Showing posts with label dissertation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dissertation. Show all posts
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Done?
As of shortly before 4:30 pm Mountain time, my dissertation is written. The data reflect the most recent analysis, my advisor's final comments have all been addressed, the arduous process of revising my thinking based on one single new reference is complete. I even created a special committee copy, without the pages of of Tables of Contents and such required by the school. It's sitting there, a lovely .pdf of 116 pages (including references), in my dissertation folder. And yet I have not emailed it out. It isn't due until tomorrow, and I can't quite conceive of what it will mean to have submitted my dissertation to my committee. It is the sensation I have had several times since my defense was announced to the department, and people started congratulating me and/or wishing me good luck when we passed in the halls. It doesn't quite seem real. I can't really be this close to being done.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Absentee Faculty: The Curse of Email
I find myself in the awkward position of stalking one of my committee members. And why am I spending five or ten minutes at a time loitering in a public hallway, trying to ignore the stares of passerby as I wait for this one faculty member to emerge from a meeting or an office so I can force her attention on me? Believe it or not, I blame this on email.
Email has been a wonderful tool, a leap forward in communication. It allows me to send a message at my convenience, and allows the recipient to respond at his or her convenience. It doesn't matter if that person is an evening person, a morning person, in another city, or in another timezone; we don't have to deal with the hassle of meeting in person to collaborate on a project or to sort out a trifling problem. Taken to extremes, there isn't any need for physical proximity at all. Advisors can head out for sabbatical knowing that most things can be accomplished via email. And any number of faculty appear only for mandatory meetings, otherwise eschewing their offices in favor of working from home or a coffeeshop or some other student-free environment. And it all works.
Except when those faculty decide to ignore their email. They get swamped with papers to grade, deeply involved in writing a book chapter, or buried in their research, and they cease responding to or even checking their email. But, they still maintain their habits of not being anywhere near campus unless they have a meeting, which renders them completely unreachable.
All I asked was whether she would be available during a two-week period when I would like to defend my dissertation, just to be sure that I could progress to the next step of scheduling. I didn't ask for a detailed schedule; just a basic "Yes, I will be around those days", or "I will be out of town on these days". It should take less than a minute to respond to, and my other committee members got around to it in a day. But this one has not responded in the past three days, leading me to believe the email has been completely disregarded. And so I loiter.
Email has been a wonderful tool, a leap forward in communication. It allows me to send a message at my convenience, and allows the recipient to respond at his or her convenience. It doesn't matter if that person is an evening person, a morning person, in another city, or in another timezone; we don't have to deal with the hassle of meeting in person to collaborate on a project or to sort out a trifling problem. Taken to extremes, there isn't any need for physical proximity at all. Advisors can head out for sabbatical knowing that most things can be accomplished via email. And any number of faculty appear only for mandatory meetings, otherwise eschewing their offices in favor of working from home or a coffeeshop or some other student-free environment. And it all works.
Except when those faculty decide to ignore their email. They get swamped with papers to grade, deeply involved in writing a book chapter, or buried in their research, and they cease responding to or even checking their email. But, they still maintain their habits of not being anywhere near campus unless they have a meeting, which renders them completely unreachable.
All I asked was whether she would be available during a two-week period when I would like to defend my dissertation, just to be sure that I could progress to the next step of scheduling. I didn't ask for a detailed schedule; just a basic "Yes, I will be around those days", or "I will be out of town on these days". It should take less than a minute to respond to, and my other committee members got around to it in a day. But this one has not responded in the past three days, leading me to believe the email has been completely disregarded. And so I loiter.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Massive Dissertation Changes, And Advisor Confrontation
The excitement of having a job interview, the stress of deciding, and the thrill of accepting the job offer were just about my entire life for a month, but they didn't change one pesky fact: I still have to finish my dissertation. Oh, the job offer isn't contingent on the PhD, but it does bring a better salary, and I will need my terminal degree if I ever want tenure.
Unfortunately, my dissertation changed dramatically in the six months since I proposed it. Oh, the first three experiments were the same, but what I thought they said was very different, and what to do for a fourth experiment was completely unknown. I spent months trying to figure out what a fourth experiment could be, and could only come up with one idea - which another member of my committee eventually said wouldn't work, or certainly wouldn't be able to argue what I needed it to argue.
The stress of all of this planning, combined with my advisor's absolute perfectionism, seeming inability to let go of what I had proposed, and seeming unwillingness to accept my opinion on the feasibility of success, resulted in an hour-and-a-half video conference, which was emotionally exhausting. In all of that, we really covered three main points:
1) I felt completely out of control of my dissertation, that I was doing nothing but catering to my advisor's opinion of what it should be, and that she dismissed many of my interpretations. It was never the case that I persuaded her to any side or interpretation, it was that I eventually bombarded her with so much data that she convinced herself. I think she still felt, at the end, that this wasn't the case, but she also wound up with plenty of evidence that she left that impression on me, and (true) hints that it also applied to other graduate students as well.
2) My advisor's ongoing insistence on matching what had originally been proposed left me feeling that my entire dissertation hinged on a single experiment. I wouldn't have proposed that way if I had known that to be the case. She eventually got me to see that there were some bigger changes that only made it look like the original final experiment was critical, but I think I got her to see that she had essentially been making my new dissertation seem like it hinged on the final experiment, and that this position was untenable.
3) No single experiment could possibly do everything we were asking of a new fourth experiment. It was supposed to be something that added depth, but could be prefaced in the introduction without knowing the results of the other experiments, and it had to fit in with the earlier experiments without going off in a new direction. In months of trying, I had come up with exactly one idea, which turned out not to work. If there was another experiment that could do this, I wasn't going to come up with it, because I had nothing left.
All of that, and I left ready for a good long nap. But as emotionally exhausting as it was, at least it was productive. My dissertation will proceed along a new plan that I devised, and my advisor modified but agreed to. There will be three experiments, and an entire chapter addressing alternative interpretations of what those experiments show, and why I favor my interpretation. One of these will be backed up from data from a mini-experiment I am currently conducting. And suddenly, the entire dissertation seems manageable. Four chapters with minor revisions, two chapters to write, and she will even cover my tuition if I have to enroll during the summer to have my PhD in hand before my new job starts. It all seems so manageable, I have to wonder what I'm missing.
Unfortunately, my dissertation changed dramatically in the six months since I proposed it. Oh, the first three experiments were the same, but what I thought they said was very different, and what to do for a fourth experiment was completely unknown. I spent months trying to figure out what a fourth experiment could be, and could only come up with one idea - which another member of my committee eventually said wouldn't work, or certainly wouldn't be able to argue what I needed it to argue.
The stress of all of this planning, combined with my advisor's absolute perfectionism, seeming inability to let go of what I had proposed, and seeming unwillingness to accept my opinion on the feasibility of success, resulted in an hour-and-a-half video conference, which was emotionally exhausting. In all of that, we really covered three main points:
1) I felt completely out of control of my dissertation, that I was doing nothing but catering to my advisor's opinion of what it should be, and that she dismissed many of my interpretations. It was never the case that I persuaded her to any side or interpretation, it was that I eventually bombarded her with so much data that she convinced herself. I think she still felt, at the end, that this wasn't the case, but she also wound up with plenty of evidence that she left that impression on me, and (true) hints that it also applied to other graduate students as well.
2) My advisor's ongoing insistence on matching what had originally been proposed left me feeling that my entire dissertation hinged on a single experiment. I wouldn't have proposed that way if I had known that to be the case. She eventually got me to see that there were some bigger changes that only made it look like the original final experiment was critical, but I think I got her to see that she had essentially been making my new dissertation seem like it hinged on the final experiment, and that this position was untenable.
3) No single experiment could possibly do everything we were asking of a new fourth experiment. It was supposed to be something that added depth, but could be prefaced in the introduction without knowing the results of the other experiments, and it had to fit in with the earlier experiments without going off in a new direction. In months of trying, I had come up with exactly one idea, which turned out not to work. If there was another experiment that could do this, I wasn't going to come up with it, because I had nothing left.
All of that, and I left ready for a good long nap. But as emotionally exhausting as it was, at least it was productive. My dissertation will proceed along a new plan that I devised, and my advisor modified but agreed to. There will be three experiments, and an entire chapter addressing alternative interpretations of what those experiments show, and why I favor my interpretation. One of these will be backed up from data from a mini-experiment I am currently conducting. And suddenly, the entire dissertation seems manageable. Four chapters with minor revisions, two chapters to write, and she will even cover my tuition if I have to enroll during the summer to have my PhD in hand before my new job starts. It all seems so manageable, I have to wonder what I'm missing.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Struggling for Motivation: Why Care What Others Think?
I find myself feeling the same toward my dissertation and ultimate defense as I did toward my black belt test several months ago. After years of training, I know exactly what I have learned, what I have accomplished; the only reason to stick around through the final strenuous test is to get an official acknowledgment of what I already know. But I can't quite bring myself to care about that official piece of paper. It'd be nice to have, but I'm not sure it's worth all the hoops I have to jump through to get it. It's just a piece of paper.
When I expressed this lack of caring to my advisor, and to a teaching advisor, the reaction was the same: You might not care about that piece of paper, but other people care! Word for word, both times - other people care. This, to me, is a ridiculous response. Sure, I care what other people think, but only to an extent. As a researcher, I care about what other researchers with expertise in my field think of the quality of my research, but only whether it is well designed, executed, and communicated, not whether it's worthwhile. As a teacher, I care about what my students think of my lessons, but only whether the lessons are effective and engaging, not whether my class is "fun" or "easy". Certainly I care about what other people think, but not enough to bend over backwards for them; not enough to subject myself to six strenuous and unpleasant months doing things I do not enjoy, sacrificing things I do enjoy, for the sake of other people's opinions.
And who are these "other people", really? A tiny, tiny percentage of the population attempts the PhD. Those who do not attempt it, those who attempt it and ultimately decide against it, they might - might- admire me for doing it, but they aren't going to think less of me for not doing something they did not do. So really, the only "other people" who care would be those who have a PhD, and think less of those who don't get one. In an administrative sense, it cuts me out of jobs that only look for the PhD itself as a marker of knowledge and skill; that cuts me out of a number of research jobs I didn't want anyway, and makes it more challenging to get a liberal arts professorship (or impossible, of "ABD considered" is only lip-service), but still leaves plenty of perfectly acceptable and interesting career opportunities open.
I do have my black belt now. So how did I motivate myself through it, and can it help with the dissertation? Well, I didn't make it through my black belt test for the prestige of having that recognized symbol of martial arts prowess. I did it as a challenge to myself, to prove to myself that I could survive the most physically demanding seven hours of my life, that I wouldn't quit when my body started cannibalizing itself for energy. Knowing what I would think of myself if I quit kept me going, except for one moment of semi-despair when the knowledge that I had carpooled to the test and would have to watch the remainder of the test kept me going.
Unfortunately, the dissertation is different than the black belt test in two critical ways. First is the time factor: putting yourself through seven hours of hell is strength, but putting yourself through three to six months of hell is masochism. Second is the criterion for success: Earning my black belt required demonstrating specific skill and convincing a single Master to promote me, but earning my dissertation requires demonstrating "a significant contribution to the literature" and convincing five academics with disparate viewpoints to promote me. I walked into my black belt test knowing that if I stuck it out and did my best I would pass; there is no such guarantee at the dissertation defense.
When I expressed this lack of caring to my advisor, and to a teaching advisor, the reaction was the same: You might not care about that piece of paper, but other people care! Word for word, both times - other people care. This, to me, is a ridiculous response. Sure, I care what other people think, but only to an extent. As a researcher, I care about what other researchers with expertise in my field think of the quality of my research, but only whether it is well designed, executed, and communicated, not whether it's worthwhile. As a teacher, I care about what my students think of my lessons, but only whether the lessons are effective and engaging, not whether my class is "fun" or "easy". Certainly I care about what other people think, but not enough to bend over backwards for them; not enough to subject myself to six strenuous and unpleasant months doing things I do not enjoy, sacrificing things I do enjoy, for the sake of other people's opinions.
And who are these "other people", really? A tiny, tiny percentage of the population attempts the PhD. Those who do not attempt it, those who attempt it and ultimately decide against it, they might - might- admire me for doing it, but they aren't going to think less of me for not doing something they did not do. So really, the only "other people" who care would be those who have a PhD, and think less of those who don't get one. In an administrative sense, it cuts me out of jobs that only look for the PhD itself as a marker of knowledge and skill; that cuts me out of a number of research jobs I didn't want anyway, and makes it more challenging to get a liberal arts professorship (or impossible, of "ABD considered" is only lip-service), but still leaves plenty of perfectly acceptable and interesting career opportunities open.
I do have my black belt now. So how did I motivate myself through it, and can it help with the dissertation? Well, I didn't make it through my black belt test for the prestige of having that recognized symbol of martial arts prowess. I did it as a challenge to myself, to prove to myself that I could survive the most physically demanding seven hours of my life, that I wouldn't quit when my body started cannibalizing itself for energy. Knowing what I would think of myself if I quit kept me going, except for one moment of semi-despair when the knowledge that I had carpooled to the test and would have to watch the remainder of the test kept me going.
Unfortunately, the dissertation is different than the black belt test in two critical ways. First is the time factor: putting yourself through seven hours of hell is strength, but putting yourself through three to six months of hell is masochism. Second is the criterion for success: Earning my black belt required demonstrating specific skill and convincing a single Master to promote me, but earning my dissertation requires demonstrating "a significant contribution to the literature" and convincing five academics with disparate viewpoints to promote me. I walked into my black belt test knowing that if I stuck it out and did my best I would pass; there is no such guarantee at the dissertation defense.
Friday, December 4, 2009
The Dissertation Proposal...Take 2
High on the list of things I never thought I would do a second time: Write a dissertation proposal. Not that the original experience was anywhere near as scarring as, say, my comprehensive exam, but neither was it a joyous experience I yearned to repeat.
But, Experiment 4 of my dissertation is killing me. For assorted technological and practical issues, I have given up hope on it working - and did so just as reviews came back declaring Experiment 4 to be absolutely vital for our interpretation of other dissertation findings. My advisor didn't want to let the experiment go. I told her that the experiment was toxic, and that I would sooner pursue an alternate career than get it to work. I was only slightly exaggerating when I said I was starting to think longingly of a career at McDonald's.
Our compromise: She will back me on changing the experiment, if I can restructure the dissertation so the research seems motivated but the current Experiment 4 doesn't seem so obviously necessary. I am to write her a dissertation proposal, which she will approve (or not), and which I can then send to the rest of my committee so they at least have a "heads up!" that the dissertation has changed before I plop it into their inboxes.
It is a good compromise, and it's not like I had much else I would have been doing for the next few weeks anyway. (The original plan was to write later chapters of the dissertation, but the motivation was no longer there). If I get frustrated, I can console myself with the knowledge that at least this time I only have to convince one person, not five.
But, Experiment 4 of my dissertation is killing me. For assorted technological and practical issues, I have given up hope on it working - and did so just as reviews came back declaring Experiment 4 to be absolutely vital for our interpretation of other dissertation findings. My advisor didn't want to let the experiment go. I told her that the experiment was toxic, and that I would sooner pursue an alternate career than get it to work. I was only slightly exaggerating when I said I was starting to think longingly of a career at McDonald's.
Our compromise: She will back me on changing the experiment, if I can restructure the dissertation so the research seems motivated but the current Experiment 4 doesn't seem so obviously necessary. I am to write her a dissertation proposal, which she will approve (or not), and which I can then send to the rest of my committee so they at least have a "heads up!" that the dissertation has changed before I plop it into their inboxes.
It is a good compromise, and it's not like I had much else I would have been doing for the next few weeks anyway. (The original plan was to write later chapters of the dissertation, but the motivation was no longer there). If I get frustrated, I can console myself with the knowledge that at least this time I only have to convince one person, not five.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Ready to Escape
I struggle with my advisor about whether I will defend by April, to graduate in May, or by July, to graduate in August. She thinks my dissertation will be better if I wait (an extra few months to get the data in). Perhaps she's right, but I want out. I dislike this project, I am frustrated by my collaborators, and I have things I want to do over the summer. I am even starting to like the alternative careers/life plans I've come up with if my committee decrees my April defense not good enough.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Dissertation Stress: How Good Does the Research Have To Be?
The first chapter of my dissertation, the introduction, is written. The next three chapters, one each for the first three experiments, are drafted - data collected, results written, and only in need of refinement. So why do I feel so stressed out, and so unsure about whether I'll be ready to defend and graduate this year?
It all comes down to the final experiment. Data collection progresses slowly, for reasons not all in my control; it will certainly extend to January, and might extend to February - giving me only a month or less to write up that experiment and the general discussion. So whenever I think about the dissertation, I focus on the question of how demanding my committee will be. Will three successful experiments, and a reasonable attempt at the fourth, be enough? Or will they insist that the fourth experiment must also be of publishable quality?
Last year, one of the students declared that she was not at all worried about her defense because she already had a post-doc offer in hand, and none of the faculty were going to hold her back. I suppose that if I don't have a job offer myself, I shouldn't care if I need an extra year to pull off the final experiment, but I can't stand the thought of failing my defense. Surely three of four successful experiments should be good enough; but do I really want to graduate as just "good enough"?
It all comes down to the final experiment. Data collection progresses slowly, for reasons not all in my control; it will certainly extend to January, and might extend to February - giving me only a month or less to write up that experiment and the general discussion. So whenever I think about the dissertation, I focus on the question of how demanding my committee will be. Will three successful experiments, and a reasonable attempt at the fourth, be enough? Or will they insist that the fourth experiment must also be of publishable quality?
Last year, one of the students declared that she was not at all worried about her defense because she already had a post-doc offer in hand, and none of the faculty were going to hold her back. I suppose that if I don't have a job offer myself, I shouldn't care if I need an extra year to pull off the final experiment, but I can't stand the thought of failing my defense. Surely three of four successful experiments should be good enough; but do I really want to graduate as just "good enough"?
Friday, November 6, 2009
I'm An Adjunct: Progress Report
I haven't written much about the actual work behind my teaching a graduate seminar as an adjunct at a nearby (defined as "within two hours by public transportation") university. On the bright side, this means I haven't felt the need to anonymously vent about the course or my students.
I have seven students. One is non-traditional, taking a course just to keep her hand in the "professional development" of her field. One speaks English as a second language. Those are my greatest challenges, which is to say that the course is going wonderfully, better than I could have expected, at least from my perspective.
The seminar is two hours, two days a week. When designing my syllabus, I phrased each day's topic as a question. The first hour is led by one of the students, who provides a summary of the day's readings and leads discussion on each article and how they might fit together to answer the day's question. The second hour of class is me getting up and attempting to answer that question myself, and then providing background on the readings for the next class. This leaves me with only one hour of material to prepare each class, and more importantly, only one hour of talking.
Amazingly enough, the class has never got out more than 15 minutes early. Somehow, with only the vaguest idea of what I was doing, I put together a reading list that lets students keep each other occupied for an hour (with occasional input from me, of course). Even more amazingly, I have mastered that Professor skill, which is To Profess. I have heard this from various workshop speakers throughout the years, a comment to the tune of "I'm a professor, so I will just stand up here and speak at you for an hour if you don't stop me with questions". It turns out that I can do this, even on topics not directly related to my research. Every morning on that two-hour commute I refresh myself on the readings and put together some notes, and every afternoon I manage to talk for an hour on what the students should have got out of those readings. Some days I have no idea where this information comes from; it's just there. Surely that's a hallmark of a professor?
I could be wrong in thinking that my students are getting what they need/want out of the class, or otherwise finding it useful. There's enough "lecture" that they should not feel my complain from my own graduate seminars, which was that there was a lot of discussion and not much teaching going on. I haven't been able to bring myself to conduct a more formal survey of student opinion, partly because the course is only for 10 weeks, but mostly because of that blurry graduate student as teacher / graduate student and students line, which I'm wary of crossing. I managed to grade their first papers without problems, feeling myself fully in the role of Expert, or rather More Expert, but my inoculations against undergraduate student opinion have not transferred to graduate students.
We're on the downhill slope now, past the halfway mark for the course, and I'm almost sad. Actually I'm mostly sad, because I love teaching and probably won't do any more for the rest of the year; but only allowing myself to be almost sad, because I do need that time freed up to finish my dissertation, so I can teach more classes next year.
I have seven students. One is non-traditional, taking a course just to keep her hand in the "professional development" of her field. One speaks English as a second language. Those are my greatest challenges, which is to say that the course is going wonderfully, better than I could have expected, at least from my perspective.
The seminar is two hours, two days a week. When designing my syllabus, I phrased each day's topic as a question. The first hour is led by one of the students, who provides a summary of the day's readings and leads discussion on each article and how they might fit together to answer the day's question. The second hour of class is me getting up and attempting to answer that question myself, and then providing background on the readings for the next class. This leaves me with only one hour of material to prepare each class, and more importantly, only one hour of talking.
Amazingly enough, the class has never got out more than 15 minutes early. Somehow, with only the vaguest idea of what I was doing, I put together a reading list that lets students keep each other occupied for an hour (with occasional input from me, of course). Even more amazingly, I have mastered that Professor skill, which is To Profess. I have heard this from various workshop speakers throughout the years, a comment to the tune of "I'm a professor, so I will just stand up here and speak at you for an hour if you don't stop me with questions". It turns out that I can do this, even on topics not directly related to my research. Every morning on that two-hour commute I refresh myself on the readings and put together some notes, and every afternoon I manage to talk for an hour on what the students should have got out of those readings. Some days I have no idea where this information comes from; it's just there. Surely that's a hallmark of a professor?
I could be wrong in thinking that my students are getting what they need/want out of the class, or otherwise finding it useful. There's enough "lecture" that they should not feel my complain from my own graduate seminars, which was that there was a lot of discussion and not much teaching going on. I haven't been able to bring myself to conduct a more formal survey of student opinion, partly because the course is only for 10 weeks, but mostly because of that blurry graduate student as teacher / graduate student and students line, which I'm wary of crossing. I managed to grade their first papers without problems, feeling myself fully in the role of Expert, or rather More Expert, but my inoculations against undergraduate student opinion have not transferred to graduate students.
We're on the downhill slope now, past the halfway mark for the course, and I'm almost sad. Actually I'm mostly sad, because I love teaching and probably won't do any more for the rest of the year; but only allowing myself to be almost sad, because I do need that time freed up to finish my dissertation, so I can teach more classes next year.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Prioritize The Dissertation, Failing To
I mentioned to one of the other graduate students in my lab that I had achieved my goal of applying to 10 jobs this semester, and he was suitably impressed. Not at the number - like me, he has no idea how many job applications would be reasonable - but at the fact that I was applying for jobs and finishing my dissertation at the same time. He didn't think he could do it.
I'm not really doing it. Applying for jobs, yes; making progress on my dissertation, not so much. It's not the job applications that have delayed my dissertation progress, so much, although checking the various job posting sites has become my new means of "productive" procrastination. Teaching, and mentoring my undergraduate students, and just dealing with the daily influx of emails and small requests, are taking up all my time. Even telling myself that I would dedicate one day a week to working on the dissertation has not motivated me enough; there are always things with nearer deadlines, or straightforward end-of-week burnout.
In my defense, I have written drafts of the first four chapters - my introduction, and the first three experiments. I have also been kept busy with the design and data collection of my fourth experiment, so it's not as though I've done nothing. I've just done very, very little since the semester began. I had planned to have my introduction ready for my advisor's approval by the end of the semester; that's not likely to happen.
The good news is that our department colloquium lacked a speaker last week, so it became a q&a on dissertation requirements. The one member of my committee who was present advanced his opinions on length of the dissertation, explicitly stating a preference for an introduction appropriate for a journal article, and definitely not in the style of our huge comprehensive exam. I am relieved that my procrastination does not come at as huge a cost as I thought (I'm only 20 pages behind, not 50). I might even be motivated enough to turn to that introduction and start revising. Or I might be one of those people who only gets to writing within a month of the due date. At least my job applications get out several months in advance.
I'm not really doing it. Applying for jobs, yes; making progress on my dissertation, not so much. It's not the job applications that have delayed my dissertation progress, so much, although checking the various job posting sites has become my new means of "productive" procrastination. Teaching, and mentoring my undergraduate students, and just dealing with the daily influx of emails and small requests, are taking up all my time. Even telling myself that I would dedicate one day a week to working on the dissertation has not motivated me enough; there are always things with nearer deadlines, or straightforward end-of-week burnout.
In my defense, I have written drafts of the first four chapters - my introduction, and the first three experiments. I have also been kept busy with the design and data collection of my fourth experiment, so it's not as though I've done nothing. I've just done very, very little since the semester began. I had planned to have my introduction ready for my advisor's approval by the end of the semester; that's not likely to happen.
The good news is that our department colloquium lacked a speaker last week, so it became a q&a on dissertation requirements. The one member of my committee who was present advanced his opinions on length of the dissertation, explicitly stating a preference for an introduction appropriate for a journal article, and definitely not in the style of our huge comprehensive exam. I am relieved that my procrastination does not come at as huge a cost as I thought (I'm only 20 pages behind, not 50). I might even be motivated enough to turn to that introduction and start revising. Or I might be one of those people who only gets to writing within a month of the due date. At least my job applications get out several months in advance.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Two Down, Two To Go?
In six hours, with 21 emails sent between 4 people in 2 countries/time-zones, and one last half-hour trying to figure out how to edit a TIFF on a Mac (eventually accomplished in 30 seconds in Paint, one last reason to love Windows), and the usual obsessing over journal formatting requirements, my second manuscript has been submitted.
Representing Experiment 2 of my dissertation, and one of those findings that convinced my advisor/committee that the research was worthwhile, it has been sent to a major journal (impact factor > 4) due to my advisor's philosophy of "aim high". Not quite as high as a lab-mate, who is submitting to Science, but high enough that I have no expectations.
The submission comes with perfect timing: Yesterday I finished collecting data for Experiment 3, and with the submission of Experiment 2 I can turn to all-new data analysis. Of course, I have just 2 weeks or less before learning whether the journal will even review our manuscript (they decline to review 60% of submissions), so I might not have much time to devote to the new data before the manuscript is back in my lap in need of a new journal and any relevant revisions. Still, it's reason enough to go out for dinner on a Friday night, even if I will be going on vacation on Monday.
Representing Experiment 2 of my dissertation, and one of those findings that convinced my advisor/committee that the research was worthwhile, it has been sent to a major journal (impact factor > 4) due to my advisor's philosophy of "aim high". Not quite as high as a lab-mate, who is submitting to Science, but high enough that I have no expectations.
The submission comes with perfect timing: Yesterday I finished collecting data for Experiment 3, and with the submission of Experiment 2 I can turn to all-new data analysis. Of course, I have just 2 weeks or less before learning whether the journal will even review our manuscript (they decline to review 60% of submissions), so I might not have much time to devote to the new data before the manuscript is back in my lap in need of a new journal and any relevant revisions. Still, it's reason enough to go out for dinner on a Friday night, even if I will be going on vacation on Monday.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Dissertation in Progress
I am working on my dissertation. Not even two full days of working on it (two days of copy-and-pasting old papers into dissertation chapters) can take away that thrill of finally being close to being finished. My dissertation committee approved my proposal with what I will happily call "minor" changes - taken care of by spending five hours programming on Sunday, and running a few extra analyses in the past two days. For the rest of the summer, it's just a matter of collecting data and reading the background literature.
I'm going to hate that reading, sooner rather than later, just as I did for my comps. But as long as I stay focused on what it will get me - the first chapter of my dissertation - I should be able to survive it.
I'm going to hate that reading, sooner rather than later, just as I did for my comps. But as long as I stay focused on what it will get me - the first chapter of my dissertation - I should be able to survive it.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The Dissertation Proposal Is In
There could be no more perfect timing than the posting of this PhD comic: "That's the test of a true Ph.D...To take 5 years of marginally related work and pretend you knew what you were doing the whole time". I read it just as I was sitting down to finally finish my dissertation proposal. This was definitely an exercise in pretending I meant to look at this theory all along, when what really happened was that I had randomly attached myself to some studies that produced interesting results while all my own research failed. There's nothing like trying to turn a completely unexpected result into a justified prediction.
The dissertation proposal process also fits in well with another PhD comic - take it out; put it in; take it out again. The proposal I turned in bears a striking similarity to the first draft I sent to my advisor - "striking" because at some point in the revisions process she had me substantially alter the last two experiments, and then had me change them back to what they used to be. The proposal is certainly better for her input and my rewriting, but I could have done without adding and then scrapping some experiment manipulations. It certainly doesn't bode well for my proposal meeting next week, when the rest of the committee will weigh in on how my proposed experiments could be "improved". At some level, I just want to tell them that I have a better idea than they do about what we're doing and what will work, and to let me do it. I don't think that would go over very well.
The dissertation proposal process also fits in well with another PhD comic - take it out; put it in; take it out again. The proposal I turned in bears a striking similarity to the first draft I sent to my advisor - "striking" because at some point in the revisions process she had me substantially alter the last two experiments, and then had me change them back to what they used to be. The proposal is certainly better for her input and my rewriting, but I could have done without adding and then scrapping some experiment manipulations. It certainly doesn't bode well for my proposal meeting next week, when the rest of the committee will weigh in on how my proposed experiments could be "improved". At some level, I just want to tell them that I have a better idea than they do about what we're doing and what will work, and to let me do it. I don't think that would go over very well.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
My First Conference - Posters
The entire reason behind attending My First Conference was to present some of my research. End-of-year reviews are coming up for the graduate students, and just once it would be nice to have publications to show for my work. One poster presented my master's thesis, which I have since abandoned; the other presented what has become the first two experiments of my dissertation.
The master's thesis poster came first. This was my first-ever poster presentation, so I was greatly relieved to have a lab mate on the board next to me. (Originally, I had been scheduled to present both posters simultaneously, one on either side of my lab mate, but I got them to change one of them. I didn't fancy rushing through her crowd every time someone came up to one or the other poster). I also had very low goals for this poster. I abandoned my master's thesis research as soon as I defended it; I'd spent so much time on it I couldn't bear to even think about the topic any more. My advisor convinced me to submit the work so she'd have some way to cite it. I took 20 handouts, and they were all gone by the end of the session; this is as much as I'd hoped for. The thesis contained an overwhelming series of maybe-results, so I wasn't at all surprised that people listened to the summary with few comments and fewer questions.
The highlight of the poster session was when my advisor arrived, children in tow. She didn't talk to us for long, as she was sidetracked by people she can't talk to any day of the week. But, she did hold court with her (or her kids') admirers right next to our posters, and my lab mate and I spent most of our downtime watching her 6-month-old son gum at her name tag. I considered starting up some bets on whether he would abandon the lower-left corner to nibble on any of the others, but before I could he tasted one and abandoned it quickly. We started discussing why, and eventually settled on a dislike of the string attached to that corner. This is the kind of serious science discussions we engage in at the last session of the first day of a huge conference.
The dissertation poster came last, in every sense: my last presentation in the last session of the last day. It was surprisingly well attended. I put the poster up 20 minutes before the session officially started, and was asked for a summary immediately; attendance was pretty constant for the first hour, as people who weren't going to any of the symposia were trying to gain their freedom from the conference. There was a half-hour lull in the middle, at which point my co-author and I took turns going to check out other posters. Then there was a steady stream of people again, as they started leaving symposia early. We kept going until they turned the lights out (well, half the lights) promptly as 6 p.m.
As this was my dissertation work, I was much more sensitive to comments. I didn't have any of the troubles explaining our measures to people that I have at department talks; either I've gotten better with practice, or our department is overly critical. At least one person thought our explanation for our results made perfect sense, and no one directly challenged it. To me, this is the perfect level of critique; they asked questions to help them understand and connect to other material, and they have to go away and think about it before they can come up with a strong rejoinder. Once again, I gave away all 20 handouts, and had 4 people request electronic copies besides.
Overall, this qualifies as unmitigated success. So much of a success, in fact, that I'm considering submitting something to the next relevant conference, in October. We shall see.
The master's thesis poster came first. This was my first-ever poster presentation, so I was greatly relieved to have a lab mate on the board next to me. (Originally, I had been scheduled to present both posters simultaneously, one on either side of my lab mate, but I got them to change one of them. I didn't fancy rushing through her crowd every time someone came up to one or the other poster). I also had very low goals for this poster. I abandoned my master's thesis research as soon as I defended it; I'd spent so much time on it I couldn't bear to even think about the topic any more. My advisor convinced me to submit the work so she'd have some way to cite it. I took 20 handouts, and they were all gone by the end of the session; this is as much as I'd hoped for. The thesis contained an overwhelming series of maybe-results, so I wasn't at all surprised that people listened to the summary with few comments and fewer questions.
The highlight of the poster session was when my advisor arrived, children in tow. She didn't talk to us for long, as she was sidetracked by people she can't talk to any day of the week. But, she did hold court with her (or her kids') admirers right next to our posters, and my lab mate and I spent most of our downtime watching her 6-month-old son gum at her name tag. I considered starting up some bets on whether he would abandon the lower-left corner to nibble on any of the others, but before I could he tasted one and abandoned it quickly. We started discussing why, and eventually settled on a dislike of the string attached to that corner. This is the kind of serious science discussions we engage in at the last session of the first day of a huge conference.
The dissertation poster came last, in every sense: my last presentation in the last session of the last day. It was surprisingly well attended. I put the poster up 20 minutes before the session officially started, and was asked for a summary immediately; attendance was pretty constant for the first hour, as people who weren't going to any of the symposia were trying to gain their freedom from the conference. There was a half-hour lull in the middle, at which point my co-author and I took turns going to check out other posters. Then there was a steady stream of people again, as they started leaving symposia early. We kept going until they turned the lights out (well, half the lights) promptly as 6 p.m.
As this was my dissertation work, I was much more sensitive to comments. I didn't have any of the troubles explaining our measures to people that I have at department talks; either I've gotten better with practice, or our department is overly critical. At least one person thought our explanation for our results made perfect sense, and no one directly challenged it. To me, this is the perfect level of critique; they asked questions to help them understand and connect to other material, and they have to go away and think about it before they can come up with a strong rejoinder. Once again, I gave away all 20 handouts, and had 4 people request electronic copies besides.
Overall, this qualifies as unmitigated success. So much of a success, in fact, that I'm considering submitting something to the next relevant conference, in October. We shall see.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The Dissertation Proposal
The talk I gave yesterday, that my advisor and I were both so proud of, was something of a precursor to my dissertation proposal. I presented on the only truly successful research of my graduate career, two experiments that are the first two experiments in my proposal. I also presented a conceptual summary of what I have planned for the next experiment.
The upside is that it was an incredibly successful talk. Two other members of my dissertation committee were there, asking questions and making suggestions, and both of them complimented me on the talk afterwards. I have a brief preview of what I might have to deal with in convincing them to approve my dissertation.
The downside is that there were lots of suggestions on what I should do instead of what I had planned to do, so I am revising my proposal, again. I consider myself extremely fortunate that two of the experiments have already been completed, so I only have to revamp two of the experiments at the fancy of my various committee members.
At least there's plenty of time to revise the proposal. One of my committee members could only be on my committee if the proposal were between May 7th and May 12th. This gives me a free pass to avoid the official "by [the end of] April" deadline, and several extra weeks to change the proposed experiments three or four time at my advisor's suggestion, before giving it to the committee so they can propose another three or four rounds of changes.
But I can't worry about all this now. Tomorrow marks the first day of the conference, in the "pre-conference" activities. Let four days of carefully controlled chaos commence...
The upside is that it was an incredibly successful talk. Two other members of my dissertation committee were there, asking questions and making suggestions, and both of them complimented me on the talk afterwards. I have a brief preview of what I might have to deal with in convincing them to approve my dissertation.
The downside is that there were lots of suggestions on what I should do instead of what I had planned to do, so I am revising my proposal, again. I consider myself extremely fortunate that two of the experiments have already been completed, so I only have to revamp two of the experiments at the fancy of my various committee members.
At least there's plenty of time to revise the proposal. One of my committee members could only be on my committee if the proposal were between May 7th and May 12th. This gives me a free pass to avoid the official "by [the end of] April" deadline, and several extra weeks to change the proposed experiments three or four time at my advisor's suggestion, before giving it to the committee so they can propose another three or four rounds of changes.
But I can't worry about all this now. Tomorrow marks the first day of the conference, in the "pre-conference" activities. Let four days of carefully controlled chaos commence...
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Begging the Outside Member
My life is too insular for this "outside committee member" nonsense. I have a hard enough time imagining two people from my own department who would be willing to write my reference/recommendation letters, so going outside the department is by definition approaching a (seemingly) random stranger and asking them to do me a favor. Perhaps it's just the impression my advisor gives of being completely unavailable to anyone outside my lab, but I don't have much hope for this process.
The first email request went out today. Now I will cringe every time I see that I have a new e-mail, wondering if it's the response. If/When the response does arrive, I will probably stare at the email in my inbox in mild terror, and avoid opening it for a day. This is exactly how I dealt with sending emails to prospective grad school mentors requesting information about their research. It's nice to know how much graduate school has changed me.
The first email request went out today. Now I will cringe every time I see that I have a new e-mail, wondering if it's the response. If/When the response does arrive, I will probably stare at the email in my inbox in mild terror, and avoid opening it for a day. This is exactly how I dealt with sending emails to prospective grad school mentors requesting information about their research. It's nice to know how much graduate school has changed me.
Monday, March 2, 2009
How To Write A Dissertation
Last Friday I attended a workshop on how to write the dissertation. It was very general, in attempts to reach a broad audience. The speaker was from the humanities, where dissertation research is primarily done by going to different libraries. Still, some of the general points are good to keep in mind.
- Choose your topic carefully. You will live with it for the rest of your life. It's possible to redefine yourself gradually over time, but as you go on the job market and prepare future research, your dissertation topic is going to determine your starting point, and thus your option.
- Choose your advisor carefully. Remember that after a year into your dissertation, you will know your topic better than your advisor, and your advisor's role will be general encouragement rather than specific content knowledge.
- Find out what dissertations look like. Look at one or two of the recent dissertations in your field, to get a feel for how long, how detailed, how close to a book they are.
- Do something for your dissertation every day. Even in the midst of a busy teaching schedule, you have to make time to read that one paper or chapter you know you have to read. Doing something every day, even if it's small, will keep you focused on your topic.
- Don't start writing too early. You have to have some idea of what you're going to say, or you're just wasting your time.
- Don't start writing too late. The dissertation is not going to write itself; even when you know what you want to say, the mechanics of writing will still take time.
- Don't start revising until you have a complete draft. You may find that sections you need to cut from an earlier chapter should just be moved to a later chapter. Having the big picture of what goes everywhere will help you figure out what needs to get tossed entirely and what just needs to be moved.
- Broadcast deadlines and keep them. Asking your advisor to clear time in a given week to review a chapter draft is a great motivating tool to stick to your timeline.
- Don't turn anything over to your advisor until you think you're done. Drafts where you know you need to work on a given paragraph or check for typos should not be handed out; the known problems will stick out to your advisor and you won't get feedback on the unknown problems.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
The Outside Member
Why are we required to have someone from a different department on our dissertation committee?
I decided it was to have someone on your committee unrelated to your field, so that you would keep your dissertation accessible to people outside the department. In that vein, I decided I should contact the one person from outside my department I've taken a class with, asking if he knew of anyone in his department who'd be interested in sitting on a committee in my topic.
My advisor seems to think the "outside" requirement is just a formality, and I should find someone with similar interests. This does not appear to be possible. I've cruised the faculty listings on various related departments, and it just so happens that my topic is really only investigated in my department. No outside expertise is really relevant. There was one person who looked like he was interested in the topic...but that turned out to be an old website from 2002; the person has moved on, and the department hasn't updated its website yet.
I'm thinking my plan will prevail. The only other student in my area who has a committee picked the outside member as the only person outside the department she'd taken a class with, which is more or less my plan (except I want to use that professor to network, instead of outright asking).
I decided it was to have someone on your committee unrelated to your field, so that you would keep your dissertation accessible to people outside the department. In that vein, I decided I should contact the one person from outside my department I've taken a class with, asking if he knew of anyone in his department who'd be interested in sitting on a committee in my topic.
My advisor seems to think the "outside" requirement is just a formality, and I should find someone with similar interests. This does not appear to be possible. I've cruised the faculty listings on various related departments, and it just so happens that my topic is really only investigated in my department. No outside expertise is really relevant. There was one person who looked like he was interested in the topic...but that turned out to be an old website from 2002; the person has moved on, and the department hasn't updated its website yet.
I'm thinking my plan will prevail. The only other student in my area who has a committee picked the outside member as the only person outside the department she'd taken a class with, which is more or less my plan (except I want to use that professor to network, instead of outright asking).
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
How Tough Can It Be?
Alice of ScienceWomen's post on advice for surviving the dissertation is having the opposite of intended effect on me. I felt quite on top of my dissertation up to a moment ago; there's a bunch of background reading, but I already survived that for my comps, and the rest of it is just do the experiment, write it up. Reminders to form support groups and pay close attention to signs of depression are making me apprehensive.
Friday, January 30, 2009
The Dissertation Starts
I have (finally) officially passed comps. My advisor added her third and final signature to the comps form in our meeting this afternoon, and I have sent it off to the administrators. I've just realized that I forgot to make a copy before doing this, but I haven't had any paperwork problems before, so I refuse to be paranoid about it.
I also have a dissertation topic. This came down to deciding between my comps paper and my published paper. With the comps topic, I have extensive theoretical background but not so much as a single experiment design. With the published topic, I have 2 experiments with significant results, but only the barest awareness of the theoretical background. With either topic, I have a piece of my dissertation completed; the difference is which piece, introduction or "meat". Given that I am nearing the end of my fourth year, with department expectations about graduating in 5 and graduate school rules about graduating in 6, my advisor and I agreed that the safer option is to have some "meat" ready. It's easy enough to conduct lit searches and write an introduction on a deadline, and it's ridiculously optimistic to try to collect data and find significant results on a deadline.
Now we move into the last stage of graduate school: Dissertation. I have the rest of the semester to get up to speed on the theoretical background of my topic and design a plausible series of experiments that can continue to test these issues. And to find at least one person outside my department I can ask to be on my committee; that may be the worst chore of the next few months.
I think the hardest part of the proposal will not be convincing my committee it's meaningful and possible, but convincing myself that my one successful line of research won't turn out to be a complete dud once I start trying to get results. These two studies were just additions to my "real" research, because they could be done easily enough. Will they still be successful once I'm actually depending on getting meaningful results?
I also have a dissertation topic. This came down to deciding between my comps paper and my published paper. With the comps topic, I have extensive theoretical background but not so much as a single experiment design. With the published topic, I have 2 experiments with significant results, but only the barest awareness of the theoretical background. With either topic, I have a piece of my dissertation completed; the difference is which piece, introduction or "meat". Given that I am nearing the end of my fourth year, with department expectations about graduating in 5 and graduate school rules about graduating in 6, my advisor and I agreed that the safer option is to have some "meat" ready. It's easy enough to conduct lit searches and write an introduction on a deadline, and it's ridiculously optimistic to try to collect data and find significant results on a deadline.
Now we move into the last stage of graduate school: Dissertation. I have the rest of the semester to get up to speed on the theoretical background of my topic and design a plausible series of experiments that can continue to test these issues. And to find at least one person outside my department I can ask to be on my committee; that may be the worst chore of the next few months.
I think the hardest part of the proposal will not be convincing my committee it's meaningful and possible, but convincing myself that my one successful line of research won't turn out to be a complete dud once I start trying to get results. These two studies were just additions to my "real" research, because they could be done easily enough. Will they still be successful once I'm actually depending on getting meaningful results?
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