The Final Stretch

I find myself approaching the final stretch of my PhD, as I'm due to submit in March, and I'm feeling a strange mixture of terror and jubilation. I recently got some great advice from a wonderful friend of mine, who told me she felt (like me) as if the amount left was overwhelming and too much. Her advice was to keep working on it every day and suddenly there will be a day when it's all done.

(I have found PhDs are, in many ways, the height of anticlimactic experiences.)

Hearing that made me feel a lot better; a PhD is an isolating experience, because in the last year, you're probably skipping most of the socialising with others at the university to get writing/research/other work done. With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of my top tips which have helped me, to hopefully help others keep their spirits up.

If anyone has any other tips, put them in the comments here!


1 - Don't panic if things change. This is so important, because what you submitted as your proposal is so far removed from what you submit, it'll probably be unrecognisable. In a recent chat with The Supervisor, I talked about how my initial proposal had me comparing the worldbuilding techniques of Ursula Le Guin, Frank Herbert, and Douglas Adams, including works from after the deaths of Herbert and Adams. Within weeks of starting I asked my supervisor if I could choose just one author because, frankly, thirty-plus primary texts was a ridiculous prospect. When I reminisced about that, The Supervisor informed me she would never have allowed me to do all that, but wanted to give me the opportunity to realise it. Since then, the focus has winnowed further, and I'm now analysing landscapes in Adams's worldbuilding. This is still awesome, but it is so much more manageable.

2 - Listen to your supervisor. For the love of whatever you do or do not believe in, listen to your supervisor. Not only have they done a PhD themselves, but they've also seen a lot of PhDs (presumably). They will know the standard of writing you need to achieve, what 100,000 words actually means in terms of work, and what pitfalls you will face. In my case, The Supervisor had seen me through my Masters dissertation as well, so she knew all my bad writing habits. For example, I can no longer write 'that' without feeling the need to delete it immediately.

3 - Sleep. Yeah, this can be a tough one, especially if, like me, you are prone to procrastination. It involves changing your habits, which sometimes means turning off the Internet for a while. This will not kill you, though if you're anything like me, you'll feel antsy and want to be distracted. This is your procrastination speaking. My method of overcoming this is to get myself into writing mood with this lovely orchestral piece from the last battle in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIRVjYz9nTw. I find it's a great combination of 'Let's Kick Ass!' and 'Huh, I forgot that was playing'. A quick Google search will give you many pieces of advice for putting an end to procrastination, so find what fits for you. Once you do this, you'll find you not only have time to sleep, but you won't wake up with thesis guilt in the middle of the night. Yep, that is a thing I do. I also wake up with Christmas-present-buying guilt/anxiety, hence my habit of shopping early.

4 - Embrace the glory of the To Do List. Seriously, this helps, even if your list reads like this:

a) Wake Up
b) Eat Food
c) Find thesis books under pile of stuff which somehow multiplies in the night
d) Read one thing
e) Lunch
f) Write for two hours
g) Existential angst

I read an article which had a lot of the standard thesis advice (I suspect, like what I'm doing here, it was written more for the author than anything else) which recommended a program called Trello, which I now love. The joy of being able to drag something from 'In Progress' to 'Finished' cannot be underestimated.

5 - Make room for the things which make you happy. Even if it is one hour a week watching your favourite TV show, or reading webcomics, or knitting, or Skype calls with friends, find something which will let you disconnect from the thesis for a little while, and let your brain have a rest. The Young Man was bemused to find me, in the middle of a particularly exhausting week, turning on America's Next Top Model, which I consider a perfect chance for the critical part of my brain to recharge. (This has replaced Yu-Gi-Oh as my top guilty pleasure).

6 - Don't do too many conferences. This is coming from Miss I-can-do-seven-conferences-in-my-thesis. I loved them all, and I regret none of them, but maybe I shouldn't have let myself be sidetracked too often. Still, I really enjoyed them. Basically, do as many as you think you can. I like to make my conference papers different from my PhD, because it lets me explore something I get interested in without it mucking up the focus on the thesis. But, having done it and been quite brain dead after, I do not recommended three conferences in six weeks. Still not quite sure how I scheduled them without realising how close they all were...

7 - Write. I don't always keep to this, but it is the advice everyone will give you. Write when you are bored. Write when you are tired. Write on a day when it's sunny outside and you want to go out, but the stupid thesis is stopping you. Write when you hate the work, and write when you love it. Write when you have no damned idea what you are saying. Going over it with your supervisor later will help you figure out what you want to say, and how to do it. In the end, just write.

And delete almost every 'that' you type...