The 700th person just joined my Facebook group:
Latinas Completing Doctoral Degrees, and I am both amazed and humbled at the
same time. Almost a year ago I started blogging about my dissertation journey in hopes that I would find support for
my extrinsically motivated self. The
Facebook group then seemed like another way to find additional help and maybe
even comfort from a community that I could trust. Like many other doctoral students, there are myriad
feelings that come up for me when I realize that I can’t complete the dissertation
on my own. And when I do admit that I
need help, I am careful about to whom I reach out. This got me thinking: what holds us back from
asking for help?
After completing the coursework and comprehensive exams in
our doctoral programs, we are told that we should now be prepared to complete a
dissertation. But I don’t think I was
unique when I got that terrifying feeling that the task that I was about to
embark on was going to be daunting, to say the least. Luckily, there are now numerous books available
(see reference links below) that try to simplify the dissertation process by
providing tips, tricks and insight into what goes on in the mind of a
dissertating student. This is one kind
of help that works if you are a person that is self-motivated and can follow
structured directions like a robot. However,
I am one of those “people persons” with a need for human interaction and
ongoing feedback and I already admitted that I am also an extrinsically motivated person.
Unfortunately, the usual dissertation committee setup does
not always provide that constant support.
I do feel fortunate that I have an amazingly supportive dissertation
mentor and a wonderfully reassuring committee, but they all have many other
responsibilities and it is not appropriate for me to expect constant check-ins
and reminders.
There are many other instances in our lives that we don’t
think twice about asking for help. For
example, I had a recent knee injury that needed a team of people to come
together to help me get back to “normal.” My primary care physician, surgeon, physical
therapist, co-workers and most importantly, my family formed the dream team to
get me back on my feet literally and figuratively. Everyone did their part to
assist me when I needed it and even when I refused to admit I needed it. There is nothing more humbling than hobbling
around on crutches and becoming so much more conscious of the privilege that I
have as an able-bodied person (but that’s a blog post for another day). I
learned to ask for help and not feel guilty or undeserving of it. That was more challenging for me than I
thought.
So back to the question about what holds us back from asking
for help in the dissertation process.
These are some thoughts I came up with:
External Issues: Our intuition tells us that we will be
judged and those stereotypes about who does and does not belong in academia
begin to show up in the ways that we are or are not actively supported. The problem is that when
we ask for help we are doing a few things:
- admitting we can’t do it alone
- making ourselves vulnerable
- relying on others who may or may not actually be able to help
Internal Issues: Our feelings of inadequacy might creep up
and we begin to believe that if we are asking for help we:
- are not capable of doing it ourselves
- don’t know what we're doing
- should have known better than to think we could dare to aspire to accomplish such a significant achievement
I think on both sides of these equations there are some
truths, but the bottom line is that NO ONE has ever done anything significant
ALONE. Every great invention or accomplishment starts with an idea, but the
final version of any great thing came to be because of a team of people who
believed in the idea and then used their variety of talents to make it
happen.
This summer I decided to post a question in the Facebook
group about creating summer writing accountability groups and I honestly
thought that maybe 5 or 6 others might reply with interest. We now have almost 60 Latina doctoral
students from all over the United States, organized in 10 groups. These
writing groups are designed to support each other and provide a variety of online (and
some in-person) check-in mechanisms to ensure a productive summer. I am one of those people who is already benefiting
from this initiative. My group has motivated me to spend time in the library and keep going at night when I thought I was too tired to code and write. (Thank you Darleny, Shirley and Daphnie!)
By reaching out for help and seeing my dissertation as a collaborative
process I opened up a world of support, hope and love (yes love) that I could
never have imagined. I am grateful and
look forward to celebrating more milestones with my newly found support group, um, I
mean, summer writing accountability group. ;)
As referenced above,
here are some useful dissertation writing resource links:
