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...
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...
Ah, writer’s block – the bane of every doctoral student’s existence. There are times when no matter how hard you try to make progress on your dissertation, the words just don’t seem to flow, and your mind feels as blank as a newly formatted...
I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly greying hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes.” Joanna Russ As a graduate student, you know that research, writing, and formatting can be a real...
