Dissertation Writing as an Endurance Sport

Hi, Muhamad!

Wow! What a week! Things have been wildly busy around here. I hope you're doing well and are happy with your dissertation progress.

Here's another thoughtful dissertating article for you!

Hope this will give you an extra boost of endurance. Keep moving.

Take care, and see you next time!
Dr.Rachna

(Muhamad's Phd. external supervisor)

Dissertation Writing as an Endurance Sport

by Michael Kelly

Ph.D. Candidate

Writing a dissertation and training for an Ironman triathlon don't seem to have a lot in common. For one thing, triathletes (both male and female) tend to shave most of their body hair in an effort to save time, whereas graduate students (both male and female) tend NOT to shave in an effort to save time.

Truth be told, both pursuits have much more in common than most people would think. And keep in mind that as a triathlete, I'm neither fast, nor good, nor particularly talented. I'm slow but stubborn, which is a useful trait in dissertation writing as well.

So, what characteristics do dissertation writing and Ironman training and racing share?

Coffee ... lots of coffee. There's just no way around it -- riding a bike or reading academic books and articles for six hours at a time enslaves you to "the bean".

We Sleep When We Die. This may be a chicken-or-egg relationship with #1, but both dissertation writing and endurance training require you to adapt to less sleep than your body needs. Should you get 8 or 9 hours? Sure. Do you get 4 or 5? Usually there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything you need to do.

The Fogie Factor. Aren't you tired of hearing your advisors tell you about how they had to run their data by submitting punch cards to lab-coated computer attendants, or that when THEY took their comprehensive exams they had to write it longhand with dull pencils, or that THEIR advisor made them (blah, blah, blah).

Triathlon's the same way -- there's always some fogie telling you about how he had to ride a 45 pound Sears 10 speed in jean shorts and tennis shoes up Torrey Pines Road, or the time that it was 117 degrees and (blah, blah, blah). Guess what? The new technology doesn't make it any easier -- your brain still needs to come up

with an original thesis and analysis that you have to sustain for several years and several hundred pages, and your body still has to propel you through 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling and 26.2 miles of running. No amount of technology can blunt the fact that these are Very Hard Things.

Talent Is Overrated. Any TV coverage you've seen of Ironman completely overplays the stumbling, the vomiting, the grimacing ... the truth of racing and training is much more mundane, and most of it is mental -- you keep yourself going out of stubbornness, and if your body tries to quit, your mind needs to do some serious smackdown to quell the corporeal rebellion. Same thing with dissertation writing -- yes, your brilliance helped create that inspired flash of insight that lies at the heart

of your thesis, but the rest of your dissertation gets written through sheer will as you spend a few years of your life drawing together the evidence and arguments into a book-length project.

What gets you through in both cases is not any particular talent, but a willingness to keep plugging away until you're done.

Most people just don't get it. Let's face it -- for most people, getting a Ph.D. is not the most rational way to spend 4-6 years of their lives.

You've gotten tired of explaining to the relatives at the holidays that you're still in school and that you're still working on "that really big paper," and you've given up trying to explain why you find your dissertation's topic so interesting. Training for an

Ironman leads to similar reactions from friends and family: "You're doing what? For how long? In one day?" Most triathletes have given up trying to explain the allure of 10-17 hours of self-propelled motion to uncomprehending loved ones.

In both cases, you're trying to explain the unexplainable. Though it's hard to remember when you've been focusing on the same narrow topic for three years or when you've been sitting on the same narrow bike seat for three hours, you started with an internal spark of some kind, a burning curiosity about what's out there and what's possible, and about whether or not you could do it. In both cases the underlying reasons tend to be intensely personal and hard to explain, which makes it all immensely satisfying in ways that are impossible to verbalize to "outsiders."

Where Does It End? In both Ironman racing and in dissertation writing, everyone hits at least one wall where they say (scream) to themselves "I AM NEVER GOING TO FINISH THIS THING!" Finishing seems so far away, and what you need to do to get there looks so inconceivably huge that it seems utterly unattainable. It makes you

doubt yourself intensely, but in both cases you need to remember that this feeling happens to everyone and does NOT indicate your unworthiness. It's universal.

What you have to do instead is focus intensely on whatever small task you're involved in at the moment -- whether that be pedaling to the top of the next hill or editing your first two chapters -- and forget (as much as you can) the Big Picture with all the fear

and loathing that comes with thinking about it.

You string together enough of those little jobs and you finish -- it's that simple.

I could go on and tell you about how both triathletes and graduate students survive on pasta to a degree that would disgust any Atkins adherents they know, or how they tend to make passersby nervous by frequently talking to themselves out loud, but I think you get the point.

Dissertation writing IS an endurance sport, and like all endurance sports it demands (and rewards) those who can give a steady, measured effort.

Michael Kelly is a Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science

Department and a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution in

Washington, D.C., which is a MUCH colder place to run this time

of year than La Jolla.