A caller asked if I had ever coached someone who had become stalled on a house renovation project. My answer was no, but what came to mind was how similar all big projects are. How difficult it can be to keep going. How crushing the project can become.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Let’s say it was you who started the renovation project. You envisioned the changes you were going to make. You put together a plan to accomplish those changes.
And you took on this project in part because of what you wanted to prove to yourself.
Following through on such a commitment takes courage and resilience. I’ve seen someone with these qualities accomplish an amazing home renovation project. He almost single-handedly built a large room onto their house. He’s an accomplished man, but he’s not a carpenter, nor is he an architect. Nevertheless, over many months, the structure came together, and it’s a lovely addition to their home.
Completing such a project must be more than satisfying. I would guess that the end feeling would be relief coupled with enormous joy in the accomplishment.
But if the renovation project, just like a stalled dissertation, is yours and if you’re stuck, re-starting takes courage and a willingness to look with new eyes at what this project will require from you.
Here are the five steps to help you restart:
1. You need a plan, the more detailed the better. A plan, with specific details, will guide you, and it will also be a way of keeping track. It’s easier to keep going when you can check off items on a list or a plan.
2. Make realistic, manageable goals each and every day or work session. Short-term goals and next steps keep you focused on the present. And that’s where you have to work.
3. When you accomplish the day’s goal, stop for the day—it may be counterproductive to push yourself beyond a reasonable stopping point. Stopping when you’ve reached a realistic goal gives you the strength to come back another day. If you go beyond the realistic goal, you start to risk burn-out or exhaustion. Exhaustion makes it much harder to return to the project.
4. After you quit for the day, acknowledge yourself for the courage it took to come back to the project yet another day and to do what you said you were going to do. Big Gold Stars!
5. Draw on that feeling of renewed courage and the surge of joy to start your work another day.
Embarrassment, discouragement, and shame are likely to accompany getting stuck on something as open and visible as a home renovation or building project. Having one’s failure on public display can be brutal. But the dread of being found out when a failure isn’t so visible, as in being stalled on a dissertation, is also brutally hard to bear.
Life’s too short to live in dread or shame. You have a choice. I say get started on that detailed plan, plot your first step, and then take it.
Are you stalled on a dissertation, or have you been stalled? What is your next step? I’d love to hear from you.
All good wishes to you,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
http://www.smarttipsforwriters.com
http://www.dissertationbootcamp.net
http://www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Whose Dissertation Is It?
Posted in academic, advisor, coaching, discourse, dissertation advisors, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, resources, Smart Tips, writing, writing models, tagged accepting help, commenting on writing, procrastination, revisions, rewriting, talk to your advisor on November 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
An ABD student wrote to me about her advisor’s generous rewriting of the dissertation text. According to the student, the advisor doesn’t change the thought, only the language.
The ABD student recognizes that the advisor’s writing is superior to her own, Her question is if the advisor has rewritten a lot of the language of the dissertation, is the ABD student’s dissertation still her own? And is this a common happenstance?
I agree that this advisor is amazingly generous and that the student is incredibly lucky to have such a responsive advisor. I’ve had many clients who complain that their advisors mark up their drafts with little more than where to put commas.
The two or so clients whose advisors did some rewriting were glad to have the rewritten text. In fact, when, down the road, one of those clients started to feel lost, I suggested that he go back and read what his advisor had written. There was much to be learned in the advisor’s writing. Not the least of which was the confidence in the student and the interest in the student’s topic that the rewriting suggested.
As might be expected, my clients also weren’t sure if they could use the text written by the advisors as their own, and so one of them bravely asked. The advisor said yes. (I think the advisor assumed his language would be adopted.) If this is your problem, please ask the advisor if you can use the language as written.
If your advisor replaces your language with hers, I can see that you might feel your revision process is truncated. It might even raise questions in your mind about how you can learn to write if your process is limited in this way. As for how you can best learn to write academic discourse, you can learn by writing and rewriting and rewriting again—at the request of your advisor—but the down side might be that you would feel anxious and uncertain in trying to interpret what the advisor actually wanted you to do.
Another way to improve your skill as an academic writer would be to follow the model offered to you by your advisor. Analyze her discourse—her use of words, her sentence structure, the argument. Put your text side by side with hers and look for the specific differences.
The dissertation is more about learning than it is about producing a completely original work or an amazing contribution to your field.
Some of my clients have procrastinated submitting early drafts to the advisor because they know they can’t write as well as the advisor. Well, duh! Advisors are tenured, published, and have been through this writing and rewriting and editing process umpteen times. Their use of language shows what they’ve learned.
If you would rather your advisor give you more open-ended questions, such as “What do you mean here?” you can always ask for that kind of response. If you have a good relationship, she will most likely give you what you ask for. It will take a lot of courage to say that you’d prefer to use your own language, but if it’s important to you, speak up.
I would be curious why an advisor might be so generous as to rewrite part of the student’s text. It would be interesting to have a discussion with the advisor about her style of responding to writing. I’ll bet she’s trying to give you something that no one ever gave her — specific examples on how a certain sentence/idea/paragraph could be better stated.
Readers, if you have a thought you’d like to share on this topic, I’d be delighted to hear from you.
In addition, if you are one of those people who procrastinate on sending a draft to your advisor because the draft isn’t perfect, I’d like to hear about that, too. Procrastination is the #1 problem among dissertation writers.
Last month, in my e-newsletter “Smart Tips” I wrote on “Has Procrastination Got a Hold on You?”
In the coming issue of “Smart Tips” I follow up with “What’s It Going to Take to Become a Recovering Procrastinator?”
If you haven’t registered for the newsletter, please go to my website at www.nancywhichard.com and sign up. I’m sending the new issue of “Smart Tips” out within a few days.
All good wishes,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com
P.S. The next issue of my e-newsletter “Smart Tips” will not only feature an article on procrastination, but will also offer you a new bonus that you won’t want to miss. Sign up at www.nancywhichard.com.
Copyright 2008 by Nancy Whichard and NWCoaching.
All Rights Reserved. This blog may not be reproduced in
whole or in part in any form without attribution to Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC
Read Full Post »