To begin, and in fact, the very reason I was motivated to construct this blog, I opened the book "Surviving Your Dissertation, A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process, 3rd Edition" by Rudestam and Newton. I made it as far as the first paragraph in Chapter 1, then decided I needed to blog my adventure! Rudestam and Newton start their conversation with analogies to the dissertation/research process. I found none of them suitable to my situation. So I will post a blog, which, I feel, best describes the dissertation process.
The dissertation process
The dissertation process is very much like walking across the hottest and driest desert in the world (which is the Atacama by the way) ... for four painful years. I say this because it is very tortuous and requires an insane amount of stamina. Yes stamina, I believe, is the key character trait one needs to get through the Desert of Dissertation. Many doctoral students enter the program with great zeal, full of life and vitality. That is how I entered the program... three years ago. I spent the first year running and sprinting my way through the desert, scheduling full semesters of classes and teaching a new course each semester (which requires an amazing amount of time and planning). On top of this, I presented at three conferences, all research of which was new, having no Master's Thesis under my belt to capitalize on. At the end of that arduous year, I had enough spirit left to continue right into a summer class, to aid in the completion of my course work early. By the time this finished up, the next year was right around the corner, and I found my self out of steam. As many inexperienced long distance runners, I started the race way too fast and lost most of my energy only a quarter of the way across the desert. During year two, I continued to teach, present new research at two conferences and began to wrack my brains about a research question. By the end of year two, I had a research direction, but was studying brand new material, having switched from an education geography to an environmental geography focus. I fell behind during my third year, for one, I burned myself out in the first two years, and for two, my advisor went on sabbatical the semester I was suppose to take my comprehensive exams. To place the exams in context of our desert analogy, the "comps" as they are termed, would be the largest mountain you have to scale in this vast and scorching desert. Oh, did I mention, I also lost a committee member during my third year? Yes, that happened. So instead of using what energy I have to scale that beast of a mountain, I now have to save it for the home stretch of this desert walkabout. So ahead of me stands 1) the comprehensive exams, 2) a research proposal, and 3) a dissertation all due by next February. The worse news is that I am either crawling at this point, or laying on my back, hallucinating with images of myself crawling, while I am actually going nowhere. This is my analogy and my struggle. If, I haven't scared you away yet, stick around and watch the drama unfold! It should be interesting.
