What grad students mean when they say they're "working hard"

Check out this short clip from Big Bang Theory.

The sad thing is my husband and I could both relate to this!

Writing dreams and writing desperation

I read a literary agent's blog for fun. I daydream about a time when I can write just for fun and become a published author, writing about things that are completely unrelated to this dissertation.

I've wanted to be a writer since grade school (yup, I was that cool), and it wasn't until I got my first B in college in a creative writing class (taught by a teacher that absolutely appalled me) that I thought it might not happen. I promptly gave up my dreams of the next great American novel, eschewed the literature part of my English degree in favor of linguistics, and moved on. And in the process of grad school, discovered something: I really like writing non-fiction. I'm also probably better at writing it than fiction. I love learning, I really like sharing what I've learned, and I've learned how to do that clearly. Score!

How did I get on that tangent?

Anyway, the other day the agent wrote a post about not writing for money (which I don't plan to do), and I was surprised at how much it resonated with my dissertation writing. Of course I'm not making any money off it, but I am approaching it with an almost palpable sense of desperation. She notes:

I've found that when the writing is all mixed up in your mind with a financial need, especially a need that's fraught with anxiety, the writing suffers. Not only that, but the joy is diminished, because the goal has changed (maybe without your even knowing it) from "write a great book" to "pay off my MasterCard."

How do I relate to that?

I've found that when dissertating is all mixed up in your mind with finishing, especially when deadlines are extremely close, the writing suffers. Not only that, but the joy is diminished, because the goal has changed (maybe without your even knowing it) from "write a great dissertation" to "finish the stupid thing."

I imagine most grad students feel this type of desperation at some point or another, and it's a rare grad who is able to balance the desire for perfection (feeling that their dissertation must be their masterpiece) and the desire to move on (feeling that their dissertation is just another hurdle to pass). Most of the time, I'm afraid my desperation shines through to my committee, and I fear that this is a little insulting to them. It's time for me to remember that I can find joy in writing my dissertation.

So today's goal is to rediscover the joy in dissertating. There is some there: the satisfaction of a well-written paragraph, an eye-catching chart, a brilliant point. Today I am focusing on that.

Put the scissors down

I may be getting a little happy with the "cut" command. I have now deleted so much from my first chapter that it's a little over half its original length. I keep telling myself I'm just making it tighter? (Even though my adviser told me to pad it...)

Usually I can't bear to part with these major cuts. So to make it easier on myself, I made a second document, where I'm pasting everything that I cut, with a sentence above saying why I cut it. Just in case my adviser says "What about where you talked about X? Why'd you take that out?" Then I can just paste it right back in. Better safe than sorry!

Anything but that!

Wow, it's been a busy couple weeks and will continue to be. As I'm simultaneously writing my results draft and putting together my powerpoint for next week's talk*, I've come to the dismal tentative conclusion that I need to rework some of my statistics. These were the stats that I thought were finished and good to go. And yet, after being reminded of a different method this past weekend, I'm afraid it's more appropriate for my work. (In a nutshell, instead of testing F1 and F2 separately, as I did, testing the distance between them.) Right now I'm stalling and trying to think of reasons why I shouldn't have to do that. So far all I've got is that I won't have time to do it by next week, and if no one in the audience suggests it, maybe I can get away without it.

And yet... for all my wanting to hurry and get this done as quickly as possible, I just don't know if I can let myself get away with it. I don't want to sacrifice quality for speed. (Actually, I want to be okay with that, but I just can't.)

And while I'm complaining about statistics (as usual), do you mind if I whine that I'm still not sure about my other numbers? Even the professional statistician didn't actually answer my questions - he just suggested I present what I have and then try (yet another) test. I think this is actually a case where I will base my decisions on what the audience says. If they don't like what I did and suggest something else, I'll do it. If they can't think of a better way, I'll probably say forget it.

If I could go back to Undergraduate Me and give her one piece of advice, it would be to take as many statistics classes and psychology research methods classes as possible. (Actually, I'd probably talk to Undergraduate Me about a few other things as well, but those are unrelated to linguistics.)


* I've found giving presentations on your work as it's in progress to be a helpful way to get a handle on what you're doing. For example, in order to create my presentation, I need to write the conclusions for these sections (something I've put off doing). In figuring out what the most important things to say are, my presentation and my written draft inform each other.

Break writing

Let's be honest - work never happens over a break. No matter how far you lug your books, no matter how good your intentions, no matter if you even do bust it out while sitting at your parents' kitchen table, you are not going to be productive. I've found that it's liberating to just accept this and plan accordingly.

So I don't know why I went ahead and signed up for this Break Writing listserv. Probably because I'll do anything to finish this dissertation faster. Oh, yeah, and to make it better, too.

So far, their tips have actually been good. Nothing I didn't know already, but good reminders: better to write for 15 minutes a day than attempt 8 hours in one day, your first draft is going to be crappy, etc. I just wish that instead of sending me these reminders during my break, when I am in and out of town and not able to implement this, they would send it during the actual school year!

Poster guidelines

LSA is in just over two weeks, which means I need to be getting down to business with my poster. They have a page with all kinds of guidelines about how to create a great poster - it's super helpful! While some of it is specific to the conference, most of it is just general advice that works for any academic posters.

Their two most helpful hints for me:

Font sizes

"The title should be legible from at least 20 feet away. The headings and text should be legible to someone standing 5-6 feet away. This means selecting the following (general) font sizes:
Title (first line(s)): 80-120 (bold, can be all-caps, but not name(s) of author(s))
Title (affiliation, contact info): 60-80 (bold)
Headings: 50-70 (bold, can be all-caps)
Text: 24-36 (certainly no smaller than 16)
Acknowledgements: 18-28
References: 18-28"

Poster spacing proportions

"Recommended Proportions: 20-30% text, 40% graphics/visual aids, and 30-40% empty space."

Yes, you basically know all the stuff they mention, but it's so nice to have the specifics just given to you. Then you don't have to think about them, and are free to think about more important stuff, like how to make your results look more significant.

Super model

It is so helpful for me to have another dissertation to reference as I'm putting mine together. Really, having a model is so valuable. The closer it is to your topic, the better. It gives you a place to go when all the little questions crop up - the ones that are too inconsequential to bother asking your professor about, but somehow manage to suck up all your time. Questions like "How many levels of headings should I go with, and what happens when I want one more than that?" and "How should I start out a chapter?" and "Can I at least have a ballpark figure of how long this chapter should be?"

In fact, I think having 2 models to reference is even better, because then you aren't basing your dissertation on the whim of some other grad student - you can base your work on similarities, with the assumption that that's how it's done. (I wouldn't bother with too many more than that, because then it'll just become another time-sucker.)

Another hint: check out the committee members that signed off on your model dissertation. In an ideal world, they'll be (a) other researchers in your field that you respect and/or (b) people from your own committee.

Visual aids are the best

Especially when you do them right.

When I was compiling my results, I basically just copy/pasted from the SPSS output. I ended up with charts like the one below.

Yes, it was very confusing and I had to include an elaborate key below it - but I didn't know how to change the graphs within the program, and didn't really think much more about it. Don't those programs know best, anyway? Won't they always give me the perfect output?

No?

Thankfully my professor suggested I revise my plot, I took the time necessary to create it, and now I have this.

Much better! I can actually learn from this one!

It's so beautiful

I just discovered the ease with which you can create a Table of Contents on Word. I have this document that I've used headings for. All I did was go up to the quick toolbar (or whatever that thing across the top is - the options below the real toolbar), click "Document Elements," click "Table of Contents," choose my style and voila!


An outline of my first chapter! Which needs work. But at least seeing the outline of it was easy peasy!

This is a test. This is only a test.

Is it possible for me to turn off the internet for the next six hours? To not give in to the temptation to turn the wireless back on? Honestly, probably not. But I'm going to give it a try. Starting now, at 10:20 in the morning. If I can make it to 4:00 without going online, I will do a victory dance that involves jumping around the room, walking like an Egyptian, and dancing like Carlton Banks. I will also have gotten a lot of work done. Here we go!


Update: I MADE IT!! Okay, I might've turned on the internet for less than a minute at lunchtime to check my email. And I might've stopped the clock a half hour before my 6 hours were up. But I'm still considering this a success!

Chop chop

Today I switched my focus to chapter revising. It was so refreshing! I thought I preferred doing the objective tasks, but that had become so tedious that it was nice to step back and look at the big picture again.

I'm looking particularly at my pilot studies and hypotheses today. I had written all this up for my original prospectus, but of course am unhappy now with how that looks. I've realized that my second pilot study is only marginally related to my present research and the conclusions actually prompt me to look at entirely different things. So chop chop! and it's gone. Now I just have one pilot study that is clearly relevant and impacts my current methodology. Much nicer.

I should note that I am not usually able to delete large chunks of what I have previously written. It's a psychological hangup of sorts. I want to hang on to it, just in case, and do so by leaving it in and just putting a line through it or changing font color or some other method. However, after awhile that gets really cluttered and you're so distracted by thinking whether or not you should include that stuff that you can't move forward. So I have taken to just creating a new document every time I plan to do some major revision, making sure to include the date. That way, I can always go back and review what I've chopped. This really frees me from the fear of deleting something brilliant. And most of the time, it wasn't brilliant and I don't miss it at all.

"So what do I do now??"

I try to write a tiny bit each day about what I've done that day. Usually I just jot down my thoughts as I'm going through things, so that I can look back and remember why I did something a certain way. Other times I think this might be the start of something brilliant, so I'd better write it down so I don't forget it! Sometimes I just write anything down so that I can pretend I actually did something that day. And finally, many times I just write down my complaints.

Yesterday's note ended with a melodramatic "So what do I do now??"

This morning Soothing Encouraging Me responded to Freaked Out Me.

"What you do now is breathe and reevaluate. Go through and think again about what questions you want your data to answer. Then take a break and work on something else, like writing a different chapter. Then jump back to where you were having difficulties with renewed vigor! You are smarter than this dissertation! You will prevail!"

And yes, I actually wrote that down.

I'm blue, da ba dee da ba die

(Confession: I had to google that title, because I wasn't sure of the order of the das and dees and so on. Now that I've got it down, I am sure it will stay in my head for a minimum of six hours.)

This afternoon was surprisingly productive! I worked on Chapter 2, specifically my pilot studies. This is still rather easy going, as I'm just copy/pasting from the prospectus and then changing. But hey, that was the goal of the prospectus - to have as much written as possible so that the dissertation writing could be that much easier! So no need to feel bad that I wasn't slaving over writing this stuff from scratch!

I can be a bit indecisive sometimes, and when it comes to what I've written, often I'll want to change something but not be sure exactly how yet. But I don't want to just delete what's already there - that's the basis for what needs to be changed, and I don't want it to just disappear! So I change the font to blue. Anyone looking at these drafts on my computer would be shocked at how much text is in blue. Sometimes when I have too much blue, I'll start using both red and blue - red for more superficial changes and blue for big content changes. About the time I need to start adding a third color (which varies between green and purple and pink), I need to think about just starting over. After awhile, it gets a bit hard to read! (In fact, I was going to change all the font colors on here to demonstrate, but I was afraid I'd give both you and me ADD.) Anyway, that's the method that works for me. I know some people like to use the comments feature, and others will highlight. Let me tell you - the highlighting I save for the REALLY important changes.

Right now, the pages are just black and blue. Which is appropriate, as they're just a little beat up and bruised, but they should pull through okay.