fighting through the din
In an effort to stick with feeling empowered, I'm sharing what has me terrified right now, so that I can move through it and get back to work.
I have 1 chapter left to rewrite for my dissertation. It has been a long, hard road at this point, but the end might finally be in sight. I say might because I feel like the goal posts keep getting moved, subtly, by my committee so that I will never finish. I expected once upon a time to be done in Sept./Oct. (and I believe there was a time before that when I envisioned finishing over the summer, but that was so long ago that I really don't remember...). This date has been moved several more times.
I've also taken what feels like quite a beating, especially over the last month. I can count on one had the number of days I have not been actively writing or editing a chapter for my dissertation, and on some of those I was working on other thesis related things. I say this not so much to be "oh woe is me" as to show that I have been pouring more effort into this than I do into, well, anything. And throughout this I have been receiving a lot of criticism, which is, of course, what is driving the editing. I don't do well with criticism. Usually this level of criticism (which is always worded harshly by my advisor) would leave me freaking out and unable to hear anything useful for about a day. Instead I have been pushing through, trying to protect my wounded pride while giving my committee what they really want. It has been an exhausting process and a process that I was only willing to exhaust myself on for the time I thought I had... which has now been extended by two weeks. I don't have the energy to keep doing this, I used it up trying to meet the past 2 or 3 deadlines.
So with all this work, I thought I had learned enough so that this last chapter wouldn't be as bad. I was WRONG. I knew I was getting burned out, so yesterday I refused to do any editing on this chapter and did most of the formatting and other extraneous things for my thesis and generally tried to chill out (yes, that was one of my 4-5 days of "not writing"). Today I opened the chapter to discover the first 2 pages were entirely in a different color -- members of my committee had erased and rewritten my whole first page. WTF. This chapter contains comments and edits from 2 of my 3 faculty members and to me it is the visual representation of them shouting over each other and occasionally ardently agreeing that what i said was really stupid. OUCH. I've really been punched in the gut with this one... and my advisor even wrote an email trying to temper it today (also she was confused by some of the other committee member's complaints).
I'm going to take a step back, take something for this headache and make some tea. Then I'm going to wade through the mess of comments and corrections and address the ones that are on writing style. Once those are cleaned out of the way, maybe I can address the actual idea issues.
So I leave you, LJ, to bolster my superpowers and face my nemesis once again.
I have 1 chapter left to rewrite for my dissertation. It has been a long, hard road at this point, but the end might finally be in sight. I say might because I feel like the goal posts keep getting moved, subtly, by my committee so that I will never finish. I expected once upon a time to be done in Sept./Oct. (and I believe there was a time before that when I envisioned finishing over the summer, but that was so long ago that I really don't remember...). This date has been moved several more times.
I've also taken what feels like quite a beating, especially over the last month. I can count on one had the number of days I have not been actively writing or editing a chapter for my dissertation, and on some of those I was working on other thesis related things. I say this not so much to be "oh woe is me" as to show that I have been pouring more effort into this than I do into, well, anything. And throughout this I have been receiving a lot of criticism, which is, of course, what is driving the editing. I don't do well with criticism. Usually this level of criticism (which is always worded harshly by my advisor) would leave me freaking out and unable to hear anything useful for about a day. Instead I have been pushing through, trying to protect my wounded pride while giving my committee what they really want. It has been an exhausting process and a process that I was only willing to exhaust myself on for the time I thought I had... which has now been extended by two weeks. I don't have the energy to keep doing this, I used it up trying to meet the past 2 or 3 deadlines.
So with all this work, I thought I had learned enough so that this last chapter wouldn't be as bad. I was WRONG. I knew I was getting burned out, so yesterday I refused to do any editing on this chapter and did most of the formatting and other extraneous things for my thesis and generally tried to chill out (yes, that was one of my 4-5 days of "not writing"). Today I opened the chapter to discover the first 2 pages were entirely in a different color -- members of my committee had erased and rewritten my whole first page. WTF. This chapter contains comments and edits from 2 of my 3 faculty members and to me it is the visual representation of them shouting over each other and occasionally ardently agreeing that what i said was really stupid. OUCH. I've really been punched in the gut with this one... and my advisor even wrote an email trying to temper it today (also she was confused by some of the other committee member's complaints).
I'm going to take a step back, take something for this headache and make some tea. Then I'm going to wade through the mess of comments and corrections and address the ones that are on writing style. Once those are cleaned out of the way, maybe I can address the actual idea issues.
So I leave you, LJ, to bolster my superpowers and face my nemesis once again.