tigerchik wrote:
Would love some advice from those of you who have written masters theses or dissertations. My thesis defense date is in early December. I have to give a draft to my committee by November 21. That leaves me roughly a month to finish it, and I'm just plain scared that I won't.
Three weeks ago, I discussed this fear with my advisor. She suggested I make a grand master outline so I could see what I have done and what I have left to do. I did that, emailed it to her, and she said she'd read/comment on it over this past weekend. I haven't heard back from her, though I suspect it will be in my inbox tomorrow evening. One of the things I could use this for is to write myself a schedule of when I'm going to do what, I guess.
Setting deadlines for myself in the past has worked ok but I'm not good about estimating the time it will take to finish something. I've missed all of my own set deadlines (except for the one for the outline) so far because it always takes longer than I think. And if I set a deadline for, say, "by the end of Monday" and it gets to be Monday night and I'm not done, I'm not going to stay up super late to finish something that's a deadline I've set. I think it's healthier to get some sleep and just give myself an "extension." I've been working on my thesis on the weekends, I worked on it over fall break, but I have gone from super OCD in high school about doing homework constantly to a more balanced homeworking state of "okay, I am tired of this, I am going to read for a bit." Like today I ran, worked on my thesis, taught yoga, took a nap because I was exhausted, and now I'm working on it again.
I tend to write best in the morning, so maybe I need to get up and run, go into my office, and then if I have a time for a second workout later, go back and do it? I've been doing 2 sports just about every morning.
While I'm whining, I do have a good idea of what I have to do and write, but I wish I got a little bit more attention from my advisor. I know she is really busy, but it's frustrating to hand something in and not get comments for two weeks or more. When it comes back, I've generally forgotten what I've written.
My anxiety is to the point that it's interfering with sleep; it's an omnipresent anxiety that makes me stressed during the day; sometimes to the point I can't focus when I do sit down to write. I have meds to help with sleep at least but I'd rather not become dependent on them, defend my thesis, and then have to wean myself off them. I can discuss that with my doctor/therapist I guess.
Ideas from anyone about how to manage finishing it, or the fear?
Everyone is different, but here are some ides.
I don't think I would wait any longer for your advisor and would continue working on the paper. The beauty of workprocessors is you can easily move things around. So start writting now and then later decide if the parts you have written should be in a different section. So if you have this outline, i guess i would decide if it was detailed enough to start writing sections, or do you need add more layers to it. Either refine it or start writting.
Also consider if there is anyone else who could help review it. Not sure if you could ask another professor or post doc, but if that is not considered inappropriate, you might ask. I had my wife read mine mainly from reability and structure point of view. Be sure to save your work as you type, saving new copies to multiple disk, thumbdrives etc. You don't want to loose this for a hard disk crash.
I think your idea of putting time limits on sections is good, but if you know that you are late to finsih things in the past, you might want make them more aggressive than needed. Generally in project management you schedule extra time at the end. If you put it throughout it will get used and you won't have any extra at the end if you need it.
If you are having difficulty getting to sleep, plus you like writing in the morning, try to do the work early so you are not up late working on it. It can be hard to quiet the mind if you have been working hard. Also, late exercise can also make it hard to fall asleep for some.
Good Luck.