The Dig on Deadlines, Part II

Before Fall Break I shared with you my thoughts on how to deal with deadlines. In that post I promised to follow up with some ideas for dealing with a lack of deadlines. Well, anticipate no more.

While many of you have no shortage of deadlines coming in the next few weeks, most of you will arrive at a time when the deadlines all but disappear: when you are finished with your coursework but are working on your thesis or capstone project. For many students that gives about three years until your defense must be complete. This seems so far into the future that, for all practical purposes, this deadline is nonexistent.

Still, you probably want to go ahead and finish up. Yet when the work's going slowly and that thesis slides just a little lower down the priority list, it can be tempting to adopt the mantra of "I have three years to finish this...I'll get back to work next week," and, before you know it, you've missed a chance to go ahead and defend and graduate.

Don't let this happen to you! Instead, consider these four tips, which draw from my experiences during my no-deadline semester:

1. Work backwards from the time you want/need to finish your project. Determine the absolute last day you must have the work completed. If this is your date of defense, look at the graduate school calendar. I even suggest you make your final deadline a week earlier than this date - this allows you some breathing room to schedule a defense date that works for you and your committee. Then, set deadlines for your drafts, bibliography, prospectus, and any other milestone points, continuing to work backwards. For example, your self-imposed deadlines might look like this:

• Defense: week of April 20-27
• Final draft to committee (I'll give them a week to read, so....): April 14
• Preliminary draft (20 pages or so) to chair of committee: April 1
• Mid-semester committee meeting: March 10
• Well, since I have a meeting coming up, I'd better give them something to read, so....
• Initial rough draft with working thesis + annotated bibliography: March 3
• Outline so I can start drafting with a basic sense of organization: February 15
• File intent to graduate: January 25
• Oh, well, I have to file an intent to graduate, so I'd better have a research proposal together, so...
• Capstone Project Proposal: January 23

Now, this is not to say that these deadlines are set in stone. Sometimes things come up - you might have a family crisis; you may find that a key source is only available in Canada and will take a month to arrive here by interlibrary loan. Still, you're more likely to stick to this timeline if you....

2. Declare your intended deadlines in writing to your committee member(s). If you tell your committee chair to expect a draft of your paper by a certain date, you are much more likely to meet your deadline.  Again, she will likely understand if something compelling prevents you from meeting this deadline, but the sense of accountability you'll feel will do wonders for your motivation.  Of all of the tips I'm giving you here, this was the most effective during my semester of project work.

3. Set up regular work hours every week. For me, this was Saturday afternoon. I would go for a run in the morning, then get a coffee and go to my "office" (really a private cubicle in Sherrod Library) and do some quality work. Knowing that I had 12-6PM carved out particularly for working on my research freed me from the distractions of home, work, and general laziness.

4. Visualize your defense and graduation. You might have heard of visualization as a technique athletes use to train their minds to succeed in competition. This works for grad school too.  Spend a few minutes each day imagining the day you walk out of your defense, having just been told you did a fine job and passed. Imagine the senses of accomplishment and relief you will feel as you walk outside, take a breath of fresh air, and realize that you are DONE! Maybe this sounds cheesy, but believe me, it works.

If you find yourself with work to do but no deadline in the near future, try one or more of these tips, and get to work! Good luck!

Fall Break - Make Sure You Get Yours

Thank goodness for mid-semester breaks. A four-day weekend is nice - think of all of the work you can catch up on your upcoming papers and projects without having to read for class or make your way to campus each evening. Wait...what? What happened to the "break" part of fall break? Are you among those who look forward to fall break not as a mini-vacation but instead as a good chance to get some work done? Welcome to the club. For many grad students, "breaks" take on an ironic purpose.

Before you spend the next several days holed up in the library with the Cultural Studies Reader and a can of Red Bull, remember that adequate rest is just as important as hard work in any activity, school included. I encourage you to designate one full day for rest and relaxation. Sleep in, go for a bike ride, watch reruns of Seinfeld all day. What you do does not matter - just don't even think about schoolwork for at least one day. "No time for that," you say? "I need to catch up!" Of course you do. But...

As a MALS student, I quickly learned that rest days were vital to my success. Sure, I might have risked setting myself up for a heavier workload the next day, but in the end, I was more productive during my study if I periodically took a "mental health day." Otherwise, I'd just get burned out and resent my work - getting much less done in the long run.

I know what some of you are thinking - isn't this just procrastination? Not really. Planned rest to rejuvenate your mind is not the same thing as putting off work because you don't want to do it. The key is to plan these breaks ahead of time - schedule a break the day after you turn in a paper, the day you have a family event, or even during this fall break.

The Dig on Deadlines, Part I:

Are all the deadlines killing you? If I recall my graduate school days correctly, all of my papers for all of my classes were due within a 24 hour period. Usually, this unified front of deadlines also fell on a week when I had a plumbing emergency or income taxes due.

Panic would ensue, followed by a marathon of maniacal study during which I became "that guy" who made the coffee shop my personal office space until the barista was practically running the vacuum cleaner over my feet. I'd meet the deadlines, celebrate by watching South Park and Seinfeld (the only programs I could pick up at 12:30 AM in those pre-digital-converter-box days), and start the cycle all over again. As soon as I (barely) survived one swarm of deadlines, I found myself smack in the face of another.

If this sounds at all familiar to you, first let me say that I feel for you. Second, believe me when I say that you WILL get through it. Hey, I'm living, blogging proof that it is possible not only to meet those deadlines but to meet them so well that you (almost) look forward to them. A 20-page paper due Monday, a book review and analysis due Tuesday, a presentation plus an essay test on Thursday? Bring. It. On.

Before you dismiss me as a weirdo exception to the rule who had no life outside of school, hear me out. I will tell you how I approached deadlines and learned to make them work for me instead of against me. Keep these points in mind and see if you don't cope a wee bit better:

1. Deadlines don't really sneak up on you. Sure, people use this as an excuse all the time. But it's not really true. With rare exceptions, you know about your deadlines well in advance. Due dates are on your course syllabi for each assignment. Sure, we all get distracted and forget about deadlines temporarily, but they don't hide for months and leap out at you at the last minute. Usually they're in plain writing. Keep this in mind, and stay proactive in your planning.

2. Deadlines can be like holidays! Really! It's all about perspective. A deadline in grad school is like a mini last day of school. Say your seminar paper is due November 30. Instead of fretting over how the weeks are flying by as you get close to your deadline, think of November 30 as the last day you have to deal with this seminar paper! Afterwards, you're free! Complete your assignments on time, and your deadline days are happy days. This positive mindset can help you stay focused on your tasks and motivated to tackle your assignments well ahead of time.

3. Go ahead and panic - but keep it short and sweet. I discovered that a well-timed freak-out in an appropriate setting was actually quite healthy. My poor husband and cats more than once had to endure a 10 to 15 minute tirade over the injustices put upon me by MALS, Roland Barthes, Julie Thompson Klein, etc.; but, more often than not these panic sessions ended in laughter. Laughter mixed with a sense of futility (I still had to do the work, after all), but laughter nonetheless. The moral of the story here is that my tirades left me relaxed and in better spirits than I would have been had I simply kept my nose to the grindstone. And in this happier state, on with my work I went. So panic, but then relax.

4. Accept that graduate school probably won't let up. As I've said before, grad school is hard. It's supposed to be hard. Not only are you trying to comprehend complex theories of French philosophers and scholarly vocabulary you could swear the authors made up just to sound good, but you're also expected to read and write about these in what seems like record time. Yep, it's going to drive you nuts from time to time. The sooner you can get over the fact that as soon as you finish one difficult task you'll be in the midst of another, the better. This pill's a little easier to swallow if you keep in mind the following.

5. You're not the only one in graduate school. Heck, you're not the only one in MALS. Remember, at any given time there are approximately 40 other students in MALS at ETSU who are going through the same thing you are. If you notice, none of them are keeling over. You'll live too. And while it's true that an interdisciplinary program of study presents unique challenges, I don't think the other 2,000 or so students in the School of Graduate Studies are enjoying a cake walk either.

6. Your professors won't give you impossible deadlines. They want you to succeed. Yes, they want to challenge you, push you to grow stronger as a scholar, but they will not set you up for failure. They have a lot on their plates too - they don't assign work just to be mean. Even for the 20-pagers, your professors don't expect a hardcover manifesto that extinguishes the quest for all knowledge. In other words, there's a reason you have page limits on your papers.

7. Remember why you are in MALS. You are here because you have a goal. You are here because you enjoy learning and are drawn to learn more about a part of our culture, history, society, or geography that is too complex to approach with only one discipline. You are taking the initiative to take an interdisciplinary approach. How cool is that? As you meet your deadlines, remember that each assignment you complete is a step toward creating new knowledge about something that interests you.

I hope these seven gems of wisdom help you meet your next deadline with confidence and satisfaction. Stay tuned for the next installment on the deadline dilemma, when I'll reveal some tips for working in situations where deadlines are all but nonexistent.