I hate my dissertation. I hate it with a passion. But it is constantly on my mind these days. I'm very close to timing out. That means I'm hitting my graduate school expiration date. All my classes and work will expire in December meaning I'd have to take three years of coursework over if I'm not done.

I got derailed in 2016 and 2017. Those years it was like one bad thing after another kept happening. That's why I got off track. It's hard to focus on a dissertation when your world keeps getting rocked by bad life events. Not all were bad though. The birth of my daughter has been pretty awesome.

What do you have to do to complete a dissertation?

With a dissertation in Sociology you complete original research. You develop a scientific question, develop a theoretical model, then go out and collect data to analyze using that model. My data collection alone took 87 hours to complete. I've been collecting data all summer and I just finished. It was a hard and tedious process.

A glimpse of my notes for data collection. I won't share my topic but you're welcome to guess.

My dissertation is about 65 pages long as of now. I expect it'll be close to 100 (maybe more) when all is said and done. Right now it has six chapters and is basically like writing a book. Once I finish a chapter I send it to my dissertation advisor who reads it and then sends it back covered in red ink listing corrections I need to make. I make corrections and send it back to her. Then she reads it and sends it back covered in red ink telling me to change things. It takes several drafts for each chapter to make her happy. When I get a completed draft of the entire thing two other committee members will read it, mark it up in red ink, and will send it back for their own preferred corrections. It's a painful process seeing your work critiqued and your arguments ripped apart.

But it's the last big challenge. It's the last big obstacle course in the world of graduate school. It's taken me 14 years to reach this point. It's like I'm in an adventure movie and I've got to fight a dragon before I can have a happy ending.

My Dragon To Slay With Words

Chapter 1 of my dissertation, the literature review, really was fascinating to research.

They Don't Tell You How Hard It'll Be To Get A Doctorate

Getting a Masters Degree was the easier than getting a Bachelors Degree for me. It took two years and then I had my degree. I was stupid when I let others encouraged me to get a doctorate saying it'd be easy since I was smart. If I had to give advice to someone thinking of getting a doctorate I'd tell them to think long and hard about it.

It's not easy. If you want to get funding to pay for tuition you have to give up your life to academia. I worked teaching for my department and took classes. I had to read hundreds of pages of academic articles and books every night for classes. No paper I wrote was less than 10 pages long. I spent my free time grading my students papers and preparing lectures. I lived and breathed school.

The older you get the harder it is. They don't tell you that either. I started doctoral school at the age of 24 and now I'm 32. Try writing an academic paper with a newborn baby in your arms...it was almost impossible for me. In 2016 I had my daughter and was so consumed by motherhood and adult life I didn't write a thing on my dissertation for a year and a half.

I've been told the suffering you go through and all the hoops you jump through is part of the process. It separates the weak from the strong and only the strong survive. Right now I feel like that damn dragon has eaten a few of my limbs.

I'm Ready For This To Be Done

The stress and anxiety of this looming expiration date has clouded my thoughts all summer. It's been very hard finding time to work on my damn dissertation. It seems like I'm always busy and when I'm not busy my toddler demands my attention. Or my crazy mother demands my attention. Or some other relative's crazy drama invades my life. It's hard to clear my mind and world to write.

Finishing everything in time has me stressed. I've developed very bad insomnia so I can't sleep which adds to my anxious mind. I'm having extreme anxiety attacks because I know I'm close to losing everything which would be be even more painful having student loan debt to payback.

I'm in a bad place mentally which is a big reason I haven't written much for fun on steemit or interacted with my favorite authors. I really miss writing for fun but I can't do that until my mind is clear. Sorry if anyone has missed me this summer. I was busy collecting data and losing my mind.

Anyways, after I post this I'm not looking my steemit page until I'm finished writing a full first draft of my dissertation (save for giving my commenters a quick vote). It might be a week...two weeks...a month!...I don't really know...until I return. I will return though. I love writing for fun and my community here. I will be around discord if anyone wants to chat or needs me for something but my article writing will be on hiatus. If I need a break I might stop by and do some leisurely reading here.

My husband is helping me go into seclusion to write. I either need to accept failure that I can't make the date or I need to focus and work my ass off to finish. Not sure if I'll fail or succeed yet. Either way I'll be free of this prison of graduate school I've created for myself.

I saw a double rainbow yesterday. Maybe it's a sign of good luck....I hope?