On top of that, I have ideas, questions, and doubts that make the whole thing a bit harder to gauge. 50 to 80 percent of a dissertation, plus or minus a world of uncertainty, is what I have occupying my mind.
I have other things to do: walk the dog, answer emails, teach students, contribute to meetings, write a column, but in this, all I can think about is my dissertation. My beloved, hated dissertation. I think about how I’m going to finish it, what title it should have, how long the chapters should be, what tone I should strike in the conclusion, and who I should thank in the preface. I think about how on earth I’m going to be able to defend it. How on earth so many people before me have been able to defend their dissertations.
It’s just a dissertation, but working on it has taken over almost everything for me lately. It started with me not getting to write as much over the summer as I’d hoped and planned to. Now I’m living by a strict daily writing schedule until the dissertation is sent to publication. Maybe I’ve started to enter that bubble that all newly graduated PhDs mention as an inevitable phase of graduate school: that time when you get tunnel vision and work 16 hours a day to finish your project. When you’re caught between time pressure and performance anxiety and the only way out is to finish the biggest project you’ve ever undertaken.
I’m nowhere near 16 hours a day, but I’m working so intensely that I get a headache and start to feel sluggish. Is there enough oxygen inside this bubble? I breathe deeply. My chest feels heavy and my heart is pounding. I don’t know if it’s performance anxiety or claustrophobia. I clench my jaw and force out words I don’t want to stand by, straight into the dissertation that I’ll one day have to defend. I can edit again tomorrow.
I’m considering therapy, but I feel like I don’t have time to think about therapy. I’m considering a vacation; my saved vacation days are just sitting there waiting for me, but I feel like I don’t have time to think about them now. My Director of Doctoral Studies asks if I still have my good work routine. I answer that my work has spilled over into the whole day and my whole life. He mentions something about the importance of rest and physical activity for a sustainable work life, but I’m thinking about the messy section in chapter three. Should I move that section to chapter two? And how should it tie in with my reasoning in chapter four?
I love this part of the writing process. Going back and forth between the chapters, trying to weave all the thoughts and arguments together. Plugging holes, undoing missteps, weaving in a common thread so that it looks as if it’s been there since time immemorial. It feels so complex and yet so silly to be with this text, which is so big to me and so small in the world.
When I finally take a break from writing, I miss it. I mull over the chapter structure and wonder if I should adjust some of the terminology. That book I should have read long ago – isn’t it so that my whole project will be dismissed if I don’t take its contribution to the field into account? The conclusion in chapter five – is it really a reasonable conclusion? Is it trivially true or completely crazy, utterly false? How on earth am I supposed to defend this without shouting, “I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I regret everything!”
Even though all I want to do these days is edit back and forth over and over again, I dream of getting it all over with. Then I’ll walk the dog, answer my emails, and take that vacation. Then I’ll write new projects. It’ll be so much fun. I’m already getting the itch to write.
