It happened yet again this Spring morning. I was on a Zoom with a brilliant Ph.D. candidate. This is someone who manages a corporate department by day and writes about socio-economic shifts by night. She leaned into the camera like she was about to confess a serious...
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent van Gogh Energy changes as you get older. It simply does. Do you remember when you used to start your night at 9:00 PM? You’d head to a café, order an espresso and pull a focused...
When I was finishing my dissertation, I didn’t use meditation to get through it — but I truly wish I had. Back then, I thought meditation was something reserved for yogis on mountaintops, not for an over-caffeinated, middle-aged grad student buried under stacks of...
A small confession: when I was writing my own dissertation, I lost one entire month of August to a heady combination of over-ripe peaches, second-rate mystery novels and a home-organization project that resulted in exactly zero new pages written. If you’ve just looked...
When I was working on my dissertation years ago, one thing was certain: my home had never been cleaner. Every writing session was the perfect opportunity for distraction…and I took full advantage. Floors were scrubbed, bookshelves meticulously rearranged and dust...
Recently, I decided to put ChatGPT to the test. I asked it a question I often hear from many of the Ph.D. students I coach: “How can I strengthen my dissertation argument?” The AI response was technically correct and well-structured—it suggested reviewing...
