Dear Dissertation Coach,
I feel like everyone in my cohort knows exactly what they are doing while they are writing their dissertations and I don’t. I feel like I’m lost, that I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, and when I do something, I feel like I’m doing it badly. What should I do? Should I quit graduate school?
Worried Dissertation Writer
Dear Worried Dissertation Writer,
No, you shouldn’t quit graduate school because you are not sure what you are doing. I have a mantra that I trained myself to use when I feel like everyone else seems to know what they are doing and I do not: Never judge someone’s insides by their outsides.
So what does that mean? Many times when we are in stressful situations such as writing a dissertation, we “armor up” as Brené Brown calls it in her book Daring Greatly. The idea is that we are so concerned about what others think of us that we keep all our insecurities and fears behind armor. We don’t let others know how we really feel.
It is possible that you are armoring up and others in your cohort don’t know how you feel. It is also possible that others in your cohort are hiding their fear of inadequacy behind their armor. If that’s the case then how do you know how anyone in your cohort really feels?
The way to handle this is to find a trusted other in your cohort and be honest about how you are feeling. Remember that not everyone is safe for you to reveal your fears to. Perhaps you made a friend in a class while running a study and you got to know them somewhat. You probably know who is safe and who probably is not. Ask that person to go to coffee with you. This is how the conversation could go:
You say, “Yesterday I got to a point in writing the lit review of my dissertation and I couldn’t decide which paper was the most important to include. I just threw my hands up and went for a walk.”
Your cohort companion will hopefully say something like, “You too? Oh, my gosh, I was writing about a method I used and I couldn’t remeber why I’d used it. Sheesh.”
How do the two of you deal with these feelings? Sometimes it helps to have these kinds of coffee meetings just to talk through how you feel. Another possibility is to set up writing meetings (you can still have the coffee). Set up some rules. Maybe you don’t talk for thirty minutes and after that time you take a break to discuss where you hit a problem in the writing. Sometimes talking it through can help.
Bottom line, Worried Dissertation Writer isn’t to quit but to become vulnerable to someone in your cohort and share your fears. You’ll feel much better once you know you are not the only one who feels this way.
Warmly,
Your Dissertation Coach
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