Overcome Stalling and Start Writing Your Dissertation

You’ve reached the first dissertation milestone—approval of your prospectus. Great! You couldn’t wait to plunge into the next step, writing the proposal. But now that you’re here, somehow it’s not working. With all the best intentions and surrounded by all your scholarly materials, you’re spending long fruitless hours in your study or the library. The days are slipping away, your friends are out eating pizza, and your family wonders what you’re really doing for all those solitary hours. You feel paralyzed.

To cheer yourself up, remember that the proposal becomes the first three chapters of the real dissertation. But this fact probably offers little consolation. Your completed proposal seems like a sky-high wall with not even a step stool in sight. Where is that danged first step?

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Want to Finish? Make Your Dissertation Your Priority

As you probably already know, writing a dissertation is different from anything you’ve ever done. This undertaking requires you to adjust, if not radically change, your lifestyle. If you ever really want to complete the dissertation, and in a timely manner (if that isn’t an oxymoron), you need to rethink your priorities.

You may have been used to putting family first (possibly after your full-time job). But rethink this priority. Heartless and psychologically suspect as this statement may sound, you can make it up to your family in many other ways—later (that’s another article). Or you may say “yes” to all kinds of non-school activities. Learn to say “not now” (also another article).

At this point in your graduate school life, you’re supposed to make the dissertation your major priority. In my longtime dissertation coaching of struggling doctoral candidates and dissertation writers, I’ve learned several techniques and related perspectives that will nudge you into making your dissertation a priority.

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12/7 TAA Webinar – Passion for Learning and Research: Is Earning a Doctorate the Right Path For You?

Join us Thursday, December 7 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET for the TAA webinar, “Passion for Learning and Research: Is Earning a Doctorate the Right Path For You?”. Presenters Dr. Tasha Egalite, a newly minted PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in TESOL at New Mexico State University, and Dr. Kristin Kew, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Administration at New Mexico State University, will share and reflect on their own doctoral journeys, the critical issues they encountered, and the hoops they jumped through while completing their dissertations. Some of the themes discovered during their research on the dissertation process and obtaining a doctorate were sustaining momentum, maintaining purpose, and creating meaningful works while furthering their learning in the fields of education and educational leadership. Advice will be provided on how to determine whether to apply for a doctoral program and how to navigate some of the pitfalls and rabbit holes of the academic arena.

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A.D. (After Dissertation): How to have a life

A motivational truism says that the most dangerous time is when you’ve reached a goal. This may be why many doctoral candidates experience Post-Parting Depression (PPD). Consciously and unconsciously, you’ve been pushing so hard for so long. Preoccupied with the intensity and innumerable details of the work itself, you may have lost sight of the larger purpose of the dissertation and degree. After graduation, you no longer have to spend every moment (after eating) on the dissertation.

Most clients I’ve helped in my dissertation editing and coaching practice experience this void. For a year or usually more, they say, they’ve wished for nothing but to finish the durn thing. Now that they have . . . somehow, and with shock, they miss it—and get depressed.

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When you’re facing the fearsome doctoral defense

As you reach the end of your doctoral work, you will probably need to “defend” your dissertation. Most universities in the United States require this, although the procedures and formats may differ among them and from those in other countries. In the U.S., the advisory committee you’ve had a love-hate relationship with throughout your dissertation writing constitutes your defense committee as well. In other countries, the defense may be conducted with a blind peer review process (Australia) or as a viva (U.K.). For most students, though, it’s still a one-to-three-hour torture, with much agonizing beforehand.

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The teacher learns from teaching in the anxiety zone

For too long I’d wallowed in my routine: first planted at my computer writing, then client manuscripts, eating, gym, tv-ing, sleeping, occasional grocery-getting, and back again. But I couldn’t deny an itch, a subtle pervasive sense of dissatisfaction.

It was time to leave my comfort cocoon.

The idea had been lurking for several months. Having published many writing how-to articles, I knew I had to teach a writing workshop.

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