15 more days of dissertation hell to go

When I took my comprehensive exams, I wrote almost 70 pages (double-spaced) in three days over my subject areas: critical pedagogy, literacy, and service-learning. (In my program, we took three five-hour exams, MWF, no notes, no prior knowledge of questions, no knowledge of the types of questions, and our reading lists contained about 100 items per subject.) At the end of each exam, I wasn't tired. I was excited, actually. I felt that I was able to produce very nice essays in a short amount of time. I felt smart. However, as the afternoon turned to evening, I felt so very tired. Drained, actually. Mentally exhausted.

I'm feeling that way again with the dissertation. In between tutorials and fire drills (no kidding), I'm writing. I've stopped reading, and I'm only writing. I don't think the writing is all that great, though. It's choppy and fragmented. But this is a draft, and I know I'll still have revisions to do when I'm finished with this draft. When. Yes, when I'm finished. I can see the light, as they say. I know that I'm coming in on being done with this dissertation, but this last push, this last hard push before school starts? It's wearing me down.

You know how you can have a word on the "tip of your tongue"? My dissertation rests there, on the tip of my tongue. I know what I want to write-- I know it in my body, I know it-- it's right on the tip of my . . . of my what? consciousness, abilities, finger tips, something? I see the end of this process because I see the entire scope of this work. I feel smart. Tired, but smart.


Cross-posted at Parts-n-Pieces.