I recently finished a rough draft of a paper and sent it to my advisor. I had meant to finish that paper in the summer. Then school started, and I thought I should be able to finish it by the end of August. And then August ended, and I no longer had a deadline, just a heavy weight that I had not completed a draft yet.
I felt so behind, and I did not want to work on this paper. I was stuck. I felt guilty for my lack of progress. But I needed to work. So I decided I was just going to sit down and dictate it. I turned on the dictator, and I talked.
I had to stop talking midway through because I had kids coming home from school, but then I kept typing until I was 4,000 words in and I had a very messy word vomit rougher than rough draft.
The paper got a whole lot easier. I was able to go through and make that word vomit into something that actually resembled actual research and argumentation.
I still need to do more research (there is always more to read). I still need to improve my arguments. I still need to proofread and actually put in proper citations.
But I think I hated working on that paper not because I hated the subject material or the argument, but because it reminded me that I had disappointed myself. I had expectations that I didn’t meet.
When I finally finished what I had wanted to do for so long, the paper wasn’t so bad anymore.
I’m not sure what to do about that in the future.
Lower my expectations? But sometimes if I have high expectations, I can get a whole lot done.
Just get things done, so I’m not missing deadlines? This is the best case scenario. I’m always happier when I’m ahead of schedule instead of behind schedule.
Maybe have multiple deadlines in mind in the first place? I mean, the deadlines were my deadlines. The actual deadline for this paper is towards the end of October (for a final draft, not a rough draft), but I don’t necessarily get kicked out of graduate school if I miss that deadline. So maybe my own self-imposed deadlines need to have a different flair: I need to realized that sometimes I have overly optimistic deadlines, realistic deadlines, and life-gets-complicated deadlines. And set all of those different dates for myself, so that when I blow past the overly optimistic deadline, I don’t feel so much guilt.
Heather Hoyt 