My PhD mood, longitudinally. Part 2.

My PhD mood, longitudinally. Part 2.

I’ve already written a little about the efforts I took to keep track of my moods, qualitatively and quantitatively, during the process of writing my dissertation. But it was a long road, and so here is Part 2, the endless middle slog.

To remind: every day I wrote down what I worked on, what chapter it was, and my daily word total. On Sunday evenings, I calculated my word total for the week as well. I also took qualitative notes about my mood for the day and categorized my mood on a 7 point Likert scale, where 1 = “Existence is meaningless and hope is a lie” and 7 = “Clarity, logic, ecstasy, power – all is within my grasp.”

Here’s the graph for the second phase:

Note that I skipped the summer months between the end of May and the end of July, as I was working on other projects, including a book chapter, a commentary piece, and a lot of media interviews for the 2018 men’s Football World Cup. It was a busy summer.

I suppose I should also mention that – with the help of many generous individuals who wrote me letters of support – I was able to extend our residence permits again. So, back to work, then, without the fear of imminent deportation. And cross fingers for next year…

Picking up again in August, I see a similar pattern to my first efforts with the methodology chapter: a slow start, full of doubts and interruptions. There is some variance in the moods, but my impression of these numbers is that my mood was hovering in the lower end (1-4, generally, with a few explorations to 5, and one short spike of 6). Lots of fits and starts. I’m clearly struggling, clearly haven’t found my way, and clearly not feeling very good about my productivity or the quality of whatever work I’m managing to scrape out.

Here are the qualitative comments that stand out:

“Starting to feel a little panicked and wanting to accomplish more than I am. Time is passing too quickly.”

“Broke ground on theoretical chapter outline. Organized lit. Hard. Going too slowly but not sure what else I can do. Have to start somewhere!”

“Feeling surprisingly fragile. I really want to get the green light from [advisor].”

“Met with [advisor]. Great advising. Need some pruning on my outline but it shouldn’t be too onerous. A long day. “

“The shock of realizing that [advisor] told me that my conceptual work doesn’t fit with my empirical. Am I the stupidest kid in school or what?? Very low.”

“Slogging through. Was told this is my last student work, not my first prof work. Very hard to continue. Get flashes of inspiration but hard to follow through. “

“I think I’m done. No idea if it’s good or nonsense, but I think I’m done! Draft #1 of Intro is done! Now to hope [advisor] approves of it. Still will reread it later this week, after simmering.”

“Excellent meeting with [advisor]. He likes my intro! He has no doubts I can do this. I’m on my way. I feel ebullient. I really want to keep this feeling!”

“Started with half a day of editing just to get back up to speed. So much untangling.”

“Rethought my contribution: marrying global with everyday. Hope it comes through! Edited and wrote. Really hoping to finish sometime this century!”

My thoughts about this are very different now. Despite how lost and desperate I seemed, I actually really enjoy going through these notes. Because now that it’s all done, I can see how everything makes sense. What I see now is a lot of attempts to organize my thoughts – some good, some not so good, but ultimately a necessary process of experimentation and pruning.

I also see good advising here. I was lost and my advisor continually helped me. Note, however, that it took me several days before I even realized and understood what he had told me during a helpful meeting! I was so very fragile.

Also of note for me is how I started to understand, during this process, my contribution: marrying the global with the everyday. In the intervening time, this has become one of my home topics.

Now, in retrospect, the theme of this period seems to be one of slowly, laboriously finding my way. And the lesson to be remembered is one of endurance. Because if I had given into despair and quit, I never would have made my way out of that forest and into something approaching a coherent argument and an understanding of what I had actually been doing these past years.

Coming up: Part 3.

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