to Network the Living Daylights Out of Everyone, Everywhere, All the Time;
exceptional and adaptable and streamlined-to-utter-efficiency organizational skills, and more, of course… but these are absolutely the Top 3, in my case.
writing a dissertation is actually fun, but only if:
you’re fortunate enough to be writing on a topic that means everything to you personally and professionally, and
you have a great relationship with a competent and resourceful and expert advisor who keeps in mind not only your academic and professional goals but also your personal ones as well, and
you’re really really really really fucking good at taking initiative and keeping track of 1000 tasks at once and thriving in a self-paced, self-driven lifestyle.
The only person “Who Actually Cares if You Finish the Thing or Not” is you (and, if you’re lucky enough, your advisor), which, again, ties back to the earlier point that one of the most critical factors in deciding whether or not you finish the damn dissertation is “you have to actually want to finish your ph.d. program REALLY REALLY BADLY.”
there are so many other demands on our time, and in order to actually work on the dissertation, you HAVE to carve out time for it. case in point: my poor ph.d. program soulmate is defending her dissertation in february and she has not touched her dissertation since october 31st. it is december 11th. for me, that’s horrifying to think about right now, but it’s so common everywhere. if we are not careful, the dissertation will consistently get pushed farther and farther back onto the backest burner, and suddenly you’ll blink and you’ll not have touched your dissertation in over a month. when i last made a post on this blog in september, it had happened to me for two-ish weeks, and that was scary enough.
whatever i do now, i do my best to TOUCH at least one of my dissertation documents at least once every few days: the slide deck for the proposal oral exam, the dissertation proposal word document, the endless coding spreadsheets, the clickup task management portal for my research assistant’s assignments…
TOUCH IT. TOUCH IT EVERY (OTHER) DAY.
progress can happen in Big Surges of energy and productivity, but more often it happens in small, incremental steps.
enter cliché: a dissertation is not (always) a sprint; it’s a marathon.
enter second cliché: a good dissertation is a done dissertation.
enter existential realization that writing a doctoral dissertation (like many other large-scale projects, other meaningful experiences, and other Hard Things) is a Metaphor for Life. ✨
fic updates!
what fic updates
100% i am CRAVING a fanfic outlet. i have been grading and reading and coding and grading and presenting and my head is full of at least ten relevant academic journal citations at any given moment. i cannot partake in a typical human conversation without saying, or at least thinking, “there’s actually this really cool study about that—” stop. kris stop. STOP, KRIS.
i had to perfect my 1-minute elevator pitch about my research for thanksgiving because anytime anyone asked me about it and, god forbid they asked me follow-up questions, I DID, INDEED, TELL THEM ABOUT IT. INDEED. thank you to all the patient souls at various friendsgivings who asked me questions (and then more questions) because even though i had to REEL IT BACK, i basically perfected my conference presentation pitches and here i am again, this section is supposed to be about FIC UPDATES. FIC.
back on topic: there is a mountain!AU jelsa two-shot requiring its second shot and i am salivating over the wintry “COMPLETION” status update, so that is ✨forthcoming.✨
i have been tentatively brainstorming with the gloriously creative @callimara over a collab 👀✨ i am DESPERATE FOR THAT TO COME TO FRUITION WHILE WINTER IS UPON US.
HOPE YOU ALL ARE DOING WELL THANK YOU FOR READING LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU
happy writing,
♡ kris
