It’s a long, lonely slog to the doctorate. And yet, at the same time, the timeline feels too short. I am planning to conduct my final dissertation defense in late March 2026, just in time for a May graduation (should the universe be willing!). My research will be complete and my dissertation will be written by end of February, 2026, to allow for revisions. That’s only a couple of months away!
I wrote in April about became a doctoral candidate. It was so exciting to achieve that milestone! But the transition from formal classes to the dissertation phase has been a doozie. Fall 2024 was my last semester of formal classes. Since then it’s been all writing, reading, more writing, data analysis, and terror-inducing meetings with my chair. I started this blog post in September. SEPTEMBER. I’m finally publishing it now on December 2.
I am worn out but there’s still a long journey ahead! (Listen, these months are flying by, but they’re flying in an oh-my-God-where-did-the-time-go way). I’m totally understanding now why, when I’ve asked doctorate graduates about their dissertations, they basically pleaded with me not to read it. I get it now. I have to accept that my dissertation is not going to be as fabulous as my heart wants it to be, because it just has to be done.
And yet! I’ve learned so much in this process and coming to the end is really gratifying is some ways. I’ve already run my survey and received even more responses than I hoped for. My focus groups are complete. I’m in the data analysis phase now.
My research is practically done!
Currently I’m revising my existing chapters. My original dissertation proposal consisted of the first three chapters of the five-chapter dissertation. Sounds like I should be 3/5 done, right? Wrong!
My Chapter 2 Lit Review was a bit of an embarrassment, so I’ve been conducting massive revisions for months. My Chapter 1 (Context) has to be updated with the latest developments in my context, since I’m focusing on generative AI. My Chapter 3, Methods, has to be revised to reflect what really happened in my research process. Things happened! Research is not a tidy process. Additionally, my Chapter 4 (Results) is basically a handful of hallucinatory bullet points and my Chapter 5 (Discussion) feels like a distant dream.
And I didn’t even tell you about the data analysis yet! I ran a survey with 23 questions, four of which were open-ended. I had to read and code four qualitative responses for each of the 189 survey respondents, and still have to read and code my focus group transcripts as well. It’s a few hundred pages of data altogether. The quantitative data analysis is partly done. You can check out this cool data dashboard my husband made me to see some preliminary results. I will keep coding, it’s quite a process. I don’t even want to think about formatting everything in APA.
Also, when I said I was done with classes, I may have exaggerated: I actually just completed a self-paced course on qualitative coding as part of my degree requirements. I took another self-paced course in spring and summer as well. These are truly self-paced, and rather lonely. I had no idea who was in the class with me! Learning to perform qualitative coding is quite a bit of learning and work. I’m grateful for that class and the practice it forced me to do of coding my qualitative results. Now I’m really done with courses. My spring semester is just dissertating.
I’m so looking forward to my defense and wrapping up my dissertation. I’ve got a trip planned to Santa Fe post-graduation (if you want an ear worm, here’s a fantastic country parody song that’s sort of related to Santa Fe). I suspect that graduation will be anti-climactic, but I will welcome having my time back!
Wish me luck in this final push! It’s a doozy.