Aeolus: Keeper of the Holidays

‘The holidays’ is one of life’s greatest excuses. From November through January, we are required to do nothing but eat cookies and wait on line at the mall. Not only that, but it is permissible for stress levels at this time to be equivalent to or in excess of regular daily activities. All this for the sake of a little good cheer.
As Aeolus the keeper of winds blew Odysseus and his crew off track, the holidays can make a person feel they’ve forgotten exactly who they are, what they are supposed to be doing in life, and why people keep exchanging fruit cake even though nobody really likes it. So as you are playing a marathon game of charades with your little nieces and nephews, you’re wishing you were writing the intro paragraph to your next chapter. And as you press ‘send’ on an email to your advisor detailing your ‘progress’ over the past two weeks, you are wondering if you’ll ever hear from him again. So too as you watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ for the 43rd time, you begin to wonder when the deadline was for that conference you wanted to submit to next fall. These are all results of the holidays’ own Aeolus that parses out treats, guilt and detours so quick and so seductively that rational thought becomes something you remember doing last spring.
Once I remember making the point at an elementary school faculty meeting, “Well, we shouldn’t even plan to get through any chapters this month (December), because everybody knows no real work gets done until after the first of the year.” I was met with pleading looks that said, ‘take me with you,’ but it was all quickly followed by regular lesson planning. No one could acknowledge the truth. So what did get done that December? Someone brought in very delicious cupcakes, I couldn’t put a piece of paper down on a surface without being covered in glitter, the average classroom decibel level rose by 40%, but lessons? learning? Memory retention? NOTHING.
My point is to consider any work you’ve managed to squeeze in between turkey eating and champagne drinking as creative icing on the proverbial gingerbread man, and let’s move onto January. January when we meet the Laestrygonians.

Lotus eaters….

If we continue our month-by-month Odyssey, October was the time of the Lotus Eaters. Once ingested, the lotus made Odysseus’ crew lazily forget their plans for escaping the island or for returning home. I imagine this was not an unpleasant state; more of a slow motioned drugged-out pause in an otherwise tumultuous adventure.

What can we learn from O’s encounter with those crazy vegetarians? Perhaps that creativity and forward movement of any kind deserves, thrives on, and even requires breaks in effort. How many times have you found yourself at the local watering hole/coffee establishment knee deep in the green fairy, well established in the throws of an hours long conversation about Peanuts vs. Calvin and Hobbes, how sex education should really be taught, or what is the perfect candy bar and why? Did guilt ensue? Was such an encounter quickly labeled a waste of time? Were there subsequent bouts of self flagellation? Before throwing the baby out with the bathwater, let’s take stock. The graduate school experience is not just a means to an end; it is a rare time in life where one can find large groups of like minded people who enjoy sitting around and talking with absolutely no purpose in mind.

To believe that the graduate school experience is indeed a journey, is to take solace in Odysseus’ seeming departures from his goal. After all, not all of his adventures involved doing battle against an enemy; showdown’s with one’s advisor, deadlines, conferences, etc. etc. Several of O’s pit stops were, to some degree at least, pleasant, and offered a time to reflect, gather energy, and, in the parlance of today’s psychology, process.

So let me be the first to recommend grabbing your three best buds and hightailing it to the nearest subterranean rendez-vous and hanging out until your vocal chords retire. This may not get your dissertation written any faster, but it is guaranteed to make your life longer, or, at the very least, better.

Last September Sigh

The parallels between Odysseus’ struggles and the day-to-day travails of the life of the graduate student are sometimes depressing. Odysseus’ journey home spanned nineteen years, and he was oft referred to as the most unfortunate man who ever lived. But since this is the last entry of September and the end of September feels like a kind of collective ‘Sunday Night Blues,’ and this last day of September is in fact Sunday, it may be the right time to get a little depressing. The end of the beginning
is upon us.
So this end, as all ends do, marks a beginning of something else. The beginning of the journey proper. A beginning filled with more hang-ups, problems, deadlines, delays, tears, sweat, and calamity than any of us wish to think about, but, as the great Odysseus said, “For in my day I have had many bitter and shattering experiences in war and on the stormy seas. So let this new disaster come. It only makes one more.”

Navigating the choppy sea that is your relationship with your advisor

Sometimes real, always legendary, is the advisor who seems to pump out Ph.D.’s like little baby bunnies. I have talked to students who’ve had the pleasure to work with an advisor like this, but like a child born into royalty, they cannot fully appreciate their good fortune having had no other situation for comparison. However the drawbacks of full throttle advisors can be as high as the price of princedom, or so I’ve heard. But let’s consider the options:

Here are a few advisoral rubrics I have heard about and/or participated in:

1. At the beginning of the semester, advisor and student meet to discuss the game plan. By the end of the meeting, the advisor has directed the student towards an avenue of research/writing that she will accomplish over the course of the semester. The student, having a clear idea of the doable and approved plan, goes forth and accomplishes things. At the end of the semester, advisor and student meet again and the advisor makes suggestions about revisions as well as help about future work. The beginning of the next semester starts this cycle over again until the dissertation is complete.

The upside: The system works.
The downside: The system is dependent upon an advisor who is capable of steering a student towards a researchable path in one meeting, and perhaps is therefore dependent upon a certain type of research. (e.g. large scale quantitative analysis)

2. An advisor with a large scope of work assigns students to different areas of her research. The advisor acts as overseer, and because she has a vested interest in the work, being that it is her work too, papers get written in a timely fashion.

The upside: The system works much of the time.
The downside: An advisor who has many different projects tends to backburner one or the other at any given time for the sake of sanity and deadline pressures. Consequently, if your study is the one getting back-burnered—you’re out of luck! Also, there is a very high risk of lack of student satisfaction with the topic assigned to her.

3. A student is tasked with choosing and formalizing a researchable idea. The advisor acts as a sounding board during this process. But, since choosing and formalizing a researchable, innovative, interesting, and motivating idea is perhaps the most daunting prospect in a young yet not getting any younger student’s life, the scope of time required to choose and formalize is enormous. Because of the time needed and the lack of self-interest to the advisor, this period, before word one is even a gleam in the eye of the A.B.D.er, can be enormous and frustrating.

The upside: The student has control over her topic, and can learn what’s really required in generating researchable ideas.

The downside: The Hamlet effect.

In my observational experience, rubrics 1 and 2 have the quickest rates of graduation. Could it be possible to create an advisoral experience with your current advisor that mimics either one of these strategies in the event that your path is closer to number 3? Or are there as many different advisor/advisee dynamics as there are ways to re-name cognition?

Here’s A.B.D. girl’s suggestions on dealing with a rubric 3 advisor situation for you to read, comment on, add to, edit, forget, chant to, cook with, or tape inside your trapper keeper.

1. Be clear about exactly what you want from your advisor and state your need in the email where you suggest a meeting.
2. Save your meetings for broad scale questions; leave smaller details to other friends or professors. My general theory about editing is that it roughly breaks down to issues of TOPIC/THESIS, STRUCTURE, DETAILS. I think one of the reasons rubric 1 works so well is that it hinges on the idea that you meet with your advisor to talk about topic/thesis related points and then you meet again much later to talk about structure. It doesn’t attempt to combine functional editing features.
3. If you’re having trouble conveying your topic/thesis and you’re hoping to have a meeting where your advisor helps you mold your rudimentary thoughts into a doable proposal, have a firm grip on the following questions: what are you interested in? what nags at you about that topic? what would you propose to do if the constraints of time and space were not at play? If you have solid answers to those questions, your advisor should be able to guide you. If your answers to those questions unhinge you, for instance if they suggest that you are better suited for a different department altogether, (I have experience in this and experience in NOT heading the call), my unsolicited suggestion would be to take some time, meditate on your desire and on what you really want to do. Sounds trite? Perhaps, but had I done this, I might have ‘saved’ myself several years of frustrating merry-go-rounding. Learn from me, fellow A.B.D.er!!!!
4. Leave your meeting with a specific action plan. And don’t be fooled by something that sounds like an action plan but is actually a nebulous invitation to go to the library and read some more stuff.

Oh where, oh where has my advisor gone?

Oh where, oh where has my advisor gone?
Oh where, oh where can he be?
With his vacant office and his absent emails,
Oh where, oh where can he be?

What’s your first response to rejection? Blaming yourself? Lashing out with anger? Reactionary hopelessness? Most likely you’ve had ample opportunity to hone how you cope with unreturned phone calls and emails in your dealings with your advisor.
Day 1: Having just sent a fresh copy of a draft of something to your advisor, you relax for a bit thinking the editorial ball is now in his court
Day 3: No acknowledgment of email yet. Perhaps it was a web-related slip up. Re-send email with attachment of draft of something
Day 4: Still no acknowledgement of email. No need to over think this. Re-send email with attachment of something and something embedded directly in the text of the email.
Day 7: It’s been a week. @#*&
Day 10: Although it’s not your style, you decide to leave a message on his voice mail.
Day 11: Receive short email back with apologies due to extreme busyness on his part.
Since there is no estimated time of end of said extreme busyness, and no proposed meeting, you begin to get a bit peeved.
Day 12: You send a polite yet firm email stating your desire to meet and talk about the something you sent.
Day 13: You receive an email back asking if the following week is ok, and if you could please re-send your something, he seems to have misplaced it due to aforementioned extreme busyness.

Thus four weeks later you have a tentative meeting scheduled with your advisor and have made no new progress on the something you sent. Although not tested by A.B.D. girl herself, I wonder if anyone has managed a non-hostile yet aggressive tactic that has worked with ‘the advisor who ignores you problem’? Really there are two problems associated with this condition:

A) You have an advisor who is ignoring you.
B) You are not getting any new work done during the rebuffed period because of a ‘what’s the point?” philosophy.

What always kept me from getting any new work done during these down periods were the times when nearly all work I had done was scrapped after a particularly merciless meeting. Sensibly, my thinking was to minimize unnecessary work, so my plan was always to see my advisor at as short intervals as possible. However, I’ve found that not only does this minimize unnecessary work, but it minimizes all work, and so delays forward movement.

I have developed a purely theoretical notion. If an A.B.D.er continued to work on her something during advisor down times, the something being worked on might take more shape, be more solid, make more sense to the A.B.D.er, and therefore be more able to withstand the criticism of a previously awol advisor. The theory behind my theoretical notion is that one’s advisor is largely just (pardon the expression) talking out of his ass during a meeting. Let me explain. He probably read over the something you sent once and made a few hurried notes all the while being more consumed by his own projects. During the meeting, he asks you questions to orient himself to your paper. Because he is your advisor, these questions guide your discussion and are volleyed back and forth between you as if they are necessarily relevant when they may in fact be tangential or down right unrelated to your topic. You leave the meeting feeling like you’re trying to put together a completely different puzzle than the one you intended. In other words, your advisor’s comments may not only be unhelpful but may actually be getting in your way.

I realize this is a hard nut to crack. First of all, how could I be right? Your advisor is one of the key players in the pass/don’t pass dichotomy that are the orals. Wouldn’t he be the one to tell you what a good idea is? My answer to that: Maybe not. I have no doubt that your advisor is capable of writing thought provoking papers and has a dynamic speaking style. I also have no reservations in believing that your advisor is able to spot sub-adequate work when he sees it, and to call it out as such. What I am questioning is his ability to help guide an A.B.D.er from 1,000 jigsaw pieces on the table to one completed puzzle. It is my belief that there may be many advisors who would be best suited looking at something that is finished, solid work, and then offering a few comments here and there.

I mean, remember when you used to write papers? All be yourself? And then get a grade? And usually, not to call you a teacher’s pet, but those grades were in the A range? Although I have rolled my eyes at this next statement when it has been said outright to me and even when it has been implied, but, ‘what’s the big deal about the dissertation?’ Subtext: You don’t really need an advisor. You could write a dissertation on your own, and moreover, you could more easily write a dissertation on your own.

Have I crossed a line from passionate theoretician to out-of-her-gourd fundamentalist? Who would put this idea to the test? Perhaps there is a middle ground. Maybe one brave A.B.D.er might try lessening her advisor dependence while increasing her forward movement and let us know how she fares.

Overkill: Antidote to procrastination or just too much killing?

Don’t let anybody tell you different, procrastination has its up side. Actually, it has several. One of the benefits to procrastinating on writing your dissertation is that you could end up doing lots of other productive things with your time.

For instance, you may be teaching a class. You may be working a regular job in a field related to your area of research. You may be spending a lot of time at the office. You may be editing your summer vacation videos to post on youtube. You may be engaged in a host of other goal-oriented activities.

I attribute all of this to the Sacking of September syndrome. Naturally speaking, September is a time of harvest, things coming to fruition, bounty. In our Odyssey parallel life, September is related to reckless looting and pillaging. The common denominator here is energy. You are now stupid with energy even if you feel like you’re as sluggish as the ratings are for 30 Roc and as jaded as Alec Baldwin is about marriage. The point is Alec Baldwin is an amazing talent, 30 Roc is a hilarious and well-written show, and you are out there kickin’-ass!

It is my belief that slow and steady does not always win the race. Sometimes caffeine soaked benders get the job done. Sometimes papers are in fact written the week-end before they are due. The sad truth, which is related to the discordance of the academic schedule with the natural swing of things, is that the only times you may have ever experienced these wild bursts of work is at the end of the semester when everything needs to be handed in somewhere.

But September, in all its crazy glory, is the best time to dig in for a weekend of non-stop writing. You may be saying, ‘that A.B.D. girl is crazy talking!’ or you may be saying, “the S.O.S. syndrome has theoretical validity but has no empirical support;’ either way sit yourself down and cozy up for a September shaggy dog story:

The time—9:09 am. The place—in front of a very old, very slow, very annoying computer. I had just been told that the fact that I had never given a paper at a conference severely obliterated my chances of leading a nice normal life in academia. Lucky for me, it was September. Stoically I waited for the results from the broadest, vaguest, most unrealistic internet key-word search for conferences ever attempted. Dumb luck led me to a new organization that was practically begging for papers. Through sleight of hand I knew I could relate my topic to the goals of the organization and wind up getting to present a paper to an actual audience. All was falling into place.
But, wait, what’s this? The deadline for papers? Did I miss it? I rushed to the calendar. Initially so confused by all the numbers, I forgot what week it was. Truth will out however. The deadline: three days away!!!
Times like these call for pacing. Pacing and an iced-tea. Pacing, an iced-tea and a black and white cookie. “Y’know, I thought,” already done with the chocolate part of the black and white cookie (which, by the way is the only good part) “Screw it. I can’t make the deadline, I’ll just find another conference.”
I ate the white part of the cookie. I shouldn’t have bothered eating the white part of the cookie. “Fine. I’ll submit to this stupid thing.”
At which point I proceeded not to leave my apartment for three days. I lived on ramen noodles, called friends on breaks I’d give myself from time to time and freaked them out because I sounded like I was on cocaine, and spread papers and notes all over the floor and every other surface until my proposal was finished.
I clicked ‘send’ four hours before the due time.

The great thing about this three day frenzy was that it was the beginning of the year and so there was no other paper build up or deadlines I was dealing with at the same time and, at the end of it, I could clean up and carry on with my life. It was like a freak storm that tears up one house and plops in an entirely different place, but with no other damage.

Could this be the time for your freak storm?

Administration Procrastination

Let’s face it—there’s more to a grad student’s life than procrastinating on writing a dissertation. There’s a world of opportunity of boring administrative crap to put off doing as well! September is when student status forms need to be filed, student loans need to be expedited, the IRB needs to pandered to, your committee lined up, and all sorts of conferences and jobs need to be researched. It is enough to daunt even the most stout hearted among us.

The head games associated with life’s administrative challenges are a-plenty, but here are three:

A) forms and deadlines tend to be ignored by the creative mind until the deadline has past
B) the fear that the deadline has already past is enough to generate a negative attitude which is a feeding ground for further procrastination
C) a vicious circle is created until the grad student is filled with such needless shame about all administrative issues that the mere mention of a ‘form’ is enough to induce panic

Here is where the Check-Offer within you must sally forth and save the day. Because although boring and fraught with many dumb, infuriating, idiotic, time-wasting, bureaucratic, mind numbing nightmares; all manner of administrative brew-ha-ha is within the scope of your capability. Not only that, but the bulk of all your administrative non-sense can probably be completed in 2 days.

Here’s a method to try for knocking out all your personal administration in one block of time:

1. Make peace with the fact that you’re not going to get any work done on your dissertation for the next week.
2. Decide what administrative stuff needs doing and make a list.
3. Try to make the list as specific as possible and list each specific as a separate item.
4. Make a box by each item on your list so that you can put a BIG check in the box when you’ve finished the item. (Don’t ask me why but it feels better to have a space to make the check rather than to just put a check mark next to your item.)
5. Do not get bogged down in an elaborate spread sheet project for making said list.
6. Now you are ready to do a little acting exercise. Pretend you are a personal assistant hired for a few days to get these tasks done. Your boss has given you a list, and you have a couple of days work to do. These are no longer forms that relate directly to your life and impact the very stability of your future, no, these are the bread and butter of a gal/guy Friday. And since you’re a professional assistant, any problems you run into are just part of the work week—maybe a bit of a yawn but nothing some Pepsi and a bag of pretzels can’t cure. For your new job as personal assistant, you need to begin work at a reasonable hour, take a lunch break, and make a plan for how you’re going to attack the rest of the work you have to do for the next day.
7. Now that you’re finished, you can present the work you’ve done to your stress case of a boss. She will now negotiate your salary. Does this feel like a rewards system you’ve used on yourself many times, but to luke-warm effect? This may be because you designed the reward too early in the game. Remember, even though these techniques center on developing a schizophrenic-like personality split; you really are still you. So if you go into a task saying that you’ll reward yourself with a massage at the end of it, you can easily just go and get the massage. However, if you plan your reward at the completion of your task, you can have a fun and surprising conversation with yourself at the end.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT YOU: Ma’am, I worked hard for the past couple of days. I think I deserve a bubble bath, and a night’s worth of watching Saved by the Bell. Also, cheez-doodles for dinner, a new pair of shoes, I can call an ex I said I would never call again, and a pony ride…with face painting, and maybe some flowers, and The Lord of the Rings boxed set…

(you may find that your inner personal assistant is a lot pushier than you would have assumed)

BOSS YOU: Well, you’re right, you should be proud of all this work you just did! And in such a timely fashion! Spot on!

(you may be surprised by how uptight sounding your inner boss is)

BOSS YOU: But I think that some of those things you mentioned are a little bit…

P.A.Y.: Fun?

B.Y.: No….

P.A.Y.: Cool sounding?

B.Y. Uh-uh…

P.A.Y.: Reasonable?

B.Y.: No, listen, what I was going to say is that those demands are entirely UN-reasonable. How about the bubble bath and some flowers?

P.A.Y.: Throw in the Saved by the Bell and you’ve got a deal.

(you’re inner boss agrees because she knows you were going to do that any way)

And there you have it— a finished pile of administrative B.S. and a relaxing time of it to boot.

The real good news is that soon this will all be behind you. I mean, have you ever known a professor who knows or cares about administrative protocol??? This is because professors don’t deal with any administrative stuff. And that may be all the motivation you need my friend. Well, that, and the lure of tenure…

Now that I have all this energy, what do I do?

So you’re writing your 7-10 page paper as previously advised, or maybe you’re saying—screw it, I’m writing this dissertation my way or the highway. In either case you’re probably wanting to get some serious work done while the iron is still hot, so to speak. But, it’s been so long since I’ve made any real progress! I’ve forgotten how…
Here are some favorite ways to get back in the writing groove:

The Work Group—

This is a popular one I believe because of how effective exam study groups can be and because of the accountability other people tend to bring to one’s own laziness. The idea is that a small group decides to get together at specific times for the sole purpose of doing solitary work. In my experience, the effectiveness of groups like this is a delicate, delicate affair rooted in the science of group dynamics. As we know from physics, one tiny suggestion of a break for Starbucks, or quiet reminder that the possibility of rain my be a serious travel risk, can be enough of a catalyst to completely halt a body in motion. The other pitfall of groups like this is the tendency to compare one’s rate of work to one’s friend sitting with you. If you’re style tends toward staring off into space for 45 minutes before getting word one on paper, this may not be the format for you. I think that these kinds of meetings are best when used to keep from flying off into isolation panic as opposed to the main way you get work done. For this reason I think a once a week meeting to get together and do a little work and remind yourself that other people are in the same boat, is probably as much as you need.

The Little Bit Every Day Method—

Here’s a plan that I really commend for its enthusiasm. How many times have I said to myself, “I’ll just do a very do-able hour a day” Not only have I said this myself, but I’ve read this advice in almost every book about writing I’ve ever read. If you can do this, it is a superior method. Or so I’m told. I’ve never been able to because the rebel part of my backstabbing brain always chimes in with, “Don’t tell me what to do!” Here’s a variation on this theme that has worked for me in the past for writing and even for exercise. 1. Make a vague plan for when you might get work done. As vague as say, after lunch. 2. If you feel like you could possibly get some work done at that time, say to yourself, “I’ll just sit down and see what happens. 3. In these cases either you will get something done, or it just won’t happen. Either way, don’t sweat it. It was just one day.
I’ve found that if I approach this method with a large does of self forgiveness, I’ll wind up ‘just sitting down and seeing what happens’ more often than I thought I might have based on my track record.

The Tiny Project—

This is not so much a method for sitting down to get work done as it is a strategy for working once one has sat down. When you sit down, have a tiny plan of what you’re going to do. Mind you, this is not the ‘vague plan’ mentioned in the “Little Bit Every Day Method.” This is a real plan of what you’re going to work on in that moment—that is ridiculously tiny. Let’s say you have the theoretical background of your dissertation to write. That’s admittedly a huge project. So to smallify it, take one strand, even if you don’t know what all of the strands are yet you still have one small fragment of an idea of a direction to go. That small fragment of an idea of a direction has a literature associated with it. Go to the library and get those books and articles. That is a tiny project.

The Bad Writing Psych Out—

Actual Writing. Let’s face it, nobody wants to do it, but at some point you will write an entire dissertation. Here’s a fact: editing is much easier to do than writing. First of all, you can always get your friends to help you edit. Secondly, editing involves less fear than writing because you’re not staring at blankness which reminds the mind of eternity which is never a good thing. So the point is, you can and should write badly and just keep that bad writing flowing. Exact perfect word? Who cares! This thing has no recognizable organization? Doesn’t matter! Just get something assembled on paper even if it’s only the quotes you’re going to use.

Special properties of the library belief—

This bit of faith may be specific to me, I realize that. But in the event that it has some relevance in your life, here goes. I believe that the library has special work getting done vibes which can be tapped into by working at the library. Work vibes can also be generated on one’s own by locking yourself in your apartment all weekend and engaging in only two mentionable activities: working and eating. In this case what happens is that instead of feeding off others work energy vibes in the library; you create your own work energy vibes because that’s all your doing, and they stay around to buoy you up and keep you in a state of work inertia! This is a great method to use in small powerful doses.

Please post with your experiences and advice, methods, strategies, or other alchemical winning combinations for forward movement!

September: or the Sacking of Ismarus

Ah, September… brand new Trapper Keeper notebook, cool looking pencil case, and an optimistic attitude. You’re back to seeing people on a regular basis, eating in the cafeteria with those soft pretzels you love, having meetings with professors, teaching a class or two. You are unstoppable! And since it’s been so long since you’ve felt the sweet embrace of a regular school structure, you think it may be time to Sack the City of Ismarus.

Untroubled by Poseidon’s storm, Odysseus and his men were going strong after the Trojan victory. Just like you who have been swigging Starbucks and noshing on Yoplait, sequestered off in your quarters all summer to get some serious writing done; Odysseus’ crew was cramped into twelve ships and hopped up on pent up rage. Time to go looting in a strange city. Or in your case offering to head up a task force on curriculum reform, marching off to three or four meetings a day, co-writing an article with your advisor, and volunteering to T.A. a class even though you’re already teaching three others. And why not? You’ve got your strength back. It’s September. You know how to work it in September.

But let’s finish that story at Ismarus. It seems Odysseus’ men were so busy looting that they did not listen to orders to high tail it back to the ships. As a result, 72 men were killed. The good news is that looting several teaching experiences and laying waste to a few too many unnecessary meetings will not result in the death of you or your colleagues. The bad news, as you know, is that it could result in the demoralizing postponement of your graduation.

Let me be the first to comment that beginning of the year optimism is not a bad thing. It’s huge improvement over free-floating anxiety and chronic insomnia. What could be argued is that September’s energy aphrodisiac needs to managed.

The question is how does one reign in one’s passion to loot without being horribly demoralizing and tunnel visioned in the process?

The Rebel versus the Check-Offer

At this point one might remind oneself that different people have different work styles; one no better than another. This is true, but only in theory. In practice, there are many different work styles but only a small few actually result in work. To simplify this matter, let me reduce all work styles to two basic types: the rebel and the check-offer.

The rebel avoids schedules, rules, and, unfortunately, the writing process in general. The rebel is highly superstitious; believing that the near genius paper she wrote three years ago after pulling many consecutive all nighters is proof that the last minute is the best time to get anything done. Possibly because of this tendency towards superstition and procrastination, the rebel is also highly creative—able to concoct interesting ideas fueled only by simple carbs. The rebel also feeds off summer and its concomitant loosey-goosey schedule.

The check-offer on the other hand can work for an hour, take a break to go to the gym and pay some bills, and then work for another hour. The check-offer knows that getting something down on paper means that she is moving ahead. She also knows that getting something down on paper is not the time to go through an elaborate second guessing matrix where one begins to doubt every doctoral degree decision ever made starting with the structure of one’s last paragraph and ending with the topic of one’s thesis. The check-offer is what thousands of summer rebels dream of becoming once September hits.

However, the habits of the check-offer require a steady hand. At the heart of the check-offer’s work ethic lies the ability and, in fact the need, to check things off a list, and then, and importantly, TO FINISH DOING ALL ITEMS ON THE LIST. So it would follow; the key is to make a very short list.

The ‘short list’ idea leads to the theory that writing a dissertation needs to become writing several term papers each with heavily related topics. This means that these papers will be easier to write since there will be much overlap between them. Plus, you know how to write a term paper. You’ve written a million of them. How long have you ever spent writing a term paper? Two weeks? Maybe. Not even.

Now I know what you’re saying, but data, but analysis, but approval from my advisor, but halted for one of many of a variety of different reasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just write a 7-10 page paper that’s related to your dissertation topic. It will not take you long and you will be able to live a full life while writing it. Now go forth and write, and make sure you check back with us and let us know how it went!

Are you Odysseus?

When did you begin your doctoral program?

a) none of your business
b) I don’t want to think about it
c) not sure, but I think Clinton was president
d) all of the above

What would you compare your graduate experience to thus far?

a) Iraq—Brutal, disorganized, no end in sight.
b) Watching somebody choking on a peanut butter sandwich and realizing I never learned how to perform the Heimlich maneuver
c) It’s been fine; the drinking helps.
d) all of the above

What are your goals, aspirations, dreams?

a) to finish this damn thing once and for all
b) to make more than $18,000 a year
c) to not kill my advisor
d) to sit around all day watching Let’s Make a Deal

Answers: Either A’s, B’s, C’s, or D’s—Congratulations! You’re a doctoral candidate! You’re up with rosy fingered dawn, having long talks with Athene, signed on for a nineteen year voyage frought with many obstacles…no, wait, that was Odysseus. Odysseus who seemed to run into a different dangerous, frustrating, seemingly unnecessary problem every time he turned around. Sound familiar? We’re here to help.