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Another mythologizing creature… sharing sparks of intellectual passion!
I've come to the conclusion that I need to write down some of the issues I'm butting my head up against, as I write my dissertation. I'm not going to use names because hurting people isn't my goal. I just want to vent a bit — and, should any present or future students in my program read this, perhaps give them a bit of advance warning of possible issues… so they're forewarned.
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One of the first and biggest issues for me was the subject of the dissertation itself. I greatly enjoyed the research which went into my master's thesis, and as I took classes for my PhD I'd been happily looking forward to doing more work on my thesis subject. Unfortunately, near the end of my second-to-last learning class (as opposed to classes specifically about dissertation stuff) I found out that the dissertation's subject matter had to be at least… I think it was 80 or 85% ? -different from the subject of my thesis.
This was a nasty shock, since what it pretty much meant was that I couldn't continue working on my thesis subject. More disturbingly, I'd been angling my research and classes specifically towards that subject for the past two years! I asked, in some surprise, why that information wasn't given right up front to every doctoral student beginning the program — and received an airy reply along the lines of: "Oh, it was! Weren't you paying attention? You must've just missed it."
Um… no. I tend to be real careful about persnickety scholastic shit like that. But I kept my temper and said no more — after all, perhaps I had somehow missed this critically important information… somehow? So instead I checked with two sister scholars in the program who were friends of mine, and who were at different points in their scholastic endeavors than I: had they heard that their dissertation's subject matter had to be at least 80ish % different from the subject of their thesis?
They both emailed me back almost immediately, and were both quite shocked. Was that true?! Surely not! I assured them it was indeed true as I'd heard it from one of the program's core faculty members. I was bleakly amused that they both thanked me for letting them know, so they wouldn't get caught in the same intellectual snare I had — of having no idea what my dissertation would be about when I was but one semester away from having to start the work that led up to it.
Curiously enough I also mentioned this to another core faculty member, to see her reaction — was she aware students weren't being given this critically important information? She too thought that surely I was wrong… and she was surprised when I told her about my two (carefully unnamed) friends.
So hopefully my dismay has made things a bit better for future students — be sure to ask about this if you're a doctoral student anywhere! …but it was still a real bite in the ass to discover so late — and then be told that somehow it was my fault for not magically knowing.
Bestiaries depict mythical, moralizing animals, but are also potential allegorical sparks that can bloom into brilliant mental bonfires. My bestiary is this mythologizing animal's fascinated exploration of beauty & meaning in the wonder of existence -- in the hopes of inspiring yet more joyous flares of intellectual passion.
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