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Folks:

"Here is a well-written, humorous essay by Jayne Higgins, a doctoral student
at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. She writes with clarity about the
throes of writing a dissertation--or, rather, about avoiding the agony of
writing it. It is a problem that many of us have faced and that many of us
look forward to. E-mail: .  Ben Varner, University of
Northern Colorado

Reprinted with permission from Academic Exchange Quarterly, Summer 2000 pp.
126-28. "AEQ is dedicated to the presentation of ideas, research, and
methods leading to effective instruction and learning regardless of level or
subject."[http://www.higher-ed.org/AEQ/]

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Overcoming Barriers to Change


                     Tomorrow's Graduate Students and Postdocs

                 ------------------ 1,611 words -----------------

                 THE ART AND SCIENCE OF AVOIDING THE DISSERTATION


Jayne Higgins, Northern Illinois University

My pencils could not be sharper. My house could not be cleaner. My
students have never been better taught, and I even have all the grading
caught up. Although I have spent many hours at the library and have
amassed an impressive array (if I do say so myself) of research, I still
find myself staring at a blank computer screen. You might say I have
writer's block, and it will eventually clear, but I know this condition as
a specialized form of that malady. There is a symptom I didn't mention- I
go to any lengths to avoid my dissertation director in the hallways of the
English Department. I have a bad case of Dissertation Avoidance Complex or
the dreaded DAC.

DAC, as I like to think of it, comes to most who pass the rigors of
doctoral pre-lims and enter into the suddenly self-dependent world of the
writing of the almighty dissertation. We all know that we have one more
step in the process to complete. Most of us in English, as we are
well-trained writers, do not even dread the writing itself. Rather, the
avoidance comes with the actual starting of the project. I think that a
whole complex of excuses, real and imagined, come into play at that point
of the process.

In my case, I think I worked so hard and worried so much about the exams
themselves that I just couldn't expend more energy to begin the writing
process. My mind and spirit are a bit bruised from three long years of
coursework beyond the Master's degree as well as another long year spent
preparing for exams. In the courts, pleading mental anguish reaps big
monetary awards; in the English department, mental anguish is an accepted
part of the process. My professors (other than the aforementioned
director) smile and nod when they ask how the dissertation is coming, and
I begin to talk of the weather, or an upcoming conference, or an article I
am working on--anything but the dissertation. They murmur encouragement
when I speak at length on the wonders of the research I have
accomplished. And then they ask the dreaded question. When do you hope to
finish? Finish, I think? Finish? I haven't even started!

DAC is a sneaky disease. It can be hidden in so many ways. I can find
solid reasons to coach my daughter' s softball team. (You may want to
substitute niece or nephew or another sport.) Why, I spent months
volunteering for community groups that were functioning just fine without
my help but which I was convinced could not go on without me. I told
myself that I had neglected my family and my community for so many years
while in grad school that I must now give them the quality time they had
missed. My family and my community probably just wished I would go back to
writing and leave them in peace.

As a Teaching Assistant, I have had to teach continually more advanced
levels of courses while accomplishing my own research and
writing. Although I love my students, they have become unwitting
participants in my syndrome. I can no longer justify to myself taking a
month to turn graded papers back to them. I have learned, as my studies
have progressed, to be a much more effective teacher. I have learned the
value of preparation. I have learned the effectiveness as a learning tool
of the well-graded paper with extensive comments. Besides, all that
grading and preparation time gives me a wonderful excuse not to work on my
dissertation. In my DAC-muddled mind, it is a win-win situation.

In the throes of DAC, I could even avoid actual writing by finding
dissertation-related tasks that kept me from the real work. While working
on my prospectus for the project, I could always find a new angle I had
not considered. I could always find solace in the library stacks and the
new and exciting materials (probably irrelevant) I was finding. I could
find a new critic who shed new light on my subject, and whom I could not
ignore and must read exhaustively. I could wait a couple of extra weeks
while interlibrary loan found that obscure book without which I could not
begin. In short, everything became more important than actually writing a
real dissertation.

The process of the dissertation is a sort of bildungsroman of its
own. 'Mat's a big English term I learned while I was in the library stacks
lost in a DAC daze. It means a coming of age story, and that is exactly
what the process of dissertation is meant to be. It is a coming of age in
the profession of English. I have taught; I have read and researched; I
have written so many twenty-page papers my head is foggy with the
thought; and I should be ready to enter the ranks of those who have gone
before me on the same path. Perhaps that thought is part of what makes me
stall. Am I really ready? Am I good enough? Have I read enough? I know my
answers should be yes, but then I always meet another grad student who has
read more, written more, presented more, and I rush back to my computer to
re-work that prospectus one more time.

After all, I want this dissertation to be perfect. I know that I am a
great writer, just waiting to emerge into the academic spotlight. In my
head, I have written and re-written the whole thing many times. I have
added and rearranged chapters. I have thought of new, brilliant
transitional passages. I know if I really start, the whole thing will just
begin to flow like a stream cut loose from its swollen banks. Or so I
believe in my DAC delirium. In reality, my computer file marked
"disschptr1" V is still blank.

There is also the question of the part-time job. Whether it involves
adjunct teaching at local community colleges, writing for businesses,
editing for publishers, or even working at the local public library, the
part-time job is both a necessity and a curse for most graduate
students. Many departments tell us we cannot hold jobs other than our
teaching assignments. It is the most open secret in the department that
most of us do have part-time jobs despite these warnings. In their wisdom,
these well-meaning graduate directors and department chairs know that
working extra hours will just compound the more serious symptoms of DAC. I
suspect they know from their own like experiences. The reality of the
situation, however, comes down to paychecks inadequate to pay the rent and
the utilities every month. Food, beyond ramen noodles and macaroni and
cheese, becomes a luxury. I have been in grad school for almost seven
years now. The economic facts of my family don't allow me to subsist on
only the TA salary. I have, at one time or another, held each of the jobs
mentioned. I could not have stayed in grad school without them. In the
worst of my DAC days, however, I used the paycheck excuse to do anything
but write my dissertation. I picked up some wonderful business writing
jobs, and I worked extra shifts at the library for anyone who asked. I
reveled in the extra paychecks, but shortsightedly ignored the larger one
waiting for me if I can just finish.

That brings me to the jobs prospects in the teaching of college
English. They are certainly not great. The longer I stay in the womb of my
friendly English department, the longer I avoid the fray. The realities of
the profession dictate that we must pad those vitas with publications and
presentations. Even if we do, though, we will have a tough fight for a
real tenure-track job. I cling to the vestiges of DAC in part to avoid the
confrontations I know lie ahead. At a certain point, the writing of
articles (including the one you are reading) becomes part of the
complex. Although I need these credits on my vita, the more I send out,
the longer I can avoid writing that other thing I should be writing
instead.

There is, however, hope. I have begun to shake off this dreaded, cursed
disease and begun actual writing. I have quit avoiding my dissertation
director and started meeting his deadlines. My family has told me I must
finish, or they will be forced to take drastic-action-like my colleague's
wife who actually moved out and left him until he finished. I have gotten
beyond sharpening pencils and doing research, and begun to pull all of it
together into a coherent whole. I have done all these things because I
have realized that putting it off only postpones the inevitable, and I am
really ready to move on. But the bottom line? The thing I dread more than
writing my dissertation is another year, or even two, as a graduate
student with a graduate student's income. That fact, in itself, has given
me the fresh motivation to leave my state of DAC and take my place in the
profession for which I have worked for so long and which I believe I now
deserve- as soon as I actually finish my dissertation.

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