New Direction

"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son" - Animal House


Ok, maybe that's a bit harsh for this situation, but frankly the fat and stupid parts were really at the core of how I had been feeling lately.  Since my wedding last June, my focus, or lack there of, has lead to some frustrating results: weight gain, poorly written dissertation, and work anxiety, among other things. I just let myself spiral and it wasn't pretty.
That's why the month of March was one of New Directions (Glee reference intended). I've re-arranged (accapella pun intended!) my priorities (in life and with the dissertation in general). I decided that making the graduation deadline this year was not worth sacrificing a well-written dissertation.

So, after some deep conversations with my supportive hubby, mom, and best girls, I've decided to make some very important shifts of focus. Instead of worrying about things that I cannot control, I am focusing on three and only three things - my husband, my dissertation and my health. These priorities seem obvious and frankly, now they are and I'm disappointed that I didn't see how much my priorities had shifted over the last 6 months until it was staring me in the face. I thought I was focusing really well... but as it turned out I was focusing on at least 10 different things. That's at least 7 too many. So, I narrowed it down to 3 - Hubby, Heath and Dissertation. All the other stuff must wait until AFTER the dissertation.

I've always hear about people who "take stock" of what is going on in their life, but I'd never done it. Now, I have and it feels good. It's hard to stick to my 3 priorities, well the husband part isn't because he's been #1 since the day I met him! In fact, I even went so far as to write down my priorities on a post-it affixed to my closet door. Each morning and night I'm reminded. It's helping, but doesn't make it easy. It's definitely a process, but I just have to push through and be disciplined.

I'd love to hear from you - Have you ever "taken stock" of your life? Do you know what your 3 priorities are?

Editing, editing, editing

I'm back! and I'm back with a new focus.

This might seem counter-intuitive since I'm making a commitment to writing on this blog more frequently. In fact, I'm thinking of not making this such a dissertation oriented blog, but seeing how it might evolve as something different... not sure what that might be, but I'm just going to again, let this organically evolve into what it will!

In a future post I'll get to the heart of my absence from here, how I needed to realign my priorities and frankly, what's been going on. But for now, I'm spending this gorgeous Saturday inside dissertating and making some progress.

Goal for today: finish editing chapter 6

As I'll delve into more detail later, one of my biggest issues is my writing and, perhaps more accurately, my editing. I'm GREAT at editing other people's work. Just ask my students who probably wished I would have been a little easier on them regarding their syntax and grammar. However, when it comes to my own work, I come up short.

I turned in a draft on my dissertation to my advisor on Feb 13th. It was a Valentine's Day miracle and I was so thrilled. I knew there would be edits, but I was convinced it was a solid draft. BOY WAS I WRONG... more details on that later. Anyway, I decided to take a week off of work and go up to Syracuse for a week-long/marathon writing workshop with my advisor. He was patient, if not always kind. But his guidance was beyond helpful and left me with a few tricks that I wanted to share here as I work towards my big goal of completing this damn thing!

• Read out loud as you edit

Now this can be tricky because this is what I did. I read it out loud and literally raced through each line. I didn't take the time to read out loud. So my advice on this age old editing trick: be slow, deliberate and digest what you're reading aloud. You might feel a fool, but it's a lot better than feeling like an idiot for writing something that you didn't mean.

• Make sure each sentence/paragraph flows from the one before

This is perhaps the most obvious thing a writer can do, but it's a common problem with writing a dissertation. There are so many things we want to say that it's hard to get a good flow going and make sure that everything is connected. In my case, I'm using different disciplines to explain a reality TV narrative device: social science theories and humanities. Therefore, going in between these two research paradigms gets muddled, unfocused and confusing. So, it's up to me to make sure it all connects. It's important to understand why and how all these various points I'm making are connected. Each sentence I edit I think (and often say aloud), "how does this connect to the previous sentence? what is the point of using this sentence? what does it achieve? how does it relate to my overall argument?" Then as I finish a paragraph I make sure it flows naturally into the next one. Then once all the sentences are written, I re-read them (aloud!) to make sure everything is connected. If it doesn't contribute to my argument or doesn't flow, I either fix it or get rid of it.

• "Get in, make your point, and get out!" BT (my advisor)

Wow, yeah, this is a major problem for me. As you might have noticed, I have a hard time "making a point." Making declarative sentences is not part of my writing style. I hem and haw, I use meaningless words to get to what I think I might maybe want to say. See? Making a point is easier to do when you don't have meaningless words in a sentence. I deleted lots and lots of "it's important to note" and "It could be said" and other flimsy phrases.

• Proof read carefully

 I am embarrassed to admit that I turned in a draft of my entire dissertation to my advisor with a ridiculous amount of typos! Example: manor of speaking. Really, CJ, manor? Like where a lord lives? I was humiliated during our writing workshop when my advisor got to some of my more ridiculous gaffes. I deserved the ridicule.  So, my lesson learned: when I think I'm done proofreading, I sleep on it and proofread again! Hopefully the 5th time's a charm.

So, any other tips out there for editing? I'm hoping today is as productive as I need it to be. I'm off to rock chapter 6.

Tapping into my motivation

A few weeks ago, I successfully turned in another chapter to my advisor. I thought for sure that would give me the momentum and confidence I need to plow through the next chapter, the next and the one after that. Sadly, my perceived ambition does not get along well with my actual ability to motivate myself.

Motivation to complete my dissertation is NOT the problem. There's a laundry list of things, personal and professional, that motivate me to complete my dissertation in the shortest amount of time possible. So, why can't I just sit down and pound on my keyboard for 10 hours and bang out some inspired work?

I have no idea.

If anyone has an answer, I'm open to it.

I do however think that no matter the motivation behind finishing, the amount of time you have to do your work, and then the pressure that mounts with each passing moment, there is just one thing holding me back - me. It's an odd feeling. How is it that I, the one with all the power, all the motivation, all the reason in the world to keep moving forward - how is it that I am still stuck?

Enough blogging, back to writing. Chapter 8, you'll be mine before the new year (or so I hope!)

"Graduate Students are the Worst"

A friend of mine from my PhD program had this posted to Facebook today - love it!
(originally from an article on the Huffington Post)

ahem, and if anyone can figure out how to make this embedded video not so huge, I'm open for suggestions :) 



Yeah, we really are the worst!

Going Organic

I finally finished chapter 7 of 10 chapters! What a feat! It felt so good and I hit the town with some friends and had myself a fabulous dinner. Then the next morning waking up from my Alaskan King Crab Legs and Raspberry Mojito hangover I started to edit. In the editing I noticed something. Chapter 7 just isn't working...

Realizing something I have poured your heart into isn't quite right is so hard to confess to myself. Fortunately (or unfortunately - depends on how you look at it), I've been here before. I've been at this point where I'm jubilant, proud of my progress only to be knocked down a peg or two by reality (pun intended).

Make no mistake, my dissertation will not be the next Iliad, or some other epic tome. My dissertation will be compete, it will be thoughtful and it will be mine. In order to accomplish those things a girl's got to have standards!

So, this past Sunday instead of melting down (the typical response when reality knocks me off my proverbial horse) I got back on and started to figure out what was so out of whack. To save you the boring stream of consciousness, the structure was all wrong. I wasn't taking care of answering the biggest questions using the structure I had in place. I was organizing my results all wrong.

The great news is, nothing is lost. No time is lost, no effort is lost. It is all part of this living organism. It might sound dangerously simple, but the hardest lesson to learn while writing your dissertation is that it is not static. It is not stuck in time or in an outline or even in a paradigm. The way I move from chapter to chapter seems to be redefined in more ways than I would have expected.

This is a tough realization because I am a planner. I like to know when I'm doing something, how it will get done and how long until I am finished. It's an obsession (as evidenced by the numerous time lines, schedules and dissertation calendars I've amassed in the last year).

So, today, I say with confidence that the dissertation is an organic being. It breaths, it changes forms and most importantly it has an essence (aka the thesis/research problem). When I divert from the center it shows. As it did so plainly in chapter 7. I would love to control exactly how much longer it will take to write this darned thing. But I can't. The best I can do is push through and try to enjoy the process as much as possible.

On that note - back to salvaging what I've written to fit into my new outline so I can stay on top of my new schedule - D'OH!! I'll never learn!

Happy Veteran's day!
Oh and back to my Bridget Jone Diary documentation:
Today: 0 hours on the D (Hoping to get at least 2 hours in tonight!)
Tomorrow: Hoping for 2.5 hours!

"When pressure exceeds your perceived ability to cope"

"When pressure exceeds your perceived ability to cope" - (Palmer & Cooper, 2010, p. 7)

The above quote is the definition of stress. It's like a light bulb went off in my head when I read these words. How in all of my schooling, and all my classes with psych PhD's had I never heard this? It's a brilliant concise way to describe stress and it's the reason I bought the book: 

How to deal with Stress by Drs Stephen Palmer and Cary Cooper

I haven't finished it yet, but I'm trying to get through the book so I can deal with my stress better. At this point it bottles up inside and I erupt like a crazy person. I owe it to myself, my husband and friends to get a grip, so I'm reading my first "self-help" book. It's by a couple of PhD's so I feel a little better about it. 

The best part of it though is the concept of control. Once I read that definition of stress I understood: I can cope with this dissertation... it will be mine, oh yes, it will.

So, as I continue to chart these rough waters (I love a water pun!), I'm happy to say that I'm getting closer to finishing my looming, anxiety-inducing chapter 7. This is the first of my results chapters - there are three total. There's a lot left to do, but I'm coping.

It's been a long time...

It's been an embarrassingly long LONG time since I worked on my dissertation and subsequently added to this little blog.

In the meantime, I got married, went on a fabulous honeymoon, started a new job with Nielsen doing research at a international CPG company, and moved to CT. (Not necessarily in that order!). Needless to say a lot has changed, but happily, the dissertation topic has not!

At the moment, I am procrastinating. I'm hitting a bit of a wall because, frankly, it has been ages since I have had to write intelligently and I am finding it intimidating. Some of what I wrote before April is really very good. I feel like what I write now is monosyllabic and uninspired. I'm frustrated because I worked so hard in graduate school to have style in my writing and now, out of practice, I feel I've lost it. I'm hoping it's something I can get back into, but for now, I need to plow through and not let it keep me paralyzed.

My husband (still so fun to say that!) is amazing. He keeps me focused and even gives me a little tough love when I start making excuses for lack of progress. I think this might be a way to keep me on task and on point since I never want to let him down. I have made a new timeline, shared it with my advisor and am trying like hell to keep to it. More on that later!

Thankfully, I have a partner in crime. A good friend of mine from my PhD program is in the same boat - same job, same point in the dissertation, same big move away from normalcy, and same desire to GET IT DONE.

So, inspiration of the day to keep me pushing along: if I complete my goal, I have a fabulous date night ahead!

Music inspiring today's outlook on the D:
Aaliyah feat. Timbaland - Try Again