The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, thankfully. Last weekend, I spoke with my Doctoral adviser twice. Much to my relief and ultimate exuberance, she not only said that the revised first chapter of my dissertation was better, she actually gave it her blessing. Both times she spoke about that revised first chapter, her comments were not all that substantive. But, I should back up and explain the moments (more like seeming aeions) leading up to that point.

In July, I finished submitting the final chapter, Chapter 8, of the first go on my dissertation. And, even this was after much struggle with hoards upon hoards of material. In August of last year, I began, in earnest, working on my disseration. I convinced myself that a six month hiatus from serious philosophical work was reasonable given that in February of last year, I went through gut-wrenching, quite stressful process of studying for and taking four written comprehensive examinations and taking an oral examination defending my responses. Well, luckily, I had narrowed my dissertation topic far enough that I haven't read a bunch of interesting but useless information. That isn't to say that, to date, I haven't read seemingly endless numbers of articles, books, and monographs. In August, I began the painful process of reading each article and writing a critical summary of each article immediately after each reading. How else was I supposed to keep track of everything I was reading?

If that wasn't enough to handle at once, at the same time, I was also teaching and taking a class. I was TAing three sections (of one class) and teaching an entirely different class. One of the classes I taught that fall semester (Fall Semester 2004) was a non-introductory class, for which I had a new prep. That took much additional effort and time.

At any rate, it wasn't until close to the end of the Winter Term, 2005, that I began writing the actual dissertation. The first attempt of my dissertation contained eight chapters. In hindsight, I wrote those chapters with too much going on in my life (working part time at Talbots, getting ready to move, keeping up with friends, etc.) and too much haste. But, to my credit, I did finish one draft of the dissertation before embarking on new territories and a full-time teaching position.

Well, given that life for my husband and me became quite hectic, starting this past July and lasting until relatively recently (the hecticness actually hasn't quite ended yet), the nearly three month dissertation writing hiatus makes sense. Besides just being crazy busy, I had also been experiencing some version of writer's block. I was determined that upon resumption of writing, whatever I wrote and submitted to my Doctoral adviser had to be of a much higher caliber, pedigree, and such. My goal was to make the next draft worlds better than the previous one. I admitted to my adviser soon before leaving Mizzou and Columbia that I wasn't sure what to write. In fact, I didn't want to fail again. One of the last comments she gave me before I departed was that "it will come." She was trying to tell me that I would eventually figure out what to write.

Sure enough, she was right. Once I figured out how to revamp the first Chapter, which, to me involved the most challenging work (in comparison with the other chapters to follwo), the writing came pretty easily. It certainly no longer felt like root canal work. And, like any true revision, my revised first chapter looks nothing at all like my original first chapter. I kept little to nothing of the content of the original first chapter. Since she approves of the revised first chapter, I'm feeling quite good now of the direction I will take in the remaining four chapters. Yes, the number of chapters have changed since the first draft.

I feel encouraged. I feel on top of the world. Graduation is something I can kind of, sort of, see happening. My goal and determination is to complete this revision by the end of November. That means I have a lot of hard, diligent, brain-splitting work to do in the next month and a week. Then, my plan is to discuss my Doctoral adviser's final comments, so I can make some more corrections before my dissertation goes to the rest of my committee.