Well- I seem to have done it! I successfully defended my dissertation last week and passed unanimously! I don’t know if that is unusual or not, but it still feels good. Of course there were some minor revisions suggested by a few committee members, but that seems to be par for the course, in our department at least. It has been a long haul, and while I have enjoyed it overall and have met some truly lovely people, I am ready to find out what the next chapter of my life holds.

However, I wanted to take some time to give advice to others on this path. Hence, my Dissertation Survival Guide. Before I start, I will admit that I never bothered to read any of these types of lists while I was in the process myself. However, it has come up in conversation a few times, so I thought It would be worth sharing my thoughts, now that I have survived this journey, relatively sound of mind and body.

1.) Put on real clothes every day. This may or may not be important to you, but to feel like a “real” grown-up during this process, I had to look the part, to some extent. I am not advocating that you dress like you are going to a professional office every day, but I do recommend not spending more time in your pajamas than is healthy for you.

2.) Keep a routine. This was vital for me. After being a parent and teacher for most of my adult life, I was used to being responsible to and for other people. I started grad school when my children were finishing up high school, so my role was already shifting, and as a GRA, my work was flexible and somewhat sporadic, so it could have been easy to fall into a slacker lifestyle. (as a former Austinite, I can use that word with pride!) So, I still got up every day and worked out, did my house chores, and spent time “working” pretty much every day, Monday-Friday. I am a list maker, and I would make lists before I went to bed to come up with tasks to accomplish the next day, be they for my paid work, my own research, or other grad school related activities. I was afraid if I started going to movies or such during the day that this less structured lifestyle would suck me into some kind of unproductive vortex and I would linger in grad school for more years than was reasonable.

3.) Set goals. This is related to my lists. I would stay on top of reading in the field, applying to present at conferences I cared about, and I took more classes than necessary- but I did like that part of grad school. I enjoy learning!

4.) At some point, you just have to sit your booty down and write. This one took me awhile to figure out. I knew I would have to start making progress on my dissertation if I was going to finish this Spring, even though I had not gotten my IRB approval yet. But it was hard to move forward. My motivation came in the form of a fellow grad student, Elese Washines’ Facebook post. In early January, she posted her resolution to start writing an hour a day. While this is not a novel idea by any stretch of the imagination, it was all I needed to get started. So, in solidarity, I messaged Elese and asked her if she wanted to be my “accountability buddy” and that I would start writing too, and we would text each other our progress.

5.) Build your stamina. When I actually started writing the dissertation itself, I started out writing for an hour a day, four days a week. Then I based it on a daily word count. Over time, I built up the amount of time I would spend writing, and by the end, could write for hours at a time. This was useful when it came to the last push to finish on time and I would spend the whole day at my computer! My marathon analogy from previous posts has proven to be useful in so many ways!

6.) While I didn’t know it would be so useful, having an accountability buddy was important. Just texting Elese a few times a week kept me more honest about sticking to a writing routine. Being a commuter student meant I didn’t have access to meet my friends for writing sessions, so this virtual way of connecting was just enough to motivate me. Find someone, preferably who understands what you are going through and commit to each other!
7.) Lastly, I do not know if it was a coincidence or not, but I started a regular yoga practice the same week I started this PhD program five years ago. Not having a full time job, and now having a much more flexible schedule, meant I could structure my day around when there were yoga classes I could attend. It may not be the answer for everyone, but I felt calmer than the occasion often called for, and I do credit yoga for helping me stay more mellow and in the moment through all of my grad school process.

I don’t know if any of this will be helpful to you, but it worked for me. If you are in this process, I wish you the best of luck. Stick with it, because being on the other side FEELS AMAZING!

So, after giving my colleagues a bit of a hard time because I have been the main contributor to the blog for that past few months, I somehow managed to forget to write a post last month (Sorry everyone!). Sigh… karma is a harsh mistress sometimes. I am in the thick of writing for my dissertation, which I somehow did not realize needed to be given to my committee quite so soon, and have been a bit distracted.

However, karma takes and she gives. I have had a couple of lovely moments of asking for what I want, and just flat out receiving it since I last wrote. I am a big proponent of the “just ask for what you want/need” philosophy and have attempted to pass this bit of wisdom on to my own children and those I have taught over the years. My attitude is that if you don’t ask, the answer is automatically “no”, so you might as well ask. On one level, you have nothing to lose, besides a bit of pride. Therefore, I encourage them to reach out to the world and make their wishes known. Otherwise, they are much less likely to get what help they need along the way.

My first recent example of asking had to do with the date for my PhD defense. As a student who does not live in, or even frequent, Corvallis, I tend to be out of the loop with how this whole grad student process works. I haven’t really seen others go through it, and am a bit lazy when it comes to digging around on websites. So, I decided to call my trusty friend Deb and ask her if there were any deadlines I should be paying attention to regarding graduating this spring. Turns out there was! If I want to walk in June, I should defend my dissertation by May 1. Oops- I really thought I had more time. However, May 1 is a lucky day in my world. It is the birthday of my life partner and best friend and happens to be one of my favorite holidays in the Celtic calendar- Beltane. So, I took a risk, emailed all 5 members of my committee and told them that was the day I hoped to have my defense. And by some small miracle, they are all available that one day! Yay!

My next example regards a conference I heard about last year, and wanted to attend, SXSWedu. It could be my Austin past, the whole SXSW industry has taken up a good part of the calendar there. However, it seems to be a conference that promotes a lot of exciting new things happening in education, particularly in my area of study- the Maker Movement, and (in one of life’s many ironies for a Luddite like myself) technology and social media. And I am still invested enough in being “cool” to want to attend this “cool” conference. I had vague ideas about submitting a proposal for this year’s event, but am not on the right listserves to hear about the appropriate deadlines, and missed that. I was still interested in attending, so checked into prices. However, the $450 early bird price was a bit of a shock, so I resigned myself to missing it again this year. Yet, within days, I had an email that some group (TES Global) was giving out free conference passes to educators who tweeted innovative things happening in their classrooms. Well, I am not actually teaching, so I tweeted a few photos from my research project, which does look exciting and innovative and techie, and I was lucky enough to get one of the passes. While I think they had lots to give out, and I don’t feel too special for having “won” one- I would not be going this year without it! I am very excited to go next week, and hope to make up for all of my missing blogs over the years while I am there! Keep your eyes peeled!

So my friends- just ask for what you want! Even if you are not sure you deserve it, you might just get it!

Mark Farley, Rebecca Harver and I made a trip to the “Aquarium Village” in Newport (and the Visitor Center’s storage unit) in the hopes of finding anything remotely inspiring in our task of camouflaging the microphones in installation at the touch tanks. We thought maybe driftwood or something like that would be easy enough to drill into and still fit within the naturalistic design of the tanks. Upon opening the door and stumbling upon dusty unidentifiable objects, our hope was not so high but soon enough I discovered what seemed to be the best solution for our dilemma.

Thank you rock boring clams for providing us the perfect “habitat” for our microphones to live! Your capability of penetrating wood, coral and rocks leaving behind these perfectly sized holes just made our life much easier and those interesting rocks a great addition to our exhibit. We did have to do a little rasping but all in all our microphones fit perfectly. Below are some photos illustrating this interesting merge between nature and technology to facilitate our video data collection and analysis.

Then we were off to drill holes at the touch tank for placement of the microphone ensemble, connecting wires and power sources. Jenny East was very proud of her newly acquired skills. We will collect some data with a couple of these installed microphones now and make sure all is functioning well before we continue the set up. I am super excited to start my data collection through this high quality video and audio system, as well as happy to see the vision long developed for the system to actually materialize. I am sure we will test around bouncing and interfering sounds since the touch tanks are so dynamic, but hey we are getting there. Stay tuned for more updates on Cyberlab’s interesting adaptations.

So, as I head into the second half of my fifth year in this dissertation process, I am starting to look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, five years might not sound like too long to be in a PhD program, but for my program, at least in the cohorts before and after mine, the average is closer to four years (here’s looking at you Drs. Good and Stoffer!) And I did start my journey thinking I could complete it in four years- I had a plan! However, my qualifying exam process dragged on for a short eternity, and that set me behind, as things happen in a sequential way. And while I could have moved forward with some of the steps, for a while I was not sure I would progress past that point, and it didn’t seem worth it to spend time on a process that I might not see through to completion. Since I am still writing these blog posts, it is true that I did squeeze through those exams and was allowed to continue on to the subsequent steps of research and writing. However, I have had some road blocks with this stage too, as, for a variety of reasons, I kept having to postpone when I could start collecting data.

Finally, last fall, it seemed that the stars were starting to align, and I would be able to do my project in January through March of this year. Now, if you are doing the math, you might realize, as I did, that this will only leave me a few months to write my whole dissertation, on top of doing the data analysis, once the program I am collecting data from ends. I do have a fairly high opinion of my ability to write a lot under pressure, but I decided to do what I can now, to move along. So, I started my writing process, before my data collection. It makes sense, I can write up my introduction and literature review and methodology and such without having done the study, and anything I write now, means something I don’t have to write in April. I am pretty determined to graduate and walk the stage this June, so time is of the essence!

In December, I started to pull together what I could from things I have already written, such as my proposal. I dinked along with this for a few weeks, hashing out an outline and filling in some spots on it. However, it was when my dear friend, Elese posted on FaceBook that her New Year’s Resolution was to write on her dissertation for an hour a day, that I was motivated to make my own concrete goal. I sent Elese a message, asking her if she wanted to be “accountability buddies” and we would stay in regular touch with each other about our progress-and she said yes.

This is all a little complicated by being a commuter student- in that I live more than an hour away from campus, so don’t go down unless I have too. Many of my friends in the Corvallis area, who are in similar points on this journey, get together in small groups to write and support each other. I have to motivate myself. Having Elese on the other end of my texts helps- I know someone out there is paying some attention to whether or not I am making regular progress. I also had a coffee date with one of my committee members who lives up here too, and she gave me an open invitation to stop by her office, even unannounced, just because this process can be lonely.

And she is right- although I had not really thought about it in that way, this is a lonely journey. I really adore the group of colleagues I have met through this program, but as I have never lived near them, I have done most of this alone. When we were taking classes, there was that level of interaction, and I miss it! What I am doing now, reminds me most of when I (foolishly!) decided to run in the first Eugene Marathon, in 2007. I was a casual runner, so joined a training group, to learn the skills it would take to help complete this, for me, colossal undertaking. I learned a lot and met some good people, but on the race day itself, I ran alone. I had planned to run with others, but people end up with different paces and such, and it was easier to just go on my own. And that is how this feels. I did the training, taking classes and going to lab meetings with my colleagues, and making some great friends, but now, I am off on the trail, writing one word at a time, as I ran that race, one step at a time.

But, I am sure looking forward to taking photos together as we all wear our PhD regalia in June, after we all make it over that finish line on our own.