Still Here (Dissertation Season Has Me)
Small confession: I am late with this week's post, and was quiet through most of last week too.
The reason is not writer's block, or avoidance, and it is not a crisis. Truth is, I have been buried — several thousand pages buried, no exaggeration! — and when I have this many clients I tend to shift my focus to them and let the blog and social channels simmer on the backburner for a while. Dissertation season is in full swing.
Here is what I’ve been up to: six doctoral dissertations in the middle of a full formatting and style pass — rebuilding Word styles chapter by chapter, repairing tables that had been built by hand, running a consistency check, and writing the change log that tells the author what moved and why. Journal manuscripts in peer review, each one requiring a full evaluation form. And I was asked to peer review not one, but two other articles this week, too. I managed to complete one because it was a resubmission of a paper I had already peer reviewed, but the second is a new file.
I also have a stack of program research and course design for a research university I partner with — reading other institutions' doctoral handbooks, mapping course outcomes up to program outcomes, and arguing with myself about which of them the course I am currently designing aligns with and why. I'm also coaching and editing for a long term client who is working on a new conference presentation abstract and proposal.
I have seven individual clients plus a university course, plus my book coming out in just a few weeks. I’ve been working 12 hour days for 7 days a week for about 6 weeks now.
This is the shape of scholarly work, and it is the part that breaks people
I tell my clients some version of this constantly: this is the work right now. Eventually, things calm and settle down and the frenzy of a new academic year begins to make a little more sense and definitely becomes more manageable.
Still here
So I will update more about the work, offer some new APA 7 tips and tricks, and some good writing advice for academic writers very soon. Now, lots of other work is at the top of my stack. Back to it.