Relax, Refresh, Produce

In my last issue, I told you that I'd let you know when Inside Higher Education ran my article about staying productive in the summer. Well, here it is. Appropriately, the piece came out on July 5th while I was relaxing at Emerald Island, one of North Carolina's many beautiful beaches. As I exhorted readers to avoid burnout by taking a work-free vacation, I soaked up a delightful dose of my own medicine. Hopefully, the article will give you more ways and means to use your time wisely this summer.

(And welcome to the many new subscribers who discovered this newsletter via the IHE article.)

Two weeks ago, I suggested that you "go public" with your goals and invited you to email me your specific scholarly plans for the summer. I've heard from many of you and responded personally to each email I've received. Feel free to keep those notes coming – I find it motivating to hear from you. It is fun to learn some of the specifics about the articles, grants, dissertation chapters, conference presentations, incompletes and comprehensive exams that are being tackled this summer. You feel more real to me now – not just a disembodied audience sprinkled with a few clients and former students. I'm struck by how much each of you is doing this summer.

In addition to individual emails that have arrived in my in box, I've also seen some ABD bloggers take up my invitation to make their goals public. Take a peek at the objectives of "Almost Bloody Done" as one example.

I'd like to send a special cheer to newsletter reader YH. Three months ago she announced to me that she planned to write her dissertation in three months. Now she has defended on schedule. Wow! This is the shortest turn around I've known about in the decade I've been doing this work. Here's the quote she ends her email with – which I believe gives us a clue about how she finished so fast:

ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in
-L. Cohen

Thanks, YH, for another reminder that Perfectionism is the Enemy of Phinishing.

I also wanted to send a special note of public support to TG, who is pregnant with her fifth child and working on papers and a grant this summer. Wow, TG, I sure hope that you have great childcare and household help. In my case, the secret to surviving as a working mom is having great people around to help out. I don't know what I'd do this summer with out Anna, the young woman who helps schlep my daughters home from day camp, keeps up with the never-ending loads of laundry, and manages to laugh rather than frown at the girls' squabbles. Bravo for brave and warm-hearted caregivers!

Even if you don't have a colony of kids, the importance of a network of supportive friends and family cannot be overemphasized. Scholarship is an isolating experience. Once you're an ABD you know more than any other living person about the narrow slice of your chosen scholarly topic. No one knows your research topic to the same extent or understands your data completely. Writing is always a solo task. To counter-balance the loneliness of long-distance tenure tracking, you need to actively work to maintain and increase the strength of important relationships.

I believe the collaborative nature of research in some disciplines plays a major part in helping students complete their doctoral work and junior faculty publish prolifically. For example, students in science and social sciences, on average, complete their doctoral work more quickly than students in the humanities, where sole authorship is the norm.

The solution to the loneliness of the winding path towards tenure: social support. Find ways to strengthen connections with peers, colleagues, mentors, and friends outside of the academy. I find that unless I plan specifically to call far away friends, months can pass without conversations. And I've only begun to explore how blogdom provides a new medium for connecting with academics on similar voyages. You'll find a list of links to blogs by other doctoral students and professors on my page of posts. Sample a few at the end of a productive work day . It is reassuring to see how many of us struggle with the same roadblocks and potholes. (But beware, I'm finding that like all new techie toys, blogs are an endless temptation for procrastination!)

Good luck on keeping connected while you keep working.

Do let me know how it goes,

© 2005 Mary McKinney, All rights reserved. You are free to use material from the Successful Academic Newsletter, in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including my live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear.
Attribution should read: "By Mary McKinney, Ph.D. of Successful Academic Coaching. Please visit Mary's web site at http://www.successfulacademic.com for additional tenure track tips and dissertation writing strategies."

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