A Year in the Life of a Dissertation

Brought to you by the letters W, M, S, and the number 336(ish).

Early last week, the Today show started running year-end retrospective segments, which freaked me out. While they scrolled through images from 2010, I had to remind myself that yes, the year was almost out. I hadn’t even begun to think about retrospective things, which is probably good since I’ve been feverishly trying to wrap up a lot of chapter revisions.

That’s when I decided that my take on 2010 retrospectives this year is dissertation-centric. After all, what was 2010 for me if not the Year of the Dissertation?

A year ago, the dissertation was not even half-baked yet. On January 1, 2010, I could honestly say that I had written Chapter 1, Chapter 2 (two versions of it), and Chapter 5. And I was pretty proud of those accomplishments.

In the winter and spring months of 2010, in between teaching assistantship duties, fellowship applications, department activities, and a conference at Brown University, I wrote two more chapters: Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. None of it, of course, went as fast or as smoothly as I would have liked. The piles of books around the house were ridiculous, my snacking habits atrocious, and yes, let’s face it, my cut-in-paste technique got a little obnoxious at times (even for me).

But by the end of May, there it was: Chapters 1 through 5, with an Intro, Conclusion, and Chapter 6 still pending. I was afraid of Chapter 6. Chapter 6 and I weren’t quite getting along in my mind yet, because I still couldn’t visualize it as well as I could see the others.

Of course, one of the lessons in the second half of the year was that it doesn’t matter how well I visualized something or not: odds were that I’d end up shredding it to pieces and finding another approach anyway.

In some ways, the spring of the dissertation was uneventful, particularly when compared with the rest of the year. I stressed over writing those two chapters. I went all over town interviewing veterans for the project and spent hours transcribing interviews. And somewhere along the way, the writing happened. I made progress.

Then came June, the month in which the dissertation and I went through a planned, yet temporary break up. This was probably a very good thing, and the reason for it was excellent: three weeks at West Point’s Summer Seminar in Military History. I wrote a lot about that this summer, and I still think about it a lot. In retrospect, that was probably one of the best experiences I could have had this year because my time in New York (and the surrounding areas) forced me to reexamine many things related to both the dissertation and my professional life.

Plus, I met a ton of interesting people and spent some time being social. It can’t always be just you and the dissertation, you know.

Then there was July. July, the month where Chapter 6 and I went at it for 10 insane days before I threw a draft at my advisor, even though I knew as soon as I printed it out that it didn’t work. And even that was okay. Me, my advisor, and Chapter 6 – we all made it through that crappy period, mostly because in the process of tripping things up so badly I seem to have figured out how it really needed to go.

And then: August and September, the months of the revisions. For two solid months I attacked each chapter in order, thoroughly, methodically. I buckled down at the table for a set period of time every day and wrote. And thought. But mostly, wrote. I worked into weekends and evenings on some chapters. I lived, breathed, ate, and slept my dissertation.

By late September, Chapters 1 through 6 had received the first major round of revisions. I wrote the conclusion (which I kinda loved). I agonized over the introduction draft (which I still kinda hate). I deposited the ENTIRE VERSION of Dissertation 2.0 into my advisor’s mailbox on October 1 and let it all just be for awhile.

But it was still the year of the dissertation, after all, so October and November included some more oral history interviews, a small archival trip, and “other” work that I think still helped with the dissertation, such as job applications and letting my brain process things subconsciously. Then, the Friday before Thanksgiving, the advisor and I got together and went through Version 2.0 together.

That was roughly six weeks ago. In the time since, I’ve looked at oodles of books. I’ve reworked countless passages and gotten frustrated over different elements of the project. Then there are days like today, when I finally found my voice in a particular chapter and found new evidence that no one’s ever written about before and got to use it.

I still haven’t touched the Introduction, Chapter 3, or the Conclusion (which needs new attention in light of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell). On the other hand, I’ve reconceptualized and revised Chapters 1 and 4 and made other edits for Chapters 2, 5, and 6.  On the final day of 2010, I’ll send these revisions off to a committee member who’s graciously offered to read the whole thing. I have other readers offering their feedback to each chapter, too.

It’s not done yet, but it’s close. So close. Which means 2011 is going to be awesome.

Hacking (of the Literal Kind)

My grad school colleagues know me as someone who uses a number of digital processes for the dissertation project. I guess that’s what happen when you spend three years associated with a program that teaches grad students how to effectively use tech tools for research, teaching, and the job search, and when you’re the person telling everyone in your department that photographing documents in the archive can be a lifesaving process. (And from the looks of it, this blog gets more than a few hits each week for my May 2010 post on Hacking the Dissertation Process.)

Maybe that’s why my advisor seemed surprised when I told her about my other hacking process…the literal cut-and-paste process I use when I’m editing chapters. This is the part where I hack the printed pages into pieces, as you can see by the image of chapter 2 strewn all over the floor above. I fell into this practice as a college freshman when I took my school’s comp 101 class. Back then, it was just a 10-page paper, but it worked. I cut the draft into paragraphs, numbered each, and wrote notes on the sides of each paragraph – sometimes editing sentences, but other times just noting what the theme of the paragraph was so I could rearrange content more effectively.

I did the same for my undergrad thesis, and the whole process has reemerged periodically during the dissertation stages. For all my digital processes, I can’t deny that this cutting and pasting works for me: it gives me the ability to visualize the whole piece a little better because I can see more than just one or two pages on the screen. I can try out what it will look like/sound like to rearrange paragraphs.

Additionally, my cut-and-paste hacking job makes the writing process a bit more physical. I go from sitting at my laptop to crouching on the floor on all fours, moving around from section to section while my dog looks on with a quizzical expression of “How crazy are you TODAY, woman?”

Tonight I’ll sit down and slice up chapter 4. I anticipate cutting a topic from the chapter, but my reread last Thursday convinced me that it’s going to be a little trickier than I initially thought. Tomorrow, I’ll go through the paragraphs at the start of the revision efforts so that I can try out the cuts and reconfigure some elements. Then I’ll begin the rewrites. That’s the part where I stack up all the pieces, sit down at my laptop, and go paragraph by paragraph, editing texts, rearranging information, and otherwise trying to figure out what needs to come next.

It’s a messy process, but maybe those are the best kind.

The Beginning of a Long Road

In June 1948, President Truman signed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act.

In July 1948, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which began the efforts to desegregate the armed forces.

On Saturday, December 18, 2010, we achieved Congressional repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

In the midst of all the cheers and good hopes for the future, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these three major changes together. I’ve also thought about how the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell means I get to revise my dissertation conclusion, and probably need to spend a little time thinking about the broader implications of the repeal in light of my conclusions. And I’ve spent a lot of time thinking that this is only the beginning of a very long journey.

In recent months, I’ve seen a lot of commentary here and there about the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the parallels to racial integration in the military. There’s not a lot about how Don’t Ask Don’t Tell parallels the military’s first sexual integration efforts, however, probably because not very many people have ever heard of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act. Of course, everyone knows women are in the military, and most Americans can probably bring up two of the “big” issues surrounding women in the armed forces – combat, women’s families – but our historical memory of women in the military tends to jump from World War II to the 1970s (except, of course, for brief flirtations with the nurses of M*A*S*H).

In the past few weeks, I devoured literature on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as I began work on revisions to Chapter 1 of my dissertation, which focuses on the 1948 Women’s Armed Services Integration Act. Thematically, there are some underlying issues between the two legislation pieces, so the reading proved helpful in many ways – even if you wouldn’t necessarily connect them at first glance. One of the documents I spent time with was the 1993 RAND study conducted when President Clinton decided to explore the possibilities of repealing the ban on gay and lesbian service members.

There’s this fascinating chapter in the study that analyzes the military’s racial integration efforts as a way to think about what might happen with ending the ban on homosexuality in the military. But you won’t find much about the connections between the integration of women and the possibility of ending the ban on homosexuality in the military. In contrast, the authors state early in that chapter that it’s not really appropriate to look to the military’s integration of women as a parallel, in part because policy related to women’s integration “has been ambiguous”.*

The authors go on to point out that as of 1993, women continued to be “set apart” from men – in my own words, I’d say segregated – primarily because of combat restrictions. “If it were contemplated that homosexuals would be set apart in separate living quarters and restricted from critical jobs, then the experience of women might be instructive. However, if the purpose is to fully end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, then the experience with racial integration is more analogous.”**

If you haven’t heard much about sexual integration and the armed forces as a corollary to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I suspect it’s because many people would agree with this report’s conclusions. Even 17 years later, I’d argue that sexual integration isn’t complete – and that there are still problems.

This is not news to anyone who has half an eye on current media regarding the military, of course, but it is something that I think many people don’t think about. Do I think the parallel of racial integration and ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has merit? Yes, I do. I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the military’s racial integration efforts. While imperfect, racial integration worked well in many ways. The emphasis was on changing behaviors, not beliefs, and this became key to enforcing racial integration processes.

And yet, you can get rid of policies, speak of equality and opportunity, and still have problems – as the racial integration process also shows. Perhaps the biggest lesson from racial integration should be that integration is not achieved just because someone says it is. The military is a large, complex institution with many layers of hierarchy built in. There are many levels of power where many individuals can abuse the system and get away with it, no matter what official policy might be.

Yes, looking to the military’s racial integration successes (and shortcomings) is important for ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and moving forward. But I think it’s a big mistake to focus on racial integration and exclude sexual integration. In fact, I’d argue that it’s paramount for the armed forces to take a good, long, serious look at its history of sexual integration efforts, success, and – above all – limitations.

Sexual integration has been happening for more than 60 years in the military, and this weekend, the armed forces turned to face another development in that process. There’s a long road ahead, and I suspect we’ll see a lot of challenges along the way that come in the form of prejudice and discrimination.

Now is the time, more than ever, for the military to come to grips with sex.

*Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel Policy: Options and Assessment, National Defense Research Institute (U.S.), Rand Corporation, 1993 (page 158).

**Ibid (page 159).

 

Tricky Bedfellows

One of the things that’s crossed my mind many times in the past five years is the idea that you better really love your dissertation topic. I think we get told this many times – or maybe I read it in one of the many “how to survive graduate school” books over the years, but it’s one of those truisms that really matter. Although I’ve been working on the dissertation for about three years now – counting from my prospectus in 2007-2008 – I’ve been working on the general theme of women’s relationship to the military/warfare for nearly a decade (off and on).

Really, though, things got most interesting in the past three years. I worried for a long time that I might get tired of the topic. After all, once I finish the dissertation, there’s still the book to work on and all that. And I won’t lie: there are days when it feels like it’s the same old, same old.

Dissertation subjects make tricky bedfellows. You have to love them enough to be passionate about digging into the topic over and over and over again. And you have to love it enough to give yourself the drive to press through revisions and the headaches and successes that go with the entire process. At some point in the dissertation process, it’ll feel like you’ve gone round and round with no end in sight. (Happily, however, I’m told there is a way out, and I’m nearly there.) It can feel like you’re in a never-ending saga of you versus the dissertation, and some days, you’re just not winning.

Yes, there are days, and they’ve happened more often than not to me lately. Maybe winter doesn’t help, since we’re mired in single-degree temperatures and below-zero wind chill factors right now. Maybe it’s the added factor of the job market and the quickly-approaching AHA next month. Maybe it’s been the fact that my chapters have gotten longer with revisions, which means I’ll need to spend some time slicing and dicing them, a process which has its own rewards and satisfactions.  (It’s a process that makes me feel a little more like I’m winning the battles, at least!)

Progress with these revisions feels slow, which doesn’t help the matter. There’s been a lot of reading involved, and a lot of playing with things and thinking about things and rethinking things, and – as mentioned -stressing over chapter lengths. Yesterday, though, I started to feel like I was getting somewhere.

Yesterday, I threw myself into reading, with some excellent results. I recently came across two primary sources that I’d never seen before. The first is a 1962 book on servicewomen and what they do, a broad overview of careers for women in the military, which offers me some interesting tidbits and perspectives (my favorite: the military as “sorority” for women). Then there’s a 1972 Army training manual, which includes – among other things – instructions on how to be a woman. I’m dying to see the film they referenced on the topic, and I’m told I can probably find it at the National Archives (will have to check it out one of these days).

I think the break from writing and editing helped me refocus. It felt like arming myself again – and yes, I realize I’m using far too many military terms in referring to the dissertation. All the reading yesterday helped me gather more evidence and ideas that I can use to better corral the dissertation and get it where it needs to be.

Today, I feel optimistic and hopeful. I feel like the progress is coming, even if it doesn’t feel that way so much of the time. Just for today, at least, the dissertation and I can be BFFs again. (Tomorrow, of course, the dissertation may be more tempermental, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.)

The World Outside

One of the wonderful things about my final year of graduate school is being on a fellowship provided by the American Association of University Women (AAUW). When I applied last year, it was just one among many grant applications. I vaguely knew of the AAUW, but couldn’t tell you much about it. I knew it was a good organization with a long history, and the grant looked pretty nice.

When I got the notification of the grant last spring, my first response was excited disbelief. I had not one, but two emails in my inbox from the organization. I read the one that arrived first and got all excited, but before announcing it to my friends in the grad student office, I had to quickly read the next one because I worried it would be one of those emails that says “Oh – we’re so sorry. We mistakenly sent you an award letter, but you didn’t actually get the award.”

Of course, both emails were simply letting me know I’d been granted an AAUW fellowship for the 2010-2011 school year. Having the fellowship pretty much means I didn’t have any teaching duties this year. I love teaching and I miss it, but honestly, having the opportunity to arrange my time around writing, revisions, and reading – as well as job applications – has been amazing.

But the other amazing part of the fellowship has been the people of AAUW. This summer when I got my award confirmation packet, the letter noted that my contact info would be given to local AAUW chapters, in case they wanted me to come speak to their groups. I thought nothing of it at the time, but in late September, I received an invite to come speak at the October meeting for one local chapter. A week or two later, I got an invite to speak briefly at another chapter meeting in November. And then in late November, a third invite arrived, asking me to speak at the December meeting for another local chapter.

In many ways, these opportunities to meet local AAUW members have been one of the highlights of my semester. It’s been a good semester – and a highly productive one – but it’s also a busy year filled with a lot of uncertainties. This is the nature, of course, of looking for a job while finishing a dissertation.

Being on the job market while finishing a dissertation means you spend a lot of time putting yourself out there and hoping someone will like you. It’s almost like being in the midst of grad school applications all over again: you’ve put all your hard work and effort into the materials and you hope, hope, hope, that you said something that someone will find appealing (someone also recently compared it to dating, which isn’t far off either). In the meantime, as you deal with dissertation edits and struggle to say things just right, it’s easy to find yourself doubting whether you’re good enough for any of it. At moments, it’s good old Imposter Syndrome all over again.

At the end of the day, of course, you have to remind yourself how far you’ve come and what you’ve accomplished. Having the opportunity to meet and speak with the local women of AAUW has been a good reality check. These women have been so welcoming, friendly, and kind. Moreover, they’re interested in me and in the work I’m doing. They like learning about my dissertation topic. They ask questions, and they invite me in as one of their own.

It’s been an awesome glimpse at the world outside, and a good reminder for myself that I really have come a long way. This year, there’s still plenty of distance to travel, but I suspect I’ll make it in the end.