Managing thesis-writing alongside the endless homework as a TA
by Darío Lizancos Robles
Finish your classes, they said. You’ll have plenty of time to work on your dissertation once you’re done with schoolwork, they said. It kind of makes sense, right? You’ve worked hard and completed the last classes you will ever have to take in your life, and now after a brief celebration it’s time to get back to work, day in and day out, on the important research that your entire academic career has been leading up to. Unfortunately, many of us find that this is not the case, that despite finishing classes we are somehow busier than when we began our graduate programs, and that getting a few solid uninterrupted hours to work on our dissertation is a luxury that we are rarely afforded.
What you sometimes don’t realize when you start your program is that once you’re done with classes, new responsibilities emerge. For example, you are teaching more advanced courses that require additional time to prepare and grade, so you can be “marketable” once your job search starts. Maybe you find that you’d like to audit a class in statistics to improve your research skills, and maybe you take on additional tasks such as joining clubs, doing side-research for conferences, trying to publish an article, or volunteering for events in your department. Maybe you start applying for jobs, and everyone knows that applying for jobs is a full-time job. Maybe you became a parent. All of a sudden, you are just as busy if not more so than you were in the beginning of your program.
But what can you do? How can you stay motivated and carve out time to complete your dissertation? How can you excel as a teacher, student, and researcher? Here are three tips to make progress on your thesis even when you are facing an endless stack of homework and papers to grade:
Look at your thesis every day.
If you take a few days away from your writing, you might not remember where you at or what you were thinking. It will take you longer to get back into the zone and catch your rhythm. When you’re working under pressure, you need every fully-focused minute you can get. Try to at least take a look at your thesis for five minutes every day.
Fully focus 100% on your thesis, even If it’s just for 15 minutes.
It’s so easy to get distracted these days – because you’re busy, you’re a multi-tasker, and you also have a life going on outside of school. It can be difficult to devote all of our attention to one thing, but if we’re able to give 100% for just a few minutes, it is better than an hour of unfocused time. I really like using the Pomodoro technique to maximize my attention and give myself healthy breaks.
Write content rather than format
Just write something on the page! Quantity over quality in the beginning. You will have plenty of time for editing later. When you’re in the mood to write and ideas are flowing easily, it’s best to get them all down rather than writing carefully and backtracking to reword things.
Just remember how far you’ve come, and even when you are dealing with endless homework, teaching, your dissertation, and other responsibilities, you are staring at the finish line of your graduate career. Taking a little bite out of your writing every day will help to advance your dissertation and help to keep you from getting overwhelmed by the task at hand.
Darío Lizancos Robles studies Spanish Linguistics in the department of Romance Languages. In Spring 2022, he will serve as the WIP TA for SPAN 4003 Medical Spanish.