Yes, I just created a blog! What was I thinking? Do I actually think I have time for another hobby? No, I do not. I certainly do not need to add yet another activity that will divert precious time and energy from my work on my dissertation. However, it is my hope that this blog will do just the opposite--that it will help me to become what I have finally realized I must become: a WRITER.
I have been keeping my writing log, and "trying" (whatever that means exactly) to write regularly. These efforts have resulted in significant progress during the last year. However, I have finally realized that they will not be enough--maybe if I keep pecking away at the research and writing, I will eventually do enough of both to graduate, but probably not. I need to completely change my mindset. I have wasted enough time lamenting that grad school is hard, and that I can't wait to finish the dissertation so that life can begin. No, life began a long time ago, and it is still going on now, grad school or no. Instead of waiting for this phase of life to finally be over, I must learn to embrace the process, the writing, and the research project.
This blog is part of an effort to do just that. I hope it will help to remind me just how blessed I am to have the opportunity to work on a PhD degree. This is the only dissertation I will write in my entire life, and I want to find joy in it--not just joy when it is finally done, but joy in watching it come to life, grow, change, and hopefully make some small contribution to the world. Through the process, I also need to grow--and in the right ways, not in increased negativity, frustration and whining.
So, well-wishing friends, please watch this space and feel free to give me a motivational kick in the rear whenever you feel I need it. Enjoy!
3 comments:
Go, Jennifer!
I am realizing as I read your post that I don't recall (Or, did I ever know?) what your topic is. I can cheer better that way.
Hi Mike, thanks for stopping by! If all goes as planned, my research project will involve developmental algebra students (guess where?) setting goals and journaling their study time. Hopefully we'll gain some interesting insights into how/when they study, and we'll see if the students prompted to set goals and plan their study time are more successful than those who don't. Would be happy to sit down with you and visit about it sometime!
Congrats on the blog! Before you know it, you'll realize how much you hate blogging and write your final farewell to your handful of readers before deleting to oblivion all 500 of your posts. Then you'll write another post. And another. A year or two a few hundred posts after that, you will finally resign yourself to the fact that a large portion of your remaining life, a life you would like to think of as being "purpose-driven" or whatever other eudaimonistic buzzword du jour you are embracing at the time, is going to be wasted in front of a computer monitor trying to think of something worth blogging about. It happens to all of us. But then it gets easier. Soon the gibberish will flow like corked wine; you will look at your Ask Baby Leibniz advice column and see that it is good.
Good luck, Jen, you rock!
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