“For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt.”
By way of Little Bit Left, a new site by a Columbia colleague that’s well worth adding to the blogroll, the NYT surveys the sad plight of the modern ABD. (I’ll be 33 at my current expected finish date, seven years after starting, and my cohort’s attrition rate has been significant, so it seems the stats bear out in my case.) “Those who insist on dissertations are aware that they must reduce the loneliness that defeats so many scholars…’It’s easy, especially in our field, to feel isolated, and that tends to slow people down…There’s no sense of belonging to an academic community.‘” Oh, I dunno…Berk and I often have very scintillating conversations…progressive citizenship, New Era consumerism, socks, squirrels, you name it.
weird. i still can’t get molly to talk about evangelical subculture and premillennialist politics.
I would say that being a person with experience in the “real world,” such as yourself, can only be helpful. I know from my own personal experience that completing a law degree, and practicing law for several years, before returning to graduate school only benefitted me when I wrote the dissertation. Setting priorities and using time management techniques honed at work gave me definite advantages.
Neil, the trick is just to go for it. A few Milchian soliloquies under the belt and next thing you know the conversation perks right up.
John, that’s true. Having “real world” work experience, particularly in a writing field, definitely makes for a leg up in the efficiency department. (Alas, it doesn’t do much for the penury and isolation, tho.)