Dissertating Under the Influence

I successfully defended my dissertation proposal (my “preliminary hearing”) 10 weeks and 6 days ago. How is it possible that it’s been that long already? It seems just like a couple of weeks ago I was standing in the hallway of my school while my dissertation committee deliberated about my proposed dissertation topic and methods. It’s been 13 days since I started data collection. As I type that my anxiety starts nagging at me:  “why did you wait so long to get started? what if no one participates? you probably took on too much. you should have listened to your committee and made it a smaller project.”  I proposed to be done with data collection in 21 weeks and 1 day. This is flexible. Sort of. It feels as if it’s creeping up on me quicker than I’d like. 

Let me back up. I’m in my fourth year of doctoral studies in social work. I’m working on a dissertation that includes four methods to study the experiences of youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ). There are interviews, observations of LGBTQ youth groups, an online survey, and a review of public data to assess community climate. I’m more excited about my dissertation than I have been about anything else in my doctoral program. I’m also more anxious about and intimidated by my dissertation than I have been about anything else in my doctoral program. For you stats nerds, one might come to the conclusion that my excitement and anxiety are positively correlated. 

I’ve been throwing myself into all kinds of social media that I didn’t understand two weeks ago (and some of which I still don’t) in an attempt to recruit participants for my study. One of the LGBTQ youth I know suggested I write a blog about my study. I started to do that and then realized that my target study population (the teenagers) aren’t going to be interested in what I have to say on this blog (well, some might…). I started a tumblr for that group. This blog is different. While I’m not 100% sure what it will morph into, I hope it is a place where I can talk about this whole dissertation thing: what the process is like, what problems I’m having, the highs and the lows, what’s influencing my work on a daily basis (you know, besides anxiety)…I hope it is a place where you, the reader, can join in and share your experiences and help me turn this blog into…whatever it will become. 

With that, I leave you with a short introduction (but I’ll be back). If you’re in graduate school, you know how tiring it gets to introduce yourself in writing, so I’m going to go about this a little differently.  Here is a (rather incomplete) list of words that describe me (in no particular order):

feminist
woman
queer
newlywed
cat person
friend
teacher
advocate
student
scholar
writer
daughter
virgo

Until next time…