How I actually made the first full draft

Making a full draft of the dissertation is time consuming and requires attention to many details. I found that one way to approach this milestone was to break up the tasks. Go through the entire document and check for consistency in headings: chapter titles, section titles, numbering. Next, check every table: are they uniform? Are they numbered correctly? Does every table have a title? Did I consistently capitalize 'Table' in both the text and in the title under each table? Then, read the whole document and check to flow. Is anything choppy? Anything missing? Did I spell something wrong? It is always embarrassing to receive edited copies of my drafts and to find corrected spelling mistakes. In the past round of revisions, I had to correct my spelling of 'Ottawa' and 'capital.' Oops.

Once all of that was done (and it took over 4 hours), I double checked my references. I included a references section for each chapter as I wrote it. Combining these references into one document was also very time consuming. I have a program that automatically creates bibliographies for me, but it doesn't use the formatting I need for Geraldine. I painstakingly changed the placement of the date, italics and other bibliographic information to match the style guide used by the top journals in my field. Some day, I will thank myself for doing such a menial task. Today is not that day. There were many copy and paste commands involved in making a document I was happy with. At the end, I had to check everything again for consistency. There are probably still errors, but I hope a committee member will draw my attention to them (and I luckily have committee members that will do such a thing). Finishing the references section took about 3 hours.

But wait, there's more?!? Dissertations also require a bunch of pedantically formatted pages at the beginning prior to chapter 1. This is called 'front matter.' The front matter must be numbered with Roman numerals which appear at the bottom of the page, whereas each chapter must be numbered with Arabic numerals in the upper right hand corner. I haven't figured out how to tell Word that I need two different systems, so for the time being, the front matter is a separate document. Ugh. So what goes in the front matter? A title page, an abstract, a copyright page, a dedication (optional), acknowledgements, a table of contents, a list of tables, a list of figures, signature lines for the dissertation chair and graduate school to sign off that everything is official and I might be able to go on vacation after graduation... I hate making tables of content. It is a very tedious task. To my joy, I discovered that I have no figures in Geraldine, and therefore do not need to make a list of figures. My table of contents is 3 pages long. Again, at some point I will be glad that I already took care of these things, but right now the only thing I can think of is having to change the page numbers in the table of contents after I finish revising the chapters. BUT, Indi wanted a table of contents with the full draft, so he got one.

What else needs to go in a dissertation? Thankfully, not much. I have two appendices in Geraldine. I have a few corrections to enter into my database, but after I do so, generating the appendices will not take long. They will be formatted neatly and should please the committee members who have seen earlier drafts of messy data. I also have to include my CV at the end, and Indi must sign that as well. I  don't know why this is required. Maybe to communicate "I am the committee chair and I did read (at least part of) the last page?"
Because my raw data is so big and it's the part of my dissertation typologists will actually want to read, the end matter will be over 100 pages.

I think my department will need to order more paper before April. Assuming my committee members will each print copies of my dissertation, it will take about 4 reams of paper. Considering the other doctoral candidates who hope to defend this spring, the department will likely need 3 extra boxes of paper. This does not include any MA students who will defend their theses this spring. Do departments work this into their budgets?

On piecing it all together

My big accomplishment of the weekend was piecing all 8 chapters of Geraldine together. Until now, each chapter had a separate file. Actually, each chapter has a separate folder on my computer and there are multiple files for each different version, data, etc. for each chapter. Creating one document in which all chapters appear in linear order should be easy, as it mostly includes copying the entire chapter and then pasting it to a new document. That part was easy, but checking the document for consistency, errors, citations, labels and so one is very time consuming.

For anyone who's interested in what exactly I had to do to to create a complete draft, I explain it in the next blog entry. For those who are just interested in reading about how I feel, reading this paragraph will suffice. While creating a single document for everything in the dissertation, a rush of positive encouragement came through me. For the first time, Geraldine started to look like a dissertation. I started to realize just how much work I've accomplished in the last 15 months. I can't believe how much data I've collected, sorted through and analyzed, nor how much I've learned through this process. In addition to becoming a true expert in my research topic, I've learned a lot about myself. My views of graduate education, professors, academia, and other graduate students have changed. Despite every time I've felt guilty for not working on Geraldine or felt overwhelmed with data and demands, having a complete draft helps me see that my work actually created something and it isn't a load of crap. The process demanded many sleepless nights, nightmares, frustrations, tears, angry words, snack breaks, isolation, and other sacrifices (including the innocent destruction of pencils) and finally, it has resulted in a substantial piece of research that contributes to linguistics, typology, lexical typology, and scientific knowledge in general. And I created it. It is mine. After May 19th, people will have to reference my work and each time they do, they will recognize my efforts, expertise, and short comings and I might even receive a royalty check of $18 every two years! The best part? I did all of this before Holy Week started and might be able to think about something else for a few days before the next major round of revisions starts. :0)

On dreams that don't make any sense

It's 2:40am and I can't sleep. For the last month or so, I've developed the habit of waking up at around 2 or 3 and having trouble falling back asleep. Tonight I woke up after having a very uncomfortable dream about my defense. In my dream, one of my committee members came half hour late, everyone except me drank a ton of coffee, and slowly the attendees of the defense starting picking apart my dissertation. So far, this description probably isn't that far off from how things will really unfold when my defense happens. But, as dreams and nightmares go, things started to get weird.

First, it was another student from the department that did most of the talking in my dream, not my committee members. This student pointed out problems in the text and asked for clarification of certain passages. Other than the fact that it was a student asking all of the questions, it's still not that weird... except for the fact that the passages of my dissertation had strange quotes from Matthew Broderick movies that don't exist. In my dream, I tried defending these passages and pointed to the repetition of I-statements as examples of Grice's Maxims. Broderick was clearly flaunting the maxims of quality and quantity (something that has absolutely nothing to do with my dissertation research whatsoever). In feeling that I was failing miserably, I started singing songs from the made up Broderick hit in order to persuade my committee. It didn't work. Instead they asked me why I submitted total crap. As I flipped through the pages of my dissertation as submitted, I repeatedly saw charts that didn't print right, problems with unicode, copies of magazine articles in the margins and horrible spelling and grammatical errors. It looked like I had never even read the damn thing, and I certainly hadn't made any adjustments based on the comments my committee members had made to previous drafts. Meanwhile, I tried to prove my mastery of linguistic analysis by discussion Hungarian weather terms. After all, the Hungarian term for 'it' in expressions such as "it's raining" makes much more sense than in any language from the Germanic or Italic branch of the Indo-European family (again, this has absolutely nothing to do with my dissertation). Somewhere around this point I woke up, struggled to sit up and make it out of bed so that I could use the bathroom, realized it was just a dream, and completely lost any amount of self esteem I had left inside of me.

Even though I know that it was just a nightmare and my defense will be nothing like this dream (other than the coffee that will be in the room and a committee member might show up late), it doesn't make me want to graduate. I'm trying my hardest to finish writing my last chapters, but I'm not satisfied with my ideas. Today's biggest challenge was keeping myself together emotionally so that I could write an extra inch of text between outbursts. I've yearned to finish a PhD for nearly 10 years and now that it's finally within grasp, I don't know why I want it. On the day of my graduation, I will officially be unemployed. A week later, the medical insurance I obtain for my family will run out. Because my paycheck is technically considered a stipend, I am ineligible for unemployment. Every year of graduate school has resulted in trying to figure out how to pay bills for 3 months without a pay check. This year it's more overwhelming because I have no idea when another paycheck will come, when I will be able to apply for jobs, or when a university might pick me out of 200 other applicants for a job. On top of that, I keep puking and everything around me still has a very unpleasant aroma. Between writing paragraphs to my discussion chapter, I had a phone interview with a county social worker. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that becoming "Dr. Kelsie" doesn't matter much this week. I also shouldn't be surprised that crazy dissertation defense nightmares involving Matthew Broderick and Hungarian lexical patterns make me cry in the middle of the night. Maybe this is just part of earning a PhD and it will soon be replaced by another equally exhausting factor common to the PhD experience. Either way,sleep is much more appealing than having others address me as "Doctor."

It's 3:30am. I just finished writing a blog about the nightmare that woke me up. It involved Matthew Broderick, Hungarian lexical patterns, Grice's Maxims, too much coffee, disgruntled committee members, and a student who thinks s/he knows more than everyone else in the department. The blog entry was entertaining. When I checked my spelling, the whole entry disappeared into cyber space.

I had a difficult day. I am overwhelmed and sleep deprived. This is what happens when you become a doctoral candidate. Don't get a PhD; it's really not that cool.

On making it to the home stretch

It's been nearly a month since my last blog post. I keep meaning to write part 2 of "On becoming a linguist," I just haven't gotten around to doing it lately. This isn't much different than anything else happening in dissertation land. I keep meaning to do something, and then I get distracted. I've learned that there are always distractions when working on a project, but I allow some to take me away from my work more than others.

By far, the biggest distraction this semester has been finding out that Geraldine is no longer an only child. By some miracle, my reproductive system decided to overlook its flaws and decided that being renamed "Dr. Kelsie" in May isn't enough, someone should call me "mom" in September as well. Between nausea, extreme hunger, napping, grouchiness and the daily panic of realizing that I am now completely responsible for another person, I haven't felt like writing the remaining chapters of my dissertation. Furthermore, really lame video games have become way more entertaining than analyzing etymologies, re-reading my drafts for the eleventybillionth time or hunting down various members of my dissertation committee. At one point I was convinced that I wouldn't graduate this semester, but after receiving a surprisingly uplifting pep talk from Indi, I kept working when I could and wrote two more chapters. I removed the lame video games from my life, and I started becoming more productive. After I completed chapter 6, I realized I only had a little bit more work to do, and yes, it's looking like I'll submit the final copy to my committee in April and defend my dissertation on April 26th at 10 am. Mark your calendars, I expect you to be there. No one on my committee would fail a pregnant lady with a room full of fans.

My discussion chapter is going smoothly. I read a few other dissertations to get a general idea of what must be included, wrote a detailed outline and started composing what will be one of the most important chapters of my dissertation (the other most important ones being the parts in which I explicitly stated what I was doing and what I was not doing with this study.) The discussion chapter's main reason for existing is to tell the reader what matters, why, and what it means. So far, so good.

I also received comments back from two committee members on a big chunk of Geraldine. It helped to see 100 or so pages of my work with comments sitting in my department mailbox. It also helped to know that I'd written another chapter since the 100 pages were printed, and the finished product will include about 200 other pages (my indices are HUGE). The comments are helpful and will not be very time consuming to incorporate. Reading through them resulted in another boost of encouragement that I am in the home stretch, I will defend this semester, and I will officially become Dr. Kelsie on May 19th at about 9:30am (I don't expect you to be there though, because graduations are super dull... only my awesome wizard costume will be exciting).

I have exactly 8 days to finish the entire draft of each chapter and send it to Indi. If I continue to feel normal for the next few days, this shouldn't be a problem. The whole dissertation: front matter, appendices, and all, should be ready for review by the end of March. Phew!