bookkeeping and an explosion

[truepenny]

DL(2) Ch. 5: 43 words

Other work accomplished: Read and integrated three articles into smorgasbord chapter of dis.

Verdict: Fuck it.

Comments: Lousy day for writing. I have a terrible time with visualizing settings, and this one is complicated and important, and I just can't see it. And then I just got email from my dissertation director about my dis. introduction, which basically says, It's lovely, but you're going to have to give in and ACTUALLY DO THE GODDAMN WORK. (This is not at all what she said, because she is a good human being and would never say such a thing to a student. But reading between the lines of what she did say, and translating into my particular vituperative vernacular, that's what it comes out as.) I hate this. I hate this dissertation. I hate the hoops I have to jump through. I hate the fact that there's these standards that nobody can tell me what they are, but they'll be happy to tell me when I haven't met them. I hate the amount of time that jumping through the hoops is going to take me. And I hate the fact that I perceive them as hoops when I ought to be perceiving them as opportunities. I'm so fucking frustrated with the PROCESS now, I just want to hit something.

***BALROG***

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Words cannot express how much I understand about the whole dissertation thing. I've been working on my dissertation since... oh, the fall of 1998. For most of that time, I've hated and despised it.

Good luck finding something to like about it. I've just managed that myself and I'm excited again, so it can happen. I hope it happens for you.

(Oh, and hi - I'm Rivka, and I found your journal through papersky, who linked to your Sayers posts. I hope you don't mind the intrusion.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind the intrusion.

Quite the contrary. I'm grateful for the commiseration. Thank you!

And I don't actually hate the dissertation. I like my topic, still, and I think it's fascinating, still. It's all the rest of the dissertation--process, experience, ritual, state of mind, self-immolation, slaughter of lambs, etc.--that I hate. And tonight I hate it very very much. Tomorrow I'll probably have my sense of perspective back.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Offstage voice of Marith: Go on. You said you would.

Marith: Am I responsible for every stupid little ditty that comes into my head in the shower?

Offstage voice: Yes. Besides, it might cheer her up.

Marith *mutters sulkily* Fine. Buffy dorkiness ahead.
*sings*

Mummies aren't cool like everybody supposes,
They got Canopic jars and you can't find their noses,
And what's with all the organs
What do they need to keep hearts around for anyway?
Mummies, mummies, it must be mummies!

...Or maybe zombies...


(I blame this entirely upon your dissertation, just in case you were looking for other reasons to hate it. Good luck!)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Marith!

That makes me love my dissertation for a change.

*wanders off singing, they got canopic jars and you can't find their noses*

[loligo.livejournal.com]

I hate the fact that there's these standards that nobody can tell me what they are, but they'll be happy to tell me when I haven't met them

Thank you, you just captured my dissertation experience in one sentence! My advisor and I had a pretty good working relationship up till then, but then I started working on the dissertation and all communication shut down. I'd get drafts back with a vague comment like "This just isn't right. Get me another draft in a month." I put this down to the fact that she went on sabbatical, had a baby, and then took a job at a university halfway across the country, and thus didn't care about me anymore. But maybe it was a consciously-chosen dissertation rite of passage?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh good. In a bad way.

I mean, good that it's not just me. And then BAD that it's not just me. Graduate programs are lingering way way behind the curve in the pedagogical revolution; nurturance is still not something that happens very much, and especially not once they've kicked you out of the nest to write a book on your own. (I have a whole thing about the ways in which graduate classwork COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY fails to prepare students for the dissertation, but I don't feel like launching into it right now. I've been splenetic enough this week already, and it's only Wednesday morning.) The "sink or swim" mentality, which is not conducive to learning in any way, shape, or form, is still governing the process of achieving advanced degrees. No wonder so many people sink.

[libskrat]

Well, hell, honey, the coursework doesn't even prepare you for the exams that it's theoretically *designed* to prepare you for, so why on earth do you think it's gonna prepare you for the diss?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

No, but the exams--for me at least--were experentially contiguous with coursework. (My god would you look at that sentence. Experentially contiguous? Holy cats.) The dissertation is like a horror movie monster. It comes out of nowhere and bites your head off. Or something. The unexamined assumption, at least in my department, is that writing a dissertation is just like writing term papers, only, you know, longer. And it's not. A dissertation is something completely else, just as "wolverine" is not a longer and fancier word for "wolf."

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Sympathies.

My PhD thesis, I received an utter lack of guidance save of the sort you describe. I could not even get anyone to tell me how long the blasted thing had to be, and when I finally lost patience with my advisor and wrote to the Graduate Studies Office, I got back a letter clearly tailored to deal with the outpourings of Trinity College's Joyce mafia, saying that they preferred theses not to be over 200,000 words and if it had to be bound in two volumes tell them in advance; which when you're looking at 20,000 words and wondering how best to bulk it up is really unhelpful. [ It went in just over 25,000 words and was accepted, and everyone else in the department who saw it was a amzed they had accepted something so short and thought it said good things about me that I'd fit a PhD's worth of work into that space. Gaah.]

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You made me curious, so I went and did a wordcount. What I have--and at a guess, this thing is half to three-quarters finished in terms of pure verbiage--totals up to 39k words. Which is probably about right, since the scuttlebutt rule of thumb I've heard is 200 pages.

But, yeah, no one will tell you anything, like if you have to ask, you don't deserve to know. I've always been an over-achiever, so that sort of thing has never bothered me, but this dissertation is turning me into a serious slacker--I mean, like all those years, I was just building up a backlog or something. I want the MINIMUM amount of work that I can do to get by on, and even asking that question is a serious transgression of the polite fictions of academia.

*snarl*

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know it's about jumping through hoops. It's always been about jumping through hoops. It's just that, up to now, I've rather enjoyed the hoops. And these hoops are the flaming hoops and I don't want to jump through them.

[libskrat]

<heresy>

So don't.

</heresy>

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

That's not heresy, at least not in my world. I made a decision based on selfishness and egotism that I wanted the Ph.D., even though I have no plans to teach or otherwise continue in academia. And quitting now--when I'm free of the coursework and the teaching and everything else except this albatross around my neck--is something I'm just too stubborn to do.

I know exactly why I'm doing this. It's not perhaps a terribly good reason, but it's MY reason, and I'm not confused about it. There are days when it feels less adequate than others, but I know if I don't finish this, get the damn degree, achieve closure, it's going to remain this perpetual unscratchable itch, and that would be even more annoying than this, hard though it is to believe. I would LIKE for my reasons to be more idealistic, intellectual, yada yada, but they just aren't.

So, yes, my excessive complaining is entirely unjustified. I did this to myself. I can put it down and walk away, and the fact that I don't is my fault, not anyone else's.

Which doesn't stop me from occasionally needing to vent.