1. christinaslisrant
  2. Are you done yet?

Are you done yet?

By cpikas on July 23, 2009.

Ack. NO.

...Ok, well when you gonna finish?

ARRRGHGH

PhD students unite! Rebel against these questions!

My answer - I don't know, and it will probably be a while. Like ask me in 3-4 years.

Here are some ways my program differs from others you might know more about:

  • very linear - we do coursework, then comps (or integrative paper), then dissertation proposal, then dissertation
  • everything is new work - the comps (or integrative paper) is not like presenting a portfolio of work already completed but a new separate thing, the dissertation is a new piece of empirical research (no publishing pieces in advance as journal articles)
  • there is course work - a lot - and there are specific classes that are required
  • there's a lot of making your own program - no two people do the exact same thing ( or take the same classes, etc)
  • many of us are older (very few, if any, straight from an undergrad), most of us are married, a lot of my fellow students have children
  • nobody gives you a dissertation problem that they've carved off a larger project - you have to go find something (it might be part of something you're working on with a faculty member, but it's really not the same)
  • we can't teach. the school is grad level only (hm, what happened to the info sci undergrad minor?) and there's a rule that grad students can't teach grad students. Two recent PhDs co-taught courses and they had some degree of freedom in this. But we're competing when we graduate with people who have taught like 4 classes :(

Anywho... what's up right now is that I'm struggling to find a dissertation topic (not too small, not too big, and I want it to mean something - like make a difference or matter in some way) and then I'll be putting my committee together to hopefully get it approved in September.

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Doesn't really sound terribly difficult from what I went through about 35 years ago starting on the road to my phud in invertebrate zoology. The major difference is the lack of teaching, but that varied a lot for my group. And in my group, nobody was handed a project - you had a year or so from acceptance to come up with your own question(s) or you got shown the door with a booby prize (a non-thesis masters).