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A dissertation coaching client said that she stopped watching TV and picked up her writing pace in order to meet a deadline. Now that she has met the deadline, she worries that she will be sucked into watching all of the TV shows that she recorded during her heavy-duty period of writing.
Do you record TV shows? It’s just too easy, isn’t it? I doubt that I’ll ever catch up on all of the International House Hunter shows that I seem to record every day. Occasionally I wonder how on earth all of the shows pile up, foolishly forgetting that I clicked on “record series.” And there must be at least 3 International House Hunter shows a day!
My client also worries that not only will she binge on watching all of the TV recordings waiting for her, but from experience she knows of the torpor that will hit her once she starts watching the hours of TV. It will be hard to get back into her writing routine. Digital stress strikes again!
Recently I stayed in a small town at an absent relative’s house (no I wasn’t a home invader–it was by invitation!). This was a house with no TV and no internet access. I was looking forward to seeing how the absence of TV and lack of email would affect me.
It was a little eerie, but good. Many clients say that it’s hard for them to get into flow while writing and sometimes they find it hard to jump into a long book that is required reading for their topic. Experience tells me that if you remove yourself from the easy temptation of TV and the internet, flow will be much easier to accomplish than you might imagine.
With no TV and internet, I moved quickly into a reading and writing routine. I gave no energy to avoiding writing and no energy to avoiding TV. And I wasn’t recording TV shows for later. It was a win-win-win.
Often, clients who have a day job say that one change they are making in their lives as dissertation writers is to leave their blackberries at work. I feel the same way about checking office email at home. Too often employers expect the unreasonable–that is, that you are online, plugged in, no matter what time of day, no matter where you are.
If you can leave the blackberry and the office email at the office, cut way back on what you are recording on TV, and limit when you will check home email to an absolute minimum, you may be surprised how easily you, too, can move into flow.
And you can control digital stress.
Do you have some strategies on how to avoid digital stress and the temptations of TV and email? I would love to hear from you.
All good wishes,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
www.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.
All good wishes,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
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