In the sticky, sweltering heat of late summer, I wrote a little post called “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dissertation,” which translated my writing struggles into a therapeutic list of writing tips. This post was written as I despairingly grappled with many of the negative emotions that can accompany slogging […]
About a year ago a colleague recommended some free courses being offered at the university, one of which was Foundations of Project Management. I’d considered it, but felt I didn’t have time. A few months later, a commenter on my post about managing deadlines in grad school noted that my description for managing project deadlines […]
In March I decided that I was going to read more. Despite a heavy workload, I figured there was still time in the day for reading besides journal article after journal article, so I made a goal to read 20 books this year. At the time this seemed impossible, but this week I finished […]
Have you ever been part of a similar conversation?
Colleague: Hey, I heard that you completed [insert task] (comps, proposal, thesis dissertation document)!
You: Yes, it feels great it out of the way!
Colleague: I bet. So now you just need to [insert next daunting task] (do your proposal, write your dissertation, find […]
I’m going to guess that many reading this column also have seen the “should one go to grad school” blog posts and perhaps even its variant, “should one to go grad school in the humanities.” In April, Inside Higher Ed linked to a similarly titled essay in The Hairpin, and also last month, GradHacker’s […]
I’m about to write a 900 word blog post about guilt, and I feel guilty about it. Why?
Because I could be spending this time working on my dissertation.
In fact, this is how I feel about most things that aren’t my dissertation. I feel guilty when I’m hanging out with my friends, out to […]
We’ve all been here: A deadline for a dissertation chapter, conference abstract, or presentation looms ever largely on the horizon. At first, work sessions proceed in a regular fashion. Progress is being made, and stress levels are low. Then, at some point, panic sets in because it seems like the task at hand can’t be completed-at least in the desired fashion. […]
The hardest part about sitting down to write is the actual beginning of making the clackity sound on the keyboard. I can get myself in the chair. I can turn on my machine. I can cruise around on the Internet, and type up a blog post or two about being in graduate school. But […]
Last week, as I prepared my office for an upcoming move to another home, I had a realization: when was the last time I actually took something out of my filing cabinet?
The filing cabinet sits in my closet in my home office. It include four drawers: two full of articles, one full of research notes […]
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I was supposed to breeze through graduate school without any changes: start in my hometown, comp in my hometown, defend in my hometown, and finish in my hometown. After that, I could move away, find the right girl, get married, get a job, and so forth. Here’s what […]
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What were your big classroom successes this year? @aguarnera wants to know. bit.ly/2sb3Gm8
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It’s the end of the academic year. Celebrate what went well for you. @aguarnera has some strategies. bit.ly/2tmxOu7
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You made it to summer! Congratulations! Take some time to reflect with this advice from @aguarnera.… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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