The best dissertation

Aha experience: The best dissertation is a completed dissertation, not a perfect one, and definitley not an unfinished one.

My release: I abandon perfectionism. I give myself permission to be imperfect. You can't tell from a completed thesis how many years it took to write or how many chapter drafts were rejected. Each academic has their own writing story. Where planning and organisation are absent, perseverance wins. Right now I'm being evaluated on how many chapters I can produce.

Progress: I've just finished the third draft of my literature review chapter. It's 23 pages long. That's 11,350 words, a bit over 10,000 but not bad. I got rid of the 'ing' words like 'establishing' and replaced them with concepts words like 'establishment.' I found it's better to write 'that indicates' rather than 'this shows'. 'Show' is too colloquial. I did an edit/word find in my draft and discovered I used the word 'can' 53 times. Never use 'can' in a thesis.

Next task: ...but I can use can't...I can't submit my chapter draft to my supervisor till I fix up my bibliography. The 'cite while you write' function doesn't work in my Word program. I'll get around it. It's a bit tedious but such a relief to have the chapter finished.

Tomorrow's day job: Make a few changes to my Methodology chapter and submit that too. All I have to do is update the references to the last 5 years. Nothing before the year 2000. I've got the books. I've re-read them. It won't take me long to finish that chapter.

Current state: I'm smiling. I can get back to reading some trashy detective and historical fiction novels in the evenings with my hot chocolate instead of wading through concepts and theories. Life is good.

Aha experience

Day job: Writing, writing and writing – only 5 pages left to go of my theory chapter and it’s a good one this time. It really makes sense. It’s easy to read, interesting and, wait for it… punchy. I write all day, walk in the late afternoon and read at night. It’s working well for me.

Light-bulb ‘aha’ experience: For every word or sentence I write, I have to leave out as much as they contain. I can’t say everything I want in my chapters. A friend told me I can always write articles for journals later and say what I left out. Knowing that makes writing easier for me.

Extra-curricula activities: I’ve been attending some free lectures at the local university, where I am not enrolled, on Migration and Identity. My supervisor said not to bother with that and just write. I suppose she’s worried I’ll get side-tracked and write another 80 pages of irrelevant stuff. Write-write-write is all she wants me to do right now.

What I don’t feel like: I don’t feel like a fraud anymore. I don’t feel as if my dissertation is a family-writing-hobby gone wrong. I believe again that my dissertation is important, that my data is unique.

Concerns: My family has lost faith in me. They think I’m going nowhere, and have been for the last 9 years. I’m sad that they can’t see how I lost my way and then found it again. They see the ironing piling up, the floors dirty, the evening meals getting sparser and me glued to the computer under piles of papers. I suppose the proof is in the pudding. I can’t wait to serve up the pudding of my completed bound work. I’ve given up on striving for a PhD conversion but I don’t feel sad about that anymore. I’m happy, really happy with the idea of completing my masters dissertation.

My distant supervisor: Being an external student, I never see her face-to-face. I just get her cryptic/borderline-abusive emails, her slashes-of-handwriting across my notes via snail mail and a kind-laughing-voice on the phone. Is she really my supervisor or is she my mother? She’s always there in the background, entrenched in my past, connected to my life whether-I-see-her-or-not. She's always ready to praise, support or criticise. When my mother died, did my supervisor take over? Am I her pseudo-student-daughter? When I told her my mother died she told me her mother had just died and she missed her more than life. When she saw my children, I told her how hard it is to be a mother and a post grad student at the same time. She said she loved them and envied my motherhood, that I had it all. Once on a residential visit to the uni she came up behind me while I was at the computer and kissed my head.

Next task: Write about multiple identities, orbiting in and out of different cultures and languages, playing the balancing act of culture-switching and code-switching. I can do that with comfort and ease.

My community

Day job: Trying not to blog too much. I've given up trying-not-to-blog.

My community:I heard on the radio today that there are approx. 14 million bloggers. 10% have news blogs which I love; that's 1 million. I love being part of this community.

My concerns: Blogging is addictive and obsessive so I'll try to find a balance in my life while I have my other day job of thesis writing.

My other day job: I'm writing about language shift, language death (sounds morbid) and immigrants who keep up transnational links. I like these topics. I can relate to them as a member of my other community which is a bunch of immigrants who are not sure whether they are ethnics or not.

The state of my heart: Thesis-writing causes low self-esteem and heart-ache. I can't believe that is how things should be. Surely such a high-level educational experience should be uplifting. Maybe it's because I'm a long-term post grad or because I'm an external student. I feel like I'm in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing.

Where to now: Keep writing. My mother told me things always change, that doors open when you least expect them.