I have 23 voice memos on my phone right now. Some are untranscribed, unlistened-to, slowly accumulating like particles of digital dust. There’s one from last October where I’m apparently making a to-do list while walking to the cafe down my street. Another...
I’d like to tell you I wrote this piece in one glorious sitting, fingers tip-tapping away, ideas cascading onto the page like energetic espresso shots. In reality, I wrote a few sentences, checked the weather in New York (no, I am not in NYC), made chai tea and...
The other day, a client told me she was “waiting until after the holidays” to get back to her dissertation. I paused briefly. After the holidays? January, when everyone returns exhausted, broke and facing three months of dark and cold weather? That...
Let me tell you about a former client of mine—let’s call him Brad. Brad was kind, well-read and simply hell-bent on writing his dissertation on the use of punctuation in 14th-century French legal manuscripts. Yes, I’m sure someone out there finds that topic riveting....
As a Ph.D. student, are you concerned about your mental health? The journey of a dissertation can often feel astonishingly solitary, a terrain where the weight of stress, anxiety and daily worries can create a profound sense of isolation. The modern world carries its...
