Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash
Today, I saw this quote from Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day.
“Sometimes writing a dissertation is a bit like having a serious, but not mortal, illness: it takes enormous energy to sustain life, you have to take very good care of yourself so you don’t collapse, and your defenses—in this case not white blood cells, but psychological defenses—are sky high.”
I know I run a risk of people telling me that I need to write more or how lucky I am to not work and do my masters. Sometimes I feel sad that my circle of friends has become smaller, but at the same time, I am relieved I don’t need to maintain certain friendships too. I feel sad that some people don’t see how much psychological and emotional battles that I have to go through everyday. Some battles are as small as pushing myself out of bed or even as huge as dealing with baby boomers.
At the same time, mental health is relatively new in Malaysia, and not many people are able to broach the topic well. Worse still, when I hit failure, people think I am being lazy and not doing anything. Why can’t people think that failure is just an indication that I am using a wrong method instead of me not doing anything. I know justifying to others goes nowhere, but since this is my blog, let me justify it:
- I go to a co-working space 3 times a week and make it my routine. There are days that I feel bleh but I get myself out of the house so I get things done.
- I make sure I write at least 2-3 paragraphs during my time in the co-working space.
- I used the promodoro technique so that I won’t get distracted.
- I go to the library on Tuesday or Thursday to borrow books.
- I blog so that I can keep track of my emotions. Those days that I can’t write, I blog and it helps me process my thoughts before doing the dissertation writing.
It makes me feel sad that people think that I am not doing anything and that caused my downfall. After talking to my husband and friend, they concluded that I was under so much pressure from my father and that affected my dissertation writing. I was able to still function and write, but it wasn’t the best work because of the pressure from my father. I know some people will downplay it as “Aiya, you know he is like that. So deal with it.”
Well, I have to acknowledge that the pressure that my father had caused on me and it affected everything. Yes, it is a case of good intentions but poor actions from my father, but for me to deny his influence on me will not help me to move on. Also, I realised if my immediate supervisors can’t help me, I have also realised that there are better people to help. The important thing is to keep searching till you find the right person.
The worse thing about people who are not doing postgraduate is their assumptions about writing a paper. In the working world and also depending in which sector you are working at, you just execute the works or just modify from the templates. Of course, some will tell you to think, but the thinking skills are often limited to the experiences that you have. When they say things such as “Write only” or “Everyday just spend some time writing fifteen minutes… what’s so hard?”
Let me breakdown why it is hard for dissertation writers. In a day, I read on an average of 5 articles a day. If I am reading books, I will squeeze about 2-3 books a day.
For every article or book chapter, I have to put at least 5 quotes from each article/book chapter into a synthesis matrix. The matrix is an excel sheet of my readings and I usually typed them in full because I need to refer them especially if the books are unavailable for me to borrow.
After putting everything in a matrix, I have to synthesize the quotations that I have put in. Synthesizing is the hardest part. Here’s why:
- I need to find out what are the similar things that all authors write, and at the same time I have to see where the differences end.
- I also need to see patterns in writings. A book about Malaysian economy written in 1970s is different from a book that is written in 2000s. While the topics are the same and it overlaps, but a book in the year 2000 will have more information and able to give more context and consequences of economic policies written in the 1970s.
- Since I am a visual person, I have to synthesised my matrix by drawing mindmaps. I also spotted certain tendencies in my mindmapping. If I did everything in pens, it ends up being messy and I would not look into the mindmaps anymore. While I have a messy table, but I would like a clearer mind. These days, I do my mindmaps in pencils, and make corrections within a day. Once the corrections are done, I will draw them out in coloured pens. Yes, it is more time consuming, but for the extra effort, my writings move on faster.
- I need to write a coherent literature review which do not sound like a background of research. I had to rewrite it about 3 times and I hope I don’t have to rewrite it again.
- Based on my Myer-Briggs personality tests, I am more of a Feeling person than Thinking. Thinking is not my strength and it takes me more effort to push myself to think.
- After all these, I have to proofread 1000 words of my own writings. I have 35,000 words to write. Go figure.
After writing this, do I think people will understand? No, but at least I have it all down. The next time when I read it, I will realised that I have forgotten something, and that’s the cause of my failure.
And let me end this post with a quote from Momentum:
