im trying to finish a draft of one of my dissertation chapters, which has been a mega struggle over the last year, and i feel that if i dont show something substantive, my department is going to kick me out. I've been working on my disseratation for a year and I dont have a solid draft of a single chapter... I have so many chunks and pieces but i have no motivation. I dont want to do academia, and i hate my discipline for the most part, so Im just totally lost with it. but I hate the idea of not finishing...
I feel ya. The sunk cost issue really fucked over a lot of my friends in academia that really just didn't want to be there. I say issue rather than fallacy due to the spectre of loans shadowing over you for the rest of forever. My advice is that you can absolutely just hand in some very poorly edited, partly incomplete work, as long as it shows you're still working on it, and have a frank discussion with your advisor or whomever your contact is on it, explaining that it's been a struggle, and if you want, why it's been a struggle. I totally get the hating your discipline thing, tho.
yeah the sunk cost is miserable. if i had known the pandemic was gonna hit and fuck up so much, i absolutely would have bounced. I just hate that the universities are just like 'nah it's fine, you're totally good to keep going like normal'.
thankfully my only debt comes from undergrad, since I got into a funded phd, even though they cut my funding last year (LOL). So im teaching on the side, as well as trying to write and keep my head above water. In my last email to my advisor I was pretty straightfoward that i was bugging, and I set a date to send in this chapter draft (mondayish) so he could see it.
God yeah, they're just pretending that everything is fine so they can keep the cash a-rolling and the profits a-climbing. It's such a fucking nightmare. Nobody can focus on this shit, remote teaching and learning is fucking impossible. I took a remote history class in undergrad and I could not fucking focus on it at all, especially since there were no lectures or anything. We'd just get a notification on a website every day telling us to read some shit, and then write about it. Zero interaction, just a single paragraph post daily from a professor in the process of moving house to another state so she wasn't even available to talk. At least it's a bit better now with zoom and stuff, but like... hell, how do people learn anything in online school? Do they just not?
I mean, there's not a lot to do with a self-imposed deadline or even much advice to give without sounding like Nike or Shia Laboeuf; "Just do it." Honestly, I'd say just sorta write whatever, as long as it meets the length needed, fits the style guide, and more or less stays on topic. If it's rambly and nonsensical, it really doesn't matter. I've seen so many dissertations that drone on or just read like the ravings of a madman for a chapter or two, it's wild.
not great.
im trying to finish a draft of one of my dissertation chapters, which has been a mega struggle over the last year, and i feel that if i dont show something substantive, my department is going to kick me out. I've been working on my disseratation for a year and I dont have a solid draft of a single chapter... I have so many chunks and pieces but i have no motivation. I dont want to do academia, and i hate my discipline for the most part, so Im just totally lost with it. but I hate the idea of not finishing...
I feel ya. The sunk cost issue really fucked over a lot of my friends in academia that really just didn't want to be there. I say issue rather than fallacy due to the spectre of loans shadowing over you for the rest of forever. My advice is that you can absolutely just hand in some very poorly edited, partly incomplete work, as long as it shows you're still working on it, and have a frank discussion with your advisor or whomever your contact is on it, explaining that it's been a struggle, and if you want, why it's been a struggle. I totally get the hating your discipline thing, tho.
yeah the sunk cost is miserable. if i had known the pandemic was gonna hit and fuck up so much, i absolutely would have bounced. I just hate that the universities are just like 'nah it's fine, you're totally good to keep going like normal'.
thankfully my only debt comes from undergrad, since I got into a funded phd, even though they cut my funding last year (LOL). So im teaching on the side, as well as trying to write and keep my head above water. In my last email to my advisor I was pretty straightfoward that i was bugging, and I set a date to send in this chapter draft (mondayish) so he could see it.
God yeah, they're just pretending that everything is fine so they can keep the cash a-rolling and the profits a-climbing. It's such a fucking nightmare. Nobody can focus on this shit, remote teaching and learning is fucking impossible. I took a remote history class in undergrad and I could not fucking focus on it at all, especially since there were no lectures or anything. We'd just get a notification on a website every day telling us to read some shit, and then write about it. Zero interaction, just a single paragraph post daily from a professor in the process of moving house to another state so she wasn't even available to talk. At least it's a bit better now with zoom and stuff, but like... hell, how do people learn anything in online school? Do they just not?
I mean, there's not a lot to do with a self-imposed deadline or even much advice to give without sounding like Nike or Shia Laboeuf; "Just do it." Honestly, I'd say just sorta write whatever, as long as it meets the length needed, fits the style guide, and more or less stays on topic. If it's rambly and nonsensical, it really doesn't matter. I've seen so many dissertations that drone on or just read like the ravings of a madman for a chapter or two, it's wild.