writing my diss
Dec. 15th, 2013 07:28 pmThe more I think about it, the more bizarre I realize my dissertation strategy was, at least compared to the other MA students I knows. I wrote my diss over about two and a half months: July for research, August and the first week and a half of September for writing. At that point I was still having chronic wrist pain, so the amount I was comfortable typing in a single day was limited, especially since I was really, really worried that I would screw up my wrists so badly that I wouldn't be able to type for a week or more. (One of the casualties of my tendonitis was that I wasn't able to type up my research notes the way I'd gotten accustomed to doing, since I didn't want to blow up my wrists on notes. I still had a lot of notes, but not as many as I would have preferred, so for about half the material I would have to page through the books or articles I read rather than referring back to my notes.)
The other thing that I was worried about in regards to my dissertation was that, a year earlier, I'd failed to complete my undergraduate honors thesis. I was terrified that my diss would go the way of my honors thesis, which basically didn't get written because I wouldn't work on it. By inclination, I have a tendency to be one of those last-minute night-before essay-writers, which does not work for a 15K MA dissertation. At least I knew this going in. The one thing I wanted to do was finish the dissertation. At this point I didn't care if it was good, all I cared about was that I proved to myself I was capable of writing an extended piece of academic writing.
So when I came back to Leicester in July, after having done no prep work in May and June -- unlike, ha, everyone else in my program that I talked to -- I had one goal for July and August: work on my dissertation every day, either writing or research. I didn't care if that was ten pages read or 100 words written, if it was five minutes or three hours, as long as I did something. No days off. Even on a truly horrendous wrist pain day, I could read five pages of a book or article.
Somewhat to my astonishment, this actually did work.
Due to my reading spreadsheets, I was actually able to keep visual track of what I was reading when and for what; through July and August I read an average of 450 research pages a week. (In July it was 610, since August I was more aimed at writing rather than research.) I didn't start writing until August 1; my goal was to write 500 words a day in order to have 15K by the end of the month, in order to spend the first week of September in edits. (My deadline was September 10.) 500 words isn't a lot -- it's about a paragraph to two paragraphs of academic writing. Twenty minutes if I don't have to keep looking up references, forty minutes if I need to keep stopping to find a quote or page number, maybe an hour tops. I can -- and I did, on occasion -- get that in while making dinner or while doing laundry. (The further I got into August, the more likely it was that I'd pick something to cook that took a long time because I'd be stuck in the kitchen, where I didn't have internet.)
Because of my wrists, I was unwilling to write more than twenty minutes at a time, so I set a timer. (I use Egg Timer or Steep.It, which is technically a tea timer but doesn't have a terrifying alarm the way Egg Timer does -- seriously, Egg Timer's alarm is terrifying and I only use it when Steep.It isn't available.) I'd write for twenty minutes, then I'd do something else for two or three or six hours, and then I'd write for another twenty minutes if I hadn't already made word count. I probably watched more TV in July and August that I ever have at any other point in my life. I went downtown and went shopping almost every day (sometimes it was window shopping rather than actual shopping, but god damn, I bought a lot of books and groceries those last few months because I'm a nervous shopper). During those two and a half months where I was working on my dissertation, I spent a lot of time not working on my diss. There were days when I didn't start working on my diss until eleven or twelve at night, since I prefer writing at night to writing during the day. My sleep schedule went to hell -- I was getting up at noon and going to bed at four or five in the morning. Not because I had to, the way I heard from some other MA students, because I was working so hard -- it just sort of did.
Around the last weekend of August, my wrists actually did go to hell, and I had several days where I was incapable of typing, which unfortunately fell right before I went to York with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aella_irene. I did not make word count that week, but I still managed to get something done every day -- 50 words at a time, a sentence or two, a few pages read, a paragraph. After I came back, I started taking a course of my tendonitis meds -- I didn't want to start while I was on holiday because my schedule was screwed up and I didn't know if I was going to have weird side effects or not. (Though seriously, at that point, I doubt I would even have noticed if I started having mood swings, I CONSTANTLY HAVE MOOD SWINGS.)
At that point, because I was behind schedule, I had to up from 500 words a day to 750, and about the last week of my diss I was writing 1K a day. I was also, at this point, watching six or seven hours of TV a day. I was literally at the point waking up, watching two or three episodes of Sons of Anarchy, writing for twenty minutes, going into town for a few hours, watching a couple more episodes, writing another twenty minutes, watching another episode, and going to bed. It was a pretty stupid schedule. It is completely contrary to every research+writing schedule I've heard about from other MA students, who used to tell me with haunted eyes that they had woken up early, been in the library all day, and crawled into bed with visions of Roman ruins dancing in their heads.
It worked.
I'm still pretty astonished that it worked; I still feel like I must have done something wrong somewhere because it's pretty much the exact opposite of what you're "supposed" to do as an academic researcher. I was stressed -- gods, I was stressed, but I wasn't as stressed as I expected to be, which, uh, actually made me more stressed because I was convinced I was missing something.
(I was having anxiety attacks the last week or so, but at that point I was rushing, which is why my last chapter and conclusion are the weakest of the dissertation, plus I was freaked out about moving and whether or not I was going to get kicked out of Opal Court, since there were literally Opal employees appearing in my room at six am when I was still asleep. GOOD TIMES, MAN, GOOD TIMES. FOR GOD'S SAKE, PEOPLE, KNOCK. But I was way more stressed about my living situation than I was about my dissertation; it was just unfortunate they both fell at the same time.)
It was crazy. It was definitely not recommended. But it did work.
On the other hand, no one else I talked to had a similar strategy, so I don't know if I just got lucky or if I was actually doing something right. But it did work. I finished my diss on time and I got really good marks.
The other thing that I was worried about in regards to my dissertation was that, a year earlier, I'd failed to complete my undergraduate honors thesis. I was terrified that my diss would go the way of my honors thesis, which basically didn't get written because I wouldn't work on it. By inclination, I have a tendency to be one of those last-minute night-before essay-writers, which does not work for a 15K MA dissertation. At least I knew this going in. The one thing I wanted to do was finish the dissertation. At this point I didn't care if it was good, all I cared about was that I proved to myself I was capable of writing an extended piece of academic writing.
So when I came back to Leicester in July, after having done no prep work in May and June -- unlike, ha, everyone else in my program that I talked to -- I had one goal for July and August: work on my dissertation every day, either writing or research. I didn't care if that was ten pages read or 100 words written, if it was five minutes or three hours, as long as I did something. No days off. Even on a truly horrendous wrist pain day, I could read five pages of a book or article.
Somewhat to my astonishment, this actually did work.
Due to my reading spreadsheets, I was actually able to keep visual track of what I was reading when and for what; through July and August I read an average of 450 research pages a week. (In July it was 610, since August I was more aimed at writing rather than research.) I didn't start writing until August 1; my goal was to write 500 words a day in order to have 15K by the end of the month, in order to spend the first week of September in edits. (My deadline was September 10.) 500 words isn't a lot -- it's about a paragraph to two paragraphs of academic writing. Twenty minutes if I don't have to keep looking up references, forty minutes if I need to keep stopping to find a quote or page number, maybe an hour tops. I can -- and I did, on occasion -- get that in while making dinner or while doing laundry. (The further I got into August, the more likely it was that I'd pick something to cook that took a long time because I'd be stuck in the kitchen, where I didn't have internet.)
Because of my wrists, I was unwilling to write more than twenty minutes at a time, so I set a timer. (I use Egg Timer or Steep.It, which is technically a tea timer but doesn't have a terrifying alarm the way Egg Timer does -- seriously, Egg Timer's alarm is terrifying and I only use it when Steep.It isn't available.) I'd write for twenty minutes, then I'd do something else for two or three or six hours, and then I'd write for another twenty minutes if I hadn't already made word count. I probably watched more TV in July and August that I ever have at any other point in my life. I went downtown and went shopping almost every day (sometimes it was window shopping rather than actual shopping, but god damn, I bought a lot of books and groceries those last few months because I'm a nervous shopper). During those two and a half months where I was working on my dissertation, I spent a lot of time not working on my diss. There were days when I didn't start working on my diss until eleven or twelve at night, since I prefer writing at night to writing during the day. My sleep schedule went to hell -- I was getting up at noon and going to bed at four or five in the morning. Not because I had to, the way I heard from some other MA students, because I was working so hard -- it just sort of did.
Around the last weekend of August, my wrists actually did go to hell, and I had several days where I was incapable of typing, which unfortunately fell right before I went to York with
aella_irene. I did not make word count that week, but I still managed to get something done every day -- 50 words at a time, a sentence or two, a few pages read, a paragraph. After I came back, I started taking a course of my tendonitis meds -- I didn't want to start while I was on holiday because my schedule was screwed up and I didn't know if I was going to have weird side effects or not. (Though seriously, at that point, I doubt I would even have noticed if I started having mood swings, I CONSTANTLY HAVE MOOD SWINGS.)At that point, because I was behind schedule, I had to up from 500 words a day to 750, and about the last week of my diss I was writing 1K a day. I was also, at this point, watching six or seven hours of TV a day. I was literally at the point waking up, watching two or three episodes of Sons of Anarchy, writing for twenty minutes, going into town for a few hours, watching a couple more episodes, writing another twenty minutes, watching another episode, and going to bed. It was a pretty stupid schedule. It is completely contrary to every research+writing schedule I've heard about from other MA students, who used to tell me with haunted eyes that they had woken up early, been in the library all day, and crawled into bed with visions of Roman ruins dancing in their heads.
It worked.
I'm still pretty astonished that it worked; I still feel like I must have done something wrong somewhere because it's pretty much the exact opposite of what you're "supposed" to do as an academic researcher. I was stressed -- gods, I was stressed, but I wasn't as stressed as I expected to be, which, uh, actually made me more stressed because I was convinced I was missing something.
(I was having anxiety attacks the last week or so, but at that point I was rushing, which is why my last chapter and conclusion are the weakest of the dissertation, plus I was freaked out about moving and whether or not I was going to get kicked out of Opal Court, since there were literally Opal employees appearing in my room at six am when I was still asleep. GOOD TIMES, MAN, GOOD TIMES. FOR GOD'S SAKE, PEOPLE, KNOCK. But I was way more stressed about my living situation than I was about my dissertation; it was just unfortunate they both fell at the same time.)
It was crazy. It was definitely not recommended. But it did work.
On the other hand, no one else I talked to had a similar strategy, so I don't know if I just got lucky or if I was actually doing something right. But it did work. I finished my diss on time and I got really good marks.
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