Why All These Books?: The Explosion of the Dissertation Self-Help Market

Let's talk about Self-Help books. And let's face it -- most are bad. But some, the practical ones, or maybe the ones that use a metaphor that just sweeps you off your feet, can be good, if used wisely, and taken with several grains of salt.

What's Wrong with Self-Help?
Historically, categories of self-help fall into a few repeating areas: Success, Health, Optimism. Think of the "How to be Rich" books, or "How to Get Friends" books. You've seen them or heard of them, maybe even taken a peek inside? And the health books? WOW. There is a whole section for those in the bookstore.

In the 1970s, as America moved forward from the Civil Rights Movement, and then Vietnam, the feelgood book became more of a thing than ever. And then it became a huge publishing industry. It tapped into people's insecurities, their struggles with body image, and their dissatisfaction with life. For some, self-help really helped. For others, it left them as isolated as before, and out a few dollars...or more. I remember digging in my mom's bookshelf when I was a kid in the '80s, and finding books with titles like Real Women Send Flowers. The most striking one I remember? A slim motivational handbook entitled F*** Yes! My mother grew stronger and stronger as we grew up, but I don't think it was because she spent $10 on F*** Yes!

In the 1990s, the pitfalls of self-help were becoming evident. The market was flooded with The Art of the Deal, 10 Days to Self-Esteem, and other well known but probably useless books. Counselors, psychologists, and other began to notice that self-help was replacing folk wisdom, making people actually feel more helpless, making them blame outside things for their own failures, and offering glib and disingenuous advice (especially the success books). In 1993, Wendy Kaminer published I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, an intelligent indictment of the entire self-help philosophy, and she marked the decline of the decades-long fad as the 21st century approached.

Though the industry of self-help did not collapse, it has been replaced in part by self-care methods like meditation, one-on-one counseling (owing to reduced stigma), and time honored traditions like group yoga. We are not afraid to let others help us anymore. So no need to read about it in private!

The Dissertation Self-Help Book

So where has the self-help book found a new lease on life? In the form of the dissertation self-help book.

Don't jump!!!

The dissertation self-help book has exploded over the last twenty years or so. Familiar metaphors from 20th century self-help, such as survival, demystification, baby-steps, a journey, grace the covers of these books. Familiar models of coping and solution fill their insides: 12-step programs, "invisible rules" that just need to be uncovered, methods to diminish the importance of the problem (I have a book called It's *JUST* a Dissertation!), romanticization of the reader's situation and magical thinking.

It's true that there are helpful pieces of advice in these books. But oh dear, the metaphors... Can we stop talking about the dissertation as if it's not a real thing?

Well... for some of us the dissertation takes a million years to write, so it really does feel like a journey. Or like any number of the romantic and fearsome metaphors on those book covers! But there is a real problem with the self-help model: It focuses on recovery. Any recovery approach itself has problems, but to suggest that a dissertation is something that needs to be survived or overcome is to suggest that the dissertation is a malady or even an addiction. Ill advised it may be! But it is not an illness in need of a cure. It is a project in need of planning, management, and other practical solutions. (See "Practical Dissertation Help Books" below)

Someone needs to write the I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional of dissertation help books. I'm Not Writing My Dissertation, You're Not Writing Your Dissertation.  It's good to have some inspirational books around. And it's helpful to envision yourself on a journey or a quest or whatever floats your boat (yet another diss metaphor...). But how do we read about dissertations with care and a critical eye?

This article on the dissertation book culture is a helpful read:

The Failure of Dissertation Advice Books: Toward Alternative Pedagogies for Doctoral Writing


Practical Dissertation Help Books

BUT WAIT! After all our nay-saying, there is hope. We do recommend some of these books to our students. And other universities do too. I'm just on about the self-help so you know there's no magic "cure" for your dissertation. But what there is are some good books with practical advice:

Writing the Doctoral Dissertation: A Systematic Approach
(We recommend this to everyone!)

The Craft of Research

Proposals that Work

Here are some more books you might want to explore, curated by the University of Michigan graduate school. But don't forget your shaker of salt.

Recommended Books on Dissertation Writing

One final and important suggestion: Taking a page from this millennium's change from self-help to self-care and group help, maybe don't look for all the answers in a book? Talk to other dissertation writers often, take care of yourself and your body, and seek help from professionals if you need to. You are the first person who can help yourself write this dissertation. The words and research have to be yours, but you don't have to handle the "journey" alone.

Explore this map and other fun stuff at
https://www.academiccoachingandwriting.org/dissertation-doctor/the-dissertation-journey

Interview with a Freelance Editor

Producing a thesis or dissertation is one thing.  But then after the writing’s done comes the crucial final phase of combining, editing, and proofreading front matter, chapters, tables, references, indexes, and such so that the whole document meets the Graduate School’s formatting requirements—no small chore.  As you head toward (or envision) that final lap, perhaps you’ve considered getting help from an editor.  Here in the Thesis Office we maintain a list of freelance editors who are familiar with NIU’s document formatting rules and offer various editing, formatting, and transcribing services for a fee.  These experts see a lot of research-based writing and can thus share plenty of useful insights on the process of getting your big document in proper shape.   

In this post, we offer some words of reflection, wisdom, and advice from one of the veterans among this group.  She recently visited our office and sat down to share her experiences working with thesis and dissertation writers at NIU.  Our interview covered a range of topics, including her early years of editing (back when clients came to her with printouts and/or files on 3 1/2-inch floppy disks), changes in her work methods over the past decade as documents became almost completely electronic, and the various fields in which her clients have written their papers.  Below is a summary of a few other matters we discussed.     

Red Marks, Red Shoes

It was near the end of the last century when friends and colleagues in DeKalb encouraged Susan Richter, an English literature major, to offer her editing services to thesis and dissertation writers at NIU.  Carolyn Law, our Thesis Office director, told her the work would be “fun.”  Has that prediction turned out to be true?  Overall, Susan’s answers add up to a firm yes.  

“I’m really a bean counter at heart,” she offered at the start of our interview, in reference to the intricacies of arranging and formatting a document in order to avoid a final editor’s red marks.  “Putting everything in the proper order, checking references to make sure they have the volume, issue, and page numbers, making sure everything is following the rules: I enjoy that.”  Though she sometimes finds the content of a thesis or dissertation to be intriguing, Susan insists that what the paper is about is less important to her than the editing of it.  “When people ask me what I do, I tell them, ‘I read but I don’t pay attention.’”  She mentioned that she remembers a few topics from documents she’s edited over the years—teaching methods, management approaches, and engineering solutions come to mind—but doesn’t recall much detail.  She said: “I don’t try to retain any of it because unless it’s something that really interests me, it doesn’t get to stay in my short-term memory.”  In emphasizing her enthusiasm for editing, she also offered a few words worth passing on to writers who may be reaching that final submission stage: “I enjoy making things look the way they’re supposed to look and follow the rules.  If that’s not something you enjoy, you’re going to have problems.  You’re going to have lots of red from Carolyn.” 




Memories about a document’s content may not linger, but anecdotes from her experiences working with grad students readily come to mind.  For example, years ago she would often meet new clients in person.  “It was interesting with the international students,” Susan recalls.  “I would usually meet them over at the student center.  And the first couple of times I said, ‘I’m a white female,’ you know, ‘I’m…’—whatever my age was at the time.  They thought I looked young.  I didn’t look as old as they thought I should.  So I started wearing red shoes.  I would say, ‘I’m 5’3” and have dark hair and will have on red shoes.’”  Thus, students looking for their editor in a crowd would scan below people’s knees, searching for foot coverings matching the color of an editor’s pen.  And does she still have those shoes?  “I do, just in case!”

Words of Experience 

Susan also shared insider views on what writers who seek a freelance editor’s assistance can get right or get wrong.  Highlights worth noting:

• Determine the particular editing or formatting problems you need help with.  Susan likes it when clients are “honest about what they have” up front.
• Give your editor ample lead time before deadlines.  “Most clients contact me ahead of time and seem to be working through the process like responsible adults,” she said.
• Remember that your editor feels deadline pressure, too.  As Susan puts it: “If clients say they’ll send something to me Monday morning and they don’t send it to me until Wednesday night, then a Friday deadline is going to be a little hard to meet.”
• Check your in-text citations and references extra carefully for accuracy and completeness.  Susan reports that they’re never correct.  She says, “People will say, ‘Oh, no, I used a program.  It’ll be fine.’  They will not be fine.  That has never happened.  Twenty years—never.”  Susan will often assist a client by adding missing information in citations and/or references, but she notes that the writer is ultimately responsible for these things.

Sympathy and Advice

Over the years, Susan has also developed a great deal of sympathy for soon-to-be-finished students at this stressful stage in their careers.  “When people would come over to the house to pick up their three copies and their original, or just their original if they needed it, I kept Kleenex by the door.”  Why Kleenex?  “Because they would just burst into tears—men and women—when I would give their finished document to them.  It was done, and it was delivered, and they would be talking and normal and then just start crying.  And so I know it’s a stressful time.  What I hope is that I can relieve some of that stress.”

Near the end of our talk, we asked if she has any words of advice on how to accomplish the thesis or dissertation wisely.  Her answer provides food for thought for writers of all stripes, not just those who may be thinking of sending their document to an editor for hire:  “Focus on the project and the writing.  Nobody can do everything equally well.  The actual formatting, the mechanical part that I work on, has pretty limited value.  Don’t let that end part be a bad memory or a problem.  Make your research worthwhile for somebody to look up and quote.  That’s the whole purpose—to contribute to the body of knowledge.  Do that.  And if editing and formatting has you overly stressed, consider hiring somebody else to make your document look pretty.”  

This is Part Two of a two-part series on Temple Grandin and the importance of "different" minds  Last month we talked about how to succeed in higher education in spite of mental disabilities (and how to excel because of them!). 

This month we discuss what kinds of contributions different minds like Grandin's (who is autistic) can bring to higher education and to university research. Today she is a renowned professor of Animal Science, but Grandin unexpectedly stumbled upon her talent for working with animals when her poor high school behavior landed her at a special school, one where kids of all abilities were put to work as ranchers. Years later, combining hands-on ranching experience with hard-won knowledge, Grandin earned a Ph. D. in Animal Science. Not your typical academic path!

So what is unique about the contributions of someone like Temple Grandin to scientific research? Her hands-on approach, necessitated by her autism, stuck with her as she began her career as a scientist and author. For instance, she expects her students to think in concrete particulars, rather than abstract theories about animals. Animals don't care about your theories about them. They only have behaviors, not theories -- and behaviors we can observe and respond to. Grandin believes that her autism, which enables her to be present in the moment, helps her to connect with animals and to see why they behave the way they do. Her "walking in their path" approach to working with cattle in particular has resulted in significant discoveries that have changed the way slaughter houses and ranches contain and move livestock.


Grandin's research and developments enrich her classroom teaching, because she brings outside knowledge and novel approaches in front of students who are studied in textbook theories and laboratory work, but not necessarily experienced in field work or real world problems addressed by science. So Grandin's inability to be an ivory tower academic, a pure scholar, is really a valuable trait -- she can't do anything but tell it like it is, and show students how to do concrete things.

The concreteness of Grandin's work also allows for many collaborative opportunities. With projects in the field (sometimes a literal field!), many minds are needed to do the work, interpret the results, and write up the reports. Most of Grandin's peer-reviewed articles are based on collaborative work, or are co-authored. She relies on the writing abilities of others and on their abstract minds, but they rely on her for the nitty gritty details of experiments and inventions that solve real problems with animals, from pigs, to dogs, to cows, of course. Increased collaboration is one of the important ways that contemporary research is changing.

While Grandin's work is exceptionally groundbreaking, many more minds like hers, and other "different" minds as well, are invaluable to academic research, applied research, and classroom teaching. The university is adapting, and will continue to adapt, to the next generation of knowledge workers. They will have autism, ADD, mental health issues, and various learning disabilities, but they will be prepared for academic work -- all because education is finally capable of reaching many young people who could not be reached, even a decade ago. It could be the overactive mind of someone who can't focus, the empathy of someone who has lived a lifetime with depression, or the transposed figures seen by a student with dyscalculia that lead to new approaches in history, social science, and math. And these thinkers, working together with their neuro-typical peers to pick up all the pieces, may be the key to developing novel solutions for the practical problems of the 21st Century.

How the Differently Minded Can Take Life by the Horns -- Temple Grandin's Take

This is Part One of a two-part series on Temple Grandin and the importance of "different" minds.

Last week I attended a talk by Temple Grandin here at NIU. I jotted down a variety of take-aways from her presentation, but one of the ideas that stuck with me (a doctoral student suffering from depression) is how those of us with different minds, those whose minds refuse to conform to neurotypicality, can often provide new insights into research and other kinds of intellectual work. Grandin also argued that as difficult as work might be when you have to struggle against the limits of your own mind, in some ways her high-functioning autism is a blessing. Knowing one's mind and having to work around it enables the differently minded to succeed in unexpected and unconventional ways.

Who is Temple Grandin?

If you didn't get the title reference to horned animals...Temple Grandin knows a thing or two about horned animals. Grandin is an animal scientist, author, and entrepreneur who, despite her autism (and perhaps because of her autism), earned a PhD from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1989. Since then, Grandin's work with farm animals and how they think has led to her invention of the curved corral and other innovative solutions for working with animals. While all of that is extremely impressive and interesting, what interests us most is how her "different mind" enabled her to develop unique and unexpected ideas about animals, and to do doctoral work.

What is a different mind?
Grandin herself has a diagnosis of autism and cerebral damage, but her philosophy on the strengths of the differently minded applies to anyone who suffers from neuro-atypicality -- whether a person is dyslexic, has lost their short-term memory, has dyscalculia, or thinks in pictures rather than words. A  number of mental conditions could apply to people who are otherwise functional and intelligent. What Grandin and others find advantageous about what are otherwise considered disabilities is that a differently minded person's altered perception and processing enables them to see things from a completely new perspective, and to sometimes discover solutions that a neurotypical person would never have access to.

For instance, Grandin's patented cattle corral design was developed when she decided to walk with the cows on the way into the slaughterhouse, and to try to see what they see. Rather than looking at their progress toward the plant analytically, from the outside, she did so sympathetically, walking in the shoes (or the hooves, in this case) of the cattle. In her presentation she shows several photos of cattle avoiding entrances. It is not always immediately apparent why they seemed to stop dead in their tracks with only thin air in front of them. But Grandin points out shadows, streams of light, reflections, and even a stray chain swaying, hanging from a ceiling, as sources of confusion and fear for the animals.

Grandin also names many other well known "different minds" who put mild disabilities to work for them. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk -- she offers them all up as examples of people whose minds did not fit the mold, yet enabled them to innovate. The Steve Jobs reference reminds me of Apple's ungrammatical tagline from twenty years ago -- "Think Different."

Why Grandin Doesn't Have to Be an Anomaly
Folks like Bill Gates aren't born every day, it's true. But it's also true that people with mild disabilities, disabilities which may eventually make them believe they are incapable of advanced study, are born every day.  A significant portion of Grandin's talk is devoted to teaching people how to live and work better with the minds they have. Some key takeaways that could help us all through an advanced degree:

• Develop workarounds: Grandin believes there are types of minds -- mathematical ones, visual ones, and verbal ones, to be specific. And each of them can be differently affected by autism, dyslexia, etc. So if, for instance, you have been shown by your mind time and again that you are not particularly verbal, then develop a method where you don't have to rely on words. Draw your notes, use visual reminders, make big checklists, etc. Research your disability to learn other workarounds that will support you through the intellectual work you have to do.

• Don't overspecialize: Though Grandin has a Ph. D. in animal science, she is adamant that graduate students should not overspecialize. Here she offers particular caution to her autistic peers who tend to be hyper-focused. Grad students need to specialize in a degree area to complete a thesis or dissertation, but they should surround themselves with different minds when they do collaborative work. Most of the research work Grandin has produced has been in interdisciplinary teams, and some of her articles are co-authored. Working with people across various fields keeps her versatile and keeps her interested in her work. It also keeps her more social! (She gets in a few jokes here, about Ph. D. students who can't talk to people at parties...)

• Have art or hobbies in your life: Piggy-backing (haha) on "don't overspecialize," Grandin stresses the importance of doing art, music, or any kind of hobby that is unrelated to your studies. For an autistic person like Grandin, this can express itself in many ways! For instance, she is obsessed with space and NASA, and reads voraciously about these topics. She mentions people she knows who have nearly pigeon-holed themselves with their studies, but were saved by picking up a violin or learning woodcraft. I can speak to this personally. I am always in a rock band or working on recordings. People ask me how I have the time to do that, and "Don't you go crazy from doing too much?" I answer no, I would go crazy if I didn't have bands and gigs in my life! Because it's not anything like what I study. 

• Learn to work early: Even if your parents didn't turn you loose until grad school, you can still learn to work... Grandin believes in putting kids to work early, not to teach them the value of a dollar or anything like that, but to make sure they can take care of themselves early. Without her own work on a ranch during high school, she may never have found her talent for working with animals. So whatever your discipline, get your hands dirty with it as soon as possible. Intern, volunteer, collaborate, conference, teach, or do whatever your field will let you do. Doing is better than just thinking and writing.

Temple Grandin was a joy to watch. I think she is a person who lives by her own advice and is a role model for autistic folks and other folks who struggle in an academic environment. Her gruff delivery and straightforward manner was refreshing and funny. (At one point she tossed the audience a ball of duct tape she'd found on the floor. "Here you probably want this!"). She closed the talk by saying it was time to go sit at the book table, because she loves to sell her books. ...As she would not let us forget, she is also an excellent businessperson. 

This ends this month's installment of our two-part series on Temple Grandin. I hope her wisdom and example inspires you to push forward on your studies, whether you struggle with a disability or not. Next month we will talk about what kinds of contributions different minds like Grandin's can bring to higher education and to university research.

The Drive You Save May Be Your Own

From start to finish, the thesis or dissertation is an arduous journey fraught with highs and lows.  Along the way, many things require special care, including even the computer device(s) on which you save your important work.  For many writers, the principal means of storage is a USB flash drive.  Words to the wise (and reminders to the conscientious): flash drives are a convenient but by no means failsafe storage option.

Nothing Lasts Forever

If you’re like me, you devote much of your attention these days to drafting and revising your dissertation.  You depend on a flash drive to store your work as you go.  You rarely consider flash-drive wear and tear.  But you should.  Think of all the places such devices regularly visit: in between connections to various USB ports, they spend time in pockets or backpacks or on table surfaces alongside other objects large and small.  Drives that hang with keys on a keychain experience another broad assortment of surroundings.  Imagine the bumps and variations in temperature flash drives regularly encounter.  Note that such stresses can gradually weaken the connection between a drive’s plug and its body.

Inside a flash drive

This connection is partly mechanical, partly electrical.  It involves a short row of tiny lugs.  They’re soldered atop the surface of a small internal circuit board.

I became keenly aware of such technical details of the typical flash drive about two months ago when the plug on mine—a drive on which I had been saving enormous amounts of precious data—suddenly snapped off.  In one stroke, recent notes and chapter drafts became instantly inaccessible!  A mammoth tornado swept through Research Avenue and knocked down Dissertation Hall, the home I had been digitally building for over a year on the remarkably vulnerable grounds of a flash memory chip.

Flash Drive Fiasco Headed Your Way?

No, you’re safe.  Clearly you won’t suffer such a catastrophe if you always handle your flash drive with tender loving care and keep it in a special place when not using it.  Or if you regularly back up files on your drive to other storage media (in accordance with the First Law of Safe Computing).  And of course you’ll avoid flash-drive horrors if you never store files on such a device to begin with and instead save everything to your hard drive…and/or external backup drive…and/or the cloud.

Yes, you’re flirting with disaster.  Again, however, if you’re like me, much of your attention nowadays centers on revising and composing your big writing project.  When you’re in the thick of all that and moving from home to office to library and back, plans for a rigorous storage routine fade into the background.  You easily fall back on the familiar habit of quickly and simply saving to the flash drive (and often forget to make backups).  Actually, in the Thesis Office, we’re quite used to working with grad students well acquainted with this habit.  Those who stop by for help with editing or formatting typically bring their working drafts (and many other important files) on what appear to be well-used and fully-loaded flash drives.

Flash Drive Recovery

What can thesis or dissertation writers do if most or all of their saved writing vanishes when their flash drive snaps in two—or otherwise fails?

Closeup of my wreck, post recovery. 

In my case, after it quickly became clear that I myself wouldn’t be able to repair the damage, my first stop was a DeKalb computer shop.  For a small fee, the attendant there soldered the USB plug back onto the drive’s circuit board.  But no luck: now Windows wouldn’t recognize the drive!

Flip-side view.  So much data in one little chip.

Was all my data really gone forever?  He then calmly referred me to an out-of-state recovery service.  I soon learned that data recovery experts can fetch fees that range from the livable to the breathtakingly astronomical.

Eventually I located a different and more feasible service online.  (Details on such services are plentiful on Google.)

Preventative Measures

Save to the cloud.  This well-known and sound advice, noted above, is always worth repeating.  One way to integrate cloud storage into everyday flash-drive usage is to set it up to run automatically.  Look for shareware or software that enables automatic uploading of files from your USB to Dropbox, OneDrive, or other cloud storage services. (Several such options are easy to track down on Google.)

Make regular backups.  You’re likely familiar with ways to configure Windows to perform automatic backups of your computer’s hard drive.  Note that relatively inexpensive software programs exist that also enable you to back up data automatically from your USB drive to your hard drive.

Remove safely.  Obviously, you should be gentle when removing your flash drive from USB ports.  Never remove the drive while a file is being written (or copied) to it.  And despite any optimizations you may have set on a Windows machine for quick removal, always right-click Eject and wait until you see the window that says the device can be safely removed before you unplug it. 

Long Story Short

In the end, I was able to recover all data on my damaged flash drive, but not right away and not without considerable misery and embarrassment.  If you ever face such an exasperating (but largely preventable) dilemma, know that recovery is possible...but not always certain.  Scribe carefully.

Working through Summer

That one time I rode 70 miles RT to NIU
and back, because I didn't have a car.
I coulda gotten a ride, but what fun is that?
Nothing else going on in summer...

On weekends when my kids were with their dad, I'd ride my bike up to the boat ramp and meet a friend who taught kayaking classes. I was the sweep, the person who kept everyone together and made sure they weren't upside-down. I could even rescue them if I had to. (Though none of them ever believed me when I told them this. I'm short and 115 lbs.) All those weekends behind the paddle earned me huge arms and dark shoulders, and about $40 a class. Not enough to pay the bills, but enough to have a taco afterward. The waitresses knew I'd sit outside, stinking from the river as I was. And maybe after that I could ride the bike to get bread and milk ALDI.

This doesn't sound like the work life of someone with a master's degree. But it was. In the six summers since I began that degree, and now the doctorate, I've kayaked, waited tables, sung in a band, taught little kids to read, lifted boxes at a home improvement store, wrote product descriptions, designed industrial soap bottle labels, and tutored high school kids in creative writing for extra cash. Actually, for ALL the cash. There was no other cash in the summer, except for the coins I'd collect in a coffee can, and the occasional fifty my dad would mail me to put gas in the car. And sometimes, there was no car.

As a graduate assistant at a state school, most of us don't get paid for about 3 1/2 months in the summer. And neither do most adjunct professors, anywhere. With most contingent academic contracts, the pay runs through the academic year. Every May 15, my stipend would dry up, and my adjunct paycheck would stop coming. And then the work stopped too. People stopped depending on me. Kids stopped accidentally calling me "professor." It hurt.

One may think, "Well now you are freed up to get another job!" But it's not that simple. Losing the academic and teaching work hurts some of us just as much as losing the money. I want to discuss a few things about "working through summer," give my two cents as a veteran grad assistant, and solicit ideas from you.

I think of summer as three things at work:

That was no fun, that job.

Working for Money: Maintaining your income (or at least part of it) is tricky, and finding a job that fits is even trickier. I did not tell Menard's that I had a master's degree. I will not put teaching kayaking or even teaching little kids to read on my resume. So, should I do something that I can add to my C.V., like try to teach college summer school? Should I suck it up and put my little self to work in a warehouse and sock away normal workin'-(wo)man wages all summer? Or should I rest, and live out of the coffee can? The best summers I've had have been spent resting, with intermittent work.

As you put some summers under your belt, there will be more and more opportunities for summer work, and even assistantships that span the year, or are summer GA gigs. Stay informed about opportunities on your campus. Ask your Graduate Director, and read the email newsletters. I am now, after all those miserable summers, on a 12-month contract thanks to a recommendation from the former Grad Director! (It doesn't make up for lost adjunct work though...the coin can abides.)

Working on Scholarship: The summertime blues are further complicated if you are writing a thesis or dissertation. You HAVE to keep working on the school stuff all summer. Even if two-thirds of your committee is away in another country for two months (my actual current dilemma!). The library is not open late like it usually is. You are not on campus all the time, surrounded by other working students, your advisors, and the general productive buzz of the university. You lose touch with your tribe. It is easy to get out of every good habit that your work and social environment gives you.

But you HAVE to keep at it. The whiteboard is my summer friend. I list everything I need to do, every day. (I make schedules on paper for the bigger picture.) Use methods like Pomodoro or "5 minutes a day" to ensure even the tiniest steps are being taken toward your goals.  This is a lonely, lonely time in the writing of the dissertation or thesis. Exercise, connect, read, or do whatever you need to to keep yourself grounded and healthy. But keep at it. You can pick up with advisors in the fall, and they will be happy you have something to share. Unlike with coursework and teaching work, professors (and the university) do expect you to be at work on the thesis or dissertation year-round. This is so hard, I know. But don't forget about it in your struggle to keep food on the table and keep the kids in pool passes.

Three summers ago, this is
literally what my coin jar was for.

Working on Yourself -- the Professional Identity Crisis:
I have a few colleagues of quality who do not experience this, and who are happy to "live out of the can" and rest for a long spell. That seems like the sane thing to do! But many of us grad students are driven in a way that can't be powered down. It's a blessing during the school year, and a curse during breaks. Personally, when I lose my titles (instructor, "professor," committee member, etc.), I lose a little bit of myself. I wear cut-offs around town and quick-dry shorts to kayak and no one addresses me with anything like deference. I become a nobody, and a poor nobody. Taking demeaning jobs, as I sometimes have, only reinforces this. If I had the pay or the position I might be happy to lounge around and dress like a slob for awhile. Who cares what anyone thinks? But when you are still crossing the impostor syndrome threshold, have $7 in your bank account, and realize that it's your former student putting milk and eggs in your cart at the food pantry (that happened), life is hard. And you're not sure where you fit. Don't forget that this is only temporary. You are working through summer for a very good reason.

In conclusion

I will make it through, like so many of my colleagues before me. And you can too! I'm looking at a May 2019 graduation with a Ph. D. (It will take me a year longer than it will take most of my cohort. I'm the only one with kids, and that's my standing excuse.) That means I have less than a summer and a half remaining of squeezing by, wallowing in existential crisis, rolling coins, and forcing myself to work alone.  As painful as it has been to work through all these summers, now that I can see the end of it coming, I know it will all be worth it. I already have great memories of pool time with the kids (paid for in sweaty cash), bike rides to the ice cream shop, and my daughter's August birthday parties. Look at that! I'm already forgetting the terrible jobs and summer insecurities.

Now if I can just make it till Tuesday when I get paid for my band's last gig...

To misquote T.S. Eliot: August is the cruellest month. Let's survive it, let's work through it, and let's all look forward to September's welcome return.

How do you work through summer?

Writing Outside: Healthy Now and for the Long Haul

Composing al fresco, Shabbona Lake State Park

In our last post, we shared several helpful ways to overcome the terror of the blank page and fill it with words.  Here we offer a somewhat related tip: often you can effectively recharge your writing by taking it outside.

Outside?

Absolutely.  In the fresh air, under natural light.  Preferably somewhere relatively open so that walls don’t separate you from the expanse of your natural surroundings.  At nearly any stage of the thesis or dissertation, you can benefit from spending quality time in open-air settings that are suitable for relaxing but also walking, running, and cycling.  You may question the idea of bringing anything related to your project to such locales.  Yet this approach can often be just what you and your writing need, especially during times your progress slows down or your energy runs low.

Why?

Introducing your writing to outdoor settings can restore its vigor and rebalance your approach to it.  The thesis or dissertation tends to keep you indoors and narrowly focused for long stretches.  Granted, most of the work requires a lot of desk time.  But too much of that can dull your body, mind, and ultimately your writing.  Although there are many ways to take breaks, spending time outside can be especially rejuvenating.  “In the woods, is perpetual youth.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that statement in his 1836 essay Nature as a way of introducing perhaps his most celebrated image dealing with the individual and the outdoors: “Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes.  I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all.”  Fanciful interpretations aside, Emerson’s idea hints at what you and your project can gain through outdoor excursions.  Certainly there is much to see and appreciate in nature.  But getting out in it can also help you see and appreciate your growing text more clearly.

How?

Among the many approaches to taking writing outside, the following are useful for immediate gain as well as long-term success:

Meditation on the Move.  Here you explore your thoughts about your writing (or anything else) while traversing outdoor surroundings on foot or bicycle.  This approach is particularly helpful during drafting and revising stages, that is, while you’re building and/or rearranging ideas.  As noted in a previous blog post, the term for this approach comes from writer and long-distance-running enthusiast Joe Henderson.  Fundamental to it is the principle that time spent thinking and moving is more important than mere distance covered: thus, aiming to get outside for 1 to 2 hours is better than aiming to complete a certain number of laps or miles.  As you meditate on the move, it also helps to note beings and objects in the distance, such as birds on branches, fish under water (often quite visible in certain sections of the Kish south of the NIU campus), clumps of faraway trees, or clouds on the horizon.  In addition to helping you stretch your mind, such distance viewing can give a welcome break to your eyes, which already spend plenty of time narrowly focused on words, pages, and screens.

Outdoor Journaling.  During a walk, run, or ride, stopping to make notes in a journal can be a very rewarding practice.  A journal allows you to put down ideas on the spot that might not come back to you when you later return to your indoor writing.  Out in nature, a pen and a pad of paper can reassert their handiness as writing tools.  Natural light can reengage your interest in your handwriting as well as the thoughts you express in it.  Of course, instead of such quaint holdovers from yesteryear, you could bring along an electronic writing gizmo.  But since you’re going outside partly to break away from routine, why not also temporarily disengage from such devices?  When you get down to it, working with writing on a screen outdoors, no matter how much you move in or out of the shade or adjust brightness settings, tends to be cumbersome and is often counterproductive.
 
Write by Windows.  Luckily, even while still working indoors, you’re generally never too far from nature.  Thus, obviously the quickest way to engage your writing with the outside world is to move to a nearby window and open it.  (Yes, even in cold weather.)  Simply composing by an open window can remarkably restore connections with your broader surroundings and thus ultimately also help revivify your writing.  It can also encourage you to venture further afield and take up some of the tips detailed above.

Wishing you continued success with your project as we head into the summer, perhaps the best season for taking your writing outside!

Staying in Love with Your Thesis or Dissertation

Exams passed, proposal approved, and you happily move forward with your writing project.  The growing relationship between you and your significant document draws on several forces, not least passion and devotion.  For some writers, these forces never waver and may even increase over time.  Yet other writers can face weary stretches due to a fading of that initial spark.  How does it happen?  How can writers stay enthralled with their thesis or dissertation?  This post mainly goes out to those of you who ponder such questions.  But it also offers helpful bits even to those convinced from the outset that they will blissfully go the distance—and those thrilled to be nearing their project’s final stages.    

Prime Factors Behind Burnout

Waning enthusiasm over the course of such a long undertaking can result from many things.  You deal with certain matters beyond your control, such as outside commitments to work or family, schedules of your committee, or availability of resources for research, experiments, or data analysis.  But most important are your own contributing thoughts and emotions, internal matters that can press acutely but that you can likely address more readily.  Such as:

Doubts about your progress.  Uncertainties about the development of your lengthy document can crop up during writing slumps and delays.  You may also harbor doubts while waiting for feedback on chapters from your readers—or, after receiving feedback, while acting on requests for changes or revisions, major and minor. 

Concerns that what you’re doing is trivial.  Such concerns partner with the so-called imposter syndrome.  They may cause you to reconsider the theory or methodology you’re applying to your endeavor.  You may ponder tweaking your approach, revisiting your proposal, or even stripping away at the foundations of the entire affair.

Temptations to pull the plug.  These can accompany outbursts like “I’m sick and tired of this whole thing.”  Probably not the exact words of any contemporary American grad student, and most likely not always true about all parts of the undertaking.  For example, in the case of my dissertation, the literary texts I’m writing about are, to me, endlessly fascinating and enjoyable.  But let’s face it: even re-examining stuff you like can eventually become draining.  Outside the context of language and literary research, important supporting tasks like tabulating results, running statistical tests, or transcribing interviews can each get tedious.  Any project requiring long stretches of deep thought, creativity, intense focus, and adherence to standards and guidelines inevitably leads to exhaustion.

Some Solutions

OK, so what to do about all this?  Among the many possible courses of action, the following three seem eminently achievable:

Revisit work that brought you to your project.  Look back at previous studies or research relevant to your current doings—or at things not directly related to them.  This experience may help remind you of what drew you to your project in the first place or point out approaches to it you may not have considered yet.

Talk about your project.  Although your ultimate aim is to arrange your ideas in writing, talking them over with others can help you maintain momentum and flow, rediscover what excites you about your project, and see what others find interesting in it.  The first person to turn to is your director, who knows your project well but is still one step removed from the composition process and, therefore, able to rekindle your sense of its strengths and significance.  Certainly you can also approach your committee readers for similar feedback.  Friends and family members can be good sounding boards, even if they’ve already heard a lot from you about your various compositional ups and downs.  Also consider the benefits of sharing your project’s aims with new acquaintances in your department, across campus, and at academic conferences.  I recently traveled to a large national conference, where I presented a portion of my dissertation research, attended several panels on topics relevant to it, and took in few that were distantly related.  The trip was a brief but helpful break from the writing.  It gave me welcome chances to meet and talk about what I’m doing with grad students and faculty from other institutions.  I came back refreshed and reenergized.    

Take regular breaks.  Needed diversions from your largely indoor endeavor should be regular and clearly distinguished from your main tasks at hand.  Getting outside, especially now that the weather is turning sunnier and warmer, can do wonders for your writing, thinking, and overall enthusiasm for your project.  Such sessions of “meditation on the move,” a term writer and runner Joe Henderson has applied to recreational long-distance running, will be explored in a future post on taking your writing outside.  Look for it in the coming weeks.  Until then, happy writing!     

Meditation on the Move, Southwest of the NIU Campus

Writing Happens Step by Step, Day by Day

“So…how’s that writing coming along?”  It seems the longer you’re engaged in your project, the more often this question—or one like it—finds a way into conversations with colleagues, friends, and family.  For insights on writing progress and occasional writing delays, below we share a few sources of wisdom from a little beyond the well-traveled paths.
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“Avoidant Syndrome”?
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Writers sometimes hit snags.  Perhaps you find yourself lingering over getting a part of your project started—or, even after starting on it, getting stuck and staying that way for a noticeable while.  Are you avoiding pressing tasks at hand?  Maybe.  But not all writing delays simply boil down to avoidance.  Writing can slow or come to a stop due to multiple factors, some beyond the writer’s control.  Yet if you experience a lengthy writing block that feels closely bound to thoughts of dodging criticism or rejection of your work, perhaps you’re flirting with what some call The Avoidant Syndrome.

I’m adapting the above terms and ideas, by the way, not so much from experience as from information about writing stoppage found on the detailed Website of A.R.T.S. Anonymous, an organization I hadn’t heard of until very recently.  As you might guess from their name, they’re a support group for creative people modeled on organizations that guide members as they follow a twelve-step program to recovery—the acronym in their name stands for Artists Recovering through the Twelve Steps.  OK, quick disclaimer.  My aim here is not to promote or question A.R.T.S. Anonymous (or any similar twelve-step programs).  Instead, I want to point out some of the principles that inform the way this support group treats the creative process and creative blocks, which share a few things in common with the writing process and writing blocks.  These principles can be of some use to anyone working toward completing a thesis or dissertation, perhaps the longest and most vexing writing project a grad student may ever face.
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Useful Insights
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Process, Not Product:  A.R.T.S. Anonymous outlines a path toward creative success in their list of Twelve Talents for a Good Life.  Item 11 in the list stresses that the creative process itself—rather than the product eventually created—is the artist’s (or writer’s) most valuable reward.  Useful for writers of all stripes, this principle is especially helpful for writers in the final composing phases of a master’s or doctoral program.  One of the biggest reasons such writers sometimes experience stoppages may be that the aimed-for product is so highly esteemed.  The thesis or dissertation is a mark of academic distinction that propels its author (you) through the beginning stages of the post-degree career.  It’s hard not to contemplate that weighty fact as you work on your project.  But heeding the principle of process over product healthily encourages you to defer such reflection until the most appropriate moments, which likely come after, not before, the process of writing the whole thing is complete.  

Setting Goals: In guidelines they provide for their initial meetings, A.R.T.S. Anonymous suggests that participating creators draw up a simple plan of tasks with projected completion dates.  The list they have in mind should be structured something like this:
Task 1 ______________  To be completed by ______________
Task 2 _____________    To be completed by ______________, etc.
Such a scheme is commonsensical and calls to mind the project-based angle on completing the thesis or dissertation, which this blog touched on last November in a review of the book Writing the Dissertation: A Systematic Approach.  Yet two bits of advice stand out in the A.R.T.S. Anonymous view on goal-setting: (1) you do need to jot down a projected completion date, but then (2) you shouldn’t feel pressure to complete the tasks in the order you list them or on the exact date you set.  At first glance, these tips seem contradictory, but they mesh with their process-over-product principle.  The essential message of A.R.T.S. Anonymous, once again, is that you must constantly engage in your creative endeavor.  Process is primary.  Time taken and final product are secondary concerns.  It’s a message that can certainly be of help to some of you in the thick of writing a thesis or dissertation. 

Daily Five Minutes:  A.R.T.S. Anonymous calls this 5 Alive, and it’s fundamental to their program.  The idea behind this potentially transforming practice is simple: devote five full minutes each day to your project.  Consider how just five minutes per day gradually adds up: after one week, you’ve put in 35 minutes, and after one month, nearly 2 1/2 hours.  Yet surely that short daily session can easily turn into a longer one, leading to more productive weeks and months.  And that’s the idea.  If you commit to a firm but manageable daily schedule, you’ll not only stay productive but often find yourself exceeding original expectations for your progress.  Writers sometimes employ similar schemes for individual composing sessions.  For example, the ten-minute freewrite: put pen to paper or hands on keyboard and write anything and everything that comes to mind, nonstop, for ten minutes.  No matter how unrefined or choppy, the text you compose in a freewriting session nearly always yields a phrase, sentence, group of thoughts, or some combination of these that you can build on as you work toward shaping your ideas in writing.  And last December, this blog detailed ways to organize a chunk of writing into four 25-minute sessions, a so-called Pomodoro.  But setting aside five solid minutes each day to your project is by far the simplest and most achievable benchmark we’ve come across.
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Routine is Key
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In summary, several ideas from A.R.T.S. Anonymous deserve consideration as you keep your writing going.  Most important is to make time for focused engagement with the writing process every day.  One last bit of related wisdom, which eloquently stresses some of the points raised above, especially the importance of daily writing: a short but powerful piece penned by detective and mystery novelist Walter Mosley, which appeared in The New York Times.  Happy Daily Writing!


Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Trick and TREAT Yourself to Some Support!

As Halloween arrives, and as you hand out candy or get dressed up for the holiday, think about giving yourself a real treat: find a writing partner or another source to help keep you on track for your study.

In the MOOC “How to Survive Your PhD,” developed by Dr. Inger Mewburn and the Australia National University Online team, the moderators begin the course with a discussion into why PhD students quit (applies to thesis writers, too). As expected, “intellectual isolation” and “stress/exhaustion/mental health issues” were among the several reasons given for quitting. Other reasons, such as “mounting debt” and “being made to do non-thesis work,” were given, but the first two I mentioned can be addressed with a small amount of effort.    

If you are reading this, you probably know that the Thesis Office tries to help with isolation through our Facebook group (NIU Theses and Dissertations) and this blog. However, I’m of the opinion that nothing beats face-to-face interactions, at least occasionally!

And not long ago, a colleague, who recently earned her PhD (congratulations, Professor Probst!), offered me a related piece of advice for making progress. Dr. Probst said she found it very helpful to have weekly meetings with a partner. Here’s how she describes her experience:

“A fellow Ph.D. candidate and I decided to dissertate from afar while we assumed full-time positions. We understood the challenges of writing a dissertation being removed from constructs, particularly peer support, at the university. We planned to continue our regular writing sessions that we began at NIU, but difficulties in arranging our schedules to make time for our dissertations presented themselves. Our weekly meetings held us accountable to write regularly, one of the most important habits for completing the dissertation. Rarely did we review each other’s work—that is not the support we needed. We needed consistency, and a guaranteed weekly opportunity to write meant we had to prioritize that work over other tasks or interests. Furthermore, our meetings encouraged us to write and revise outside these sessions because our writing mindset never lapsed, however tired and discouraged we sometimes felt. We learned that allowing too much distance from the dissertation would make returning to it more challenging. Additionally, the emotional struggles of writing a dissertation are real and can be detrimental, so the emotional support we provided to one another often was more important than carving out time in our schedules to write.”

Wow! I think Dr. Probst’s words offer some good advice!

If you cannot find a partner or cannot work out the logistics, though, NIU offers other resources that might be of benefit.

For instance, if you are experiencing stress, anxiety, or any other condition such as depression, NIU’s Counseling and Consultation Services, located in the Campus Life Building (corner of Lucinda and Normal) Room 200, offers free groups and programs for NIU students. One of their offerings is a “Mindful Monday” group, which meets from 12 – 12:45 for meditation and relaxation, thus reducing stress while offering camaraderie.

They also have therapy dogs every 2nd Monday from 6:00-7:15 pm in Stevenson Hall. See one good dog in the photo to the right!

NIU counselors can get you to an appropriate anxiety/stress management group by referral from a walk-in appointment, available Monday through Friday from 11:00 – 3:30. For more information, see their website or call them at 815-753-1206.

Finally, don’t forget about us, the Thesis and Dissertation Office. We are here in Adams Hall 104 Monday through Thursday from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm, and we have a quiet workshop area in our adjoining room (AH 103) where you can work anytime we are open. Stop in, call us (815) 753- 9405, or email thesis@niu.edu. We will be glad to help in any way we can.

Break Time!

We’ve been posting some heavy material in our last few blog entries—so this post encourages you to relax! With many of us about to start (or have started) a new school year or semester, and others working hard in other ventures, I'm excited to tell you about the studies revealing the benefits of taking a break, especially outside. 

On June 23 of this year, NPR’s Patti Neighmond posted an article, “Take a Hike to Do Your Heart and Spirit Good.” In this piece, Neighmond references an NPR study on adult exercise. The poll revealed that about 50% of adults say they do exercise regularly, with walking being the most common activity. Neighmond reveals, however, that many people think walking isn’t good enough exercise, so they may skip it.

Neighmond then reports on studies by Dr. Tim Church of Louisiana State University. These studies show that while walking might not help adults lose actual pounds, it does help reduce belly fat and keeps the body generally healthier.

What does that have to do with writing? Well, Church also found that regular walkers have    

•     less anxiety
•        less depression
•        more energy

So for writers of serious, lengthy research, why not stop for a few minutes and take a walk to recharge--so to speak? And even if you are quite energetic already, there are more benefits of nature breaks...

In April 2014, Ellen Stuart from the Ernst & Young Leadership and Professional Development Center at NIU wrote a post called “Boost Your Brainpower!” for the LPDC Blog. Ellen reports that “spending time outside can actually boost your brainpower”; she references the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which finds that a “20 minute walk through ‘green space’… reduces ‘brain fatigue.’”

These ideas may be second nature (pun not entirely intended!) to most, but I think sometimes we need to be reminded and prompted to actually get outside!

Yet, as I was riding my bike on my favorite path recently, I began to wonder if even the smells around me had a positive influence—including that dank river smell. I did a quick Google search and found a piece that Bonnie Tsui wrote for The Atlantic City Lab entitled “The Smell of Nature Is Almost As Good As the Real Thing, As Far As Our Brains Are Concerned.”

Hmmm…really?

Well, yes. Tsui provides good evidence for using aromatherapy during those times when you can’t get outside. Tsui refers to a study touting the benefits of walking outside done by Qing Li, an immunologist at Tokyo’s Nippon Medical School. In this study, Li found that “walks in the woods boosted natural killer immune cells that helped fight infection and cancer,” and he, as I (patting myself on the back), “came to suspect that it was the natural scents of evergreens and other trees that did the bulk of the work." Some countries are now even promoting “forest therapy,” according to Tsui. Read Tsui’s piece to learn about Li’s findings on sniffing cypress scents and more. 

So while I might fire up the aromatherapy diffuser soon, right now, it’s beautiful outside. I’m going to take a walk and view and smell the real outdoors. I hope that you can too.