Finish Your Dissertation Once and for All!

Finish Your Dissertation Once and for All!: How to Overcome Psychological Barriers, Get Results, and Move on with Your LifeFinish Your Dissertation Once and for All!: How to Overcome Psychological Barriers, Get Results, and Move on with Your Life by Alison B. Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One-sentence synopsis: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, I’m going to finish this dissertation!” Yes, all I kept thinking about whilst skimming this were Stuart Smalley‘s daily affirmations. From the title I was hoping for something directed at people who are already in the midst of working on their dissertations—more concrete ideas about speeding up the process. Essentially I’m already doing everything suggested in this book. So while it was an affirmation (ha) that I’m on the right track, sadly it offered no magic bullets. Will continue to plod. (Have started to think Evelyn Hunt Ogden‘s suggestion to hire someone to help with monotonous tasks wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.) Recommended for anyone floundering at the “I don’t know where to start” stage.

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Spring 2013 – Week 4

What I did this week:

  • Scanned + printed 12 chapters (total: 78).
  • Entered book data for 12 books.
  • Read and took notes on 3 research chapters (Keen, Shirky, Hedges).
  • Library – returned books + took out 12 more (total: 90).
  • Updated Goodreads list.
  • Updated spreadsheet + Scrivener.

5: Refuse to Choose

Refuse to Choose! : A Revolutionary Program for Doing All That You LoveRefuse to Choose! : A Revolutionary Program for Doing All That You Love by Barbara Sher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Borrowed from the VPL.

Read in January 2013.

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I saw this mentioned The Clutter Museum:

One of my favorite career-finding books, and one I recommend regularly to my students, is Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose. In it, she describes ‘scanners,’ bright people who are simultaneously and/or serially interested in diverse and sometimes divergent subjects and careers.

and for obvious reasons was intrigued.

Sher’s opening anecdote is about reading university course descriptions, wanting to take everything—and her sadness on realizing she couldn’t:

The conventional wisdom was overwhelming and seemed indisputable: If you’re a jack-of-all-trades, you’ll always be a master of none. You’ll become a dilettante, a dabbler, a superficial person—and you’ll never have a decent career. Suddenly, a scanner who all through school might have been seen as an enthusiastic learner had now become a failure. (6)

She describes different types of scanners. I was skimming along, identifying with a characteristic here and there, when I reached the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ type, which is so me, it’s ridiculous (right down to the detail that jacks don’t have the clutter problem that other scanners do). Some highlights:

  • do you have more certificates and degrees that most people—all in different disciplines? *cough*
  • are you good at just about everything you try? / have you ever thought your problem would be solved if you were good at only one thing?
  • many things come easily to you so you sometimes underestimate their value
  • you “have often complained that being good at almost everything isn’t the same as being great at one thing.” (202) !! I say this all the time.

Jacks have so much talent, but that’s not all they have—they are the ones who show up and deliver. They do the job. With all these qualities, they should be hugely successful in business or the arts or some profession. But they rarely are. (203)

Truth.

Almost without exception, this type of scanner is gifted at something you don’t find on career lists: Catching the ball in a team situation. Bailing out the other players. Saving the day. (205)

She describes jacks as ‘rescuers.’

If you don’t have the needed skills, you’ll learn them fast, because you know how to learn. (206)

Yep. It’s always driven me nuts how job descriptions say stuff like ‘must be familiar with X’ or ‘must know how to use Y program’ b/c even if I’ve never done X or used Y, I can figure it out in like, a day. So no big deal.

She suggests scanners are best suited for an ‘umbrella career,’ i.e. one that allows you to do many of the things you enjoy—like freelance writer or researcher. heh 🙂 Indeed.

Throughout the book there are strategies for dealing with being a scanner. A lot of these are things I already do in my own way. The central one is keeping a ‘scanner daybook’—essentially a writer’s notebook—where you write all your random brilliant ideas 😉 down so you’re not overwhelmed/distracted by them.

While much of the book was a confirmation of stuff I already know, it’s always nice to get validation that you are not the only one, that you are a recognized type! Being a unique snowflake is overrated. Plus, now I have this post I can refer people to when they want to know what’s up with all those degrees. I can’t help it! I’m a jack-of-all-trades!

Immediately after finishing Refuse to Choose, I read this essay by Michael Dirda. Scanner alert!

When I talk to friends and editors about possible projects, especially about projects that might come with a significant cash advance, they usually suggest a biography. Sometimes I’m tempted, but the prospect of spending years researching and writing about someone else’s life offends my vanity. I don’t want to submerge myself in another man or woman’s existence, I want to write about me, about the books and writers that I like. And I want to be able to finish any commitment within a year at best, so that I can get on to something else. I have, it would seem, the temperament of a reporter—always intensely interested in a subject for a short while, but soon ready to move on to the next assignment.

Sweet Potato Curry

Sweet Potato Curry

I couldn’t find a recipe that was exactly what I wanted so I just made one up. Ended up pretty good, I thought, though it’s hard to go wrong with curry paste + coconut milk. I love that everything in it is yellow-orange-red.

Ingredients
canola oil
1 yellow onion, chopped finely
2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup red lentils
1 sweet potato aka yam, cubed
3-4 small carrots, diced
red curry paste
1/3 cup coconut milk
lemon juice

Method
In a 12-inch skillet, saute onion in a bit of oil until translucent. I added some of the curry paste at this point. Add the vegetable stock and lentils. It’ll be soup-like at this point, but that’s ok. I pre-cooked the sweet potatoes in the microwave for a few minutes just to make sure they wouldn’t end up crunchy. Add the sweet potatoes, carrots, and more curry paste to taste. Let simmer, stirring occasionally, until it thickens to a curry-like (vs. soup-like) consistency. Add the coconut milk. (To be honest, I didn’t measure this, but I think that’s about right, judging from the amount I had left over.) Simmer a few minutes more. I added a bit of lemon juice right at the end, for the sour in the magic sweet-sour-salty-spicy combo. Serve with jasmine rice. Makes 3-4 servings.

Spring 2013 – Week 3

What I did this week:

  • Scanned + printed 8 chapters.
  • Updated Scrivener project.
  • Entered book data for 8 books.
  • Read + took notes on The Shallows.
  • VPL – returned books; took out more books (it never ends).
  • University library – dropped off recalled book; picked up holds that came in.
  • Updated spreadsheet + Scrivener.
  • Updated Goodreads + WorldCat lists.
  • Backed up project.

silences

In my undergraduate creative nonfiction workshops, I begin each semester with a writing prompt that asks students to interrogate their own silences as essayists. Make a list, I say, of all the things you would never write about. What’s too painful? What’s too new? What’s too private? After they’ve been jotting notes for a few minutes, I ask them to look back over the list and add because clauses to each item – why they would never write about each subject. This way, they can share their reasons with the class, without having to share the material.

The reasons for wanting not to write about something are always revealing, and after a few classes, I’ve come to think of them as falling into one of two categories: for someone else’s sake, or for our own. We may choose not to write an essay because it would hurt, or incriminate, someone else. We may choose not to write an essay because the story, compelling as it may be, doesn’t really belong to us.

But often, the only people we’re looking to protect are ourselves.

—

being yourself / what comes naturally

“You really want to find a way to get paid for being yourself,” [Oprah] told the audience earlier, with reference to finding your purpose in life.

*

During the course of my life, I’ve worked very hard, and often with success, at things that didn’t come naturally. But in the end, I do best—and certainly most enjoy—what comes naturally.  By the way, the fact that something “comes naturally” doesn’t mean that it’s easy or doesn’t require tremendous amounts of practice.

—Gretchen Rubin

unwilling to write a mediocre page

I think George Saunders hasn’t written a novel because he’s too much of a prose perfectionist. Because he’s unwilling to write a mediocre page. Because he likes the control the short-story form gives him.

“A novel is a work of a certain length that is somehow flawed,” a wise critic once said — and as I was told during the first few weeks of my MFA program.

To write a novel, and see to it through from the first word to the 150,000th, you have to be willing to embrace the idea that every once in a while your prose is going to be, for lack of a better word, more prosaic than it would be otherwise. Why? Because to get a reader to make it through 150,000 words (the length of my last, and about the length of your average robust novel), you need this clunky, unattractive but very utilitarian thing called a plot.

—Hector Tobar

Spring 2013 – Week 2

What I did this week:

  • Returned books to VPL + took out 11 more.
  • Went to downtown uni library + took out 8 books.
  • Updated Goodreads lists.
  • Uupdated paper lists.
  • Updated spreadsheet + Scrivener project.
  • Requested 6 books.
  • Skimmed ebooks; pared list; identified chapters to read.
  • Updated WorldCat lists.
  • More thinking/notetaking on my three categories. Broke lit review into three sections.
  • Arranged book references into those 3 categories.
  • Started identifying keywords/subjects (b/c it’s always best to do the last thing you need to do first!)
  • Skimmed pbooks; identified chapters to read.
  • Paid tuition.
  • Organized non-book references into the three magic categories.
  • Some of the books I requested came in; picked them up + returned a couple others.

Am super happy with my categories for a couple reasons: 1) realized how well they incorporate all aspects of my past education, and seeing as this is the capstone, that is an interdisciplinarian win.  2) when I sorted out my ref books into the 3 “piles” the three ended up about even–which tells me I’m on the right track.