Gimme a Break

I must regroup and rest up from this weekend's trip so I've decided to take a few days to just go to work, come home, and be a couch potato. I got a taste for some science fiction today, so I checked out a few books from the library. Today, I started Walter Mosley's The Wave--so far it is really hitting the spot and unless it ends horribly, I think I'd have to recommend this one. It was doing a great job of keeping my mind off of the you-know-what with the you-know-whos.

But of course, I'm thinking about how I'm going to handle this whole dissertation revisions issue. My overall feeling about the meeting with the CoChairs is disappointment, not so much because of the delayed defense which does suck, but particularly because of the continued lack of specific feedback. I took notes on my laptop during the meeting but I really didn't need to. After the meeting and the overwhelming vote of confidence that I received on the project, I still feel like I am writing this dissertation without help. The most specific things that I got out of the meeting: 1) my work is good and 2) they are surprised, actually the word was "shocked" that I was able to do so much good work so quickly (as well as "shocked" that I took that job). Beyond those two things, figuring out specifically what I need to do with the project for my CoChairs' satisfaction is still somewhat nebulous.

Here's what I know. There are some inconsistencies in the project, just as a result of writing over a period of time. Some of my ideas have changed since I first submitted Chapters One and Two last summer, so the early chapters in particular need to be updated. And we had a good conversation about those changes, the evolution of my writing, and how writing can be a revelatory process. I've already started working on those adjustments and I shared with the CoChairs where I was headed in making the earlier works fit the more recent ones and they seemed to agree. And of course, there is also the general matter of the writing--the mechanical and stylistic stuff. My CoChairs loved the flow of the piece and my voice in the project and one of my CoChairs started to give me some more specific ideas for polishing up the writing but her comments were limited by the amount of my work that she's read (that is to say, she's less than halfway through--keep in mind I've been submitting chapters since last year). So of course, the writing of the document could go through some more revisions for flow and polish--I am definitely prepared and already in the process of doing that as well. One area of additional concern that I had of course was the length/content. I asked if anything should be cut out since it is so long, but they both said no--everything needs to stay in. In fact, they both thought my revisions might cause the draft to grow a bit as they would like me to consider adding a personalized preface rather than just jumping in to Chapter One.

But to me, all that stuff is comestic and comes with the territory/seems obvious. Maybe I'm just a little thrown off because the meeting was just not what I expected. I had really hoped to hear more about the substance of my work--a subject that has not be brought up or interrogated really since my proposal. I expected more concrete "you must fix/reconsider/redo this" type comments--I expected more attention to deficiencies in the work--but I didn't get that. I didn't get any feedback on my analyses in my case studies (any of them) or on my overall argument--things that I thought were kind of important for this process. I recognize that it is a good thing for a dissertation advisor to struggle to find bad things to say--but it leaves me without a specific point of reference to begin making this work "better." It also leaves me clueless as to potential weak areas/points of contention that I might expect to have to answer at my defense. I don't want to do all this work fixing up a draft and then get to the defense to find out--hey my arguments don't fly. One of my CoChairs has read most of my case studies and she hasn't said anything about the arguments--my other CoChair just hasn't gotten to those parts of the study yet (which is a continued source of anxiety). But really, I think I'm mostly sad to truly learn and see that my decision to take my job offer has impacted the feedback I've received (or haven't received). But I hope that after seeing me and talking about why this was an important decision for me that things will turn around for the better. I am supposed to be inundated with written feedback on the unread chapters in the next week, so I'm just waiting and planning in the meantime. I'll probably spend some time on Friday or Saturday writing a list of things I think I need to do to make this thing better and by Sunday I'll start spending some time with my hard copy and a bright colored pen. But for now, I'm taking a little dissertation break. Anybody got a good meme??