Criticism is hard for anyone to take, particularly if it's one's own work being picked through with a fine-toothed comb.
Dave Sbarra, a Graduate Arts and Sciences student, imagines standing in a hallway, waiting for a team of professors in the room to finish tearing up a paper that has consumed most of his waking hours for the past few years.
Sbarra said he pictures a fellow classmate walking by and asking him how he's been doing. Will he have to fight the urge to reveal his biggest fear - that his professors will open the door and blow off all of his efforts as a complete waste of time?
It's an experience unlike any other - the moment when Ph.D. candidates defend their dissertation to a committee of faculty members, and Sbarra said he feels pretty confident. Students are at the mercy of four individuals, who have complete power in either approving or rejecting a 150-plus-page paper.
"It's a surreal experience," Sbarra said. "You're asked to step out of the room after the [proposal] defense and wait in the hallway as your committee evaluates your work."
Sbarra put six years into his doctoral dissertation entitled "Affective Processing Following Romantic Relationship Dissolution." Put more simply, he's spent the past six years tracking the emotional experiences and mood fluctuations of 60 University students as they deal with the breakup of serious dating relationships.
Unlike projects for the professional schools of medicine, business and law, the dissertation lacks formal deadlines - a reason why most candidates remain at the University for several years.
In order to obtain a Ph.D., students first must spend roughly three to four years completing course requirements, including the completion of a thesis within the first two years, which Graduate Arts and Sciences student Patrick McGuinn refers to as a "mini, mini dissertation."
They then face the ultimate challenge: figuring out an area of interest with a scope reasonable for their dissertation.
As if the process of filling up 10 pages for a standard undergraduate course paper isn't painful enough for many students, writing a dissertation seems like it would be the worst form of self-inflicted torture to those who take on the task.
But students who are knee-deep in the dissertation process serve as encouraging reminders that the "pass/fail" nature of the dissertation project is misleadingly scary.
Fellow Graduate Arts and Sciences students Karlyn Crowley and Charles Goldthwaite prove that a little self-discipline and great friends make the goal of getting out of bed every morning to write much more feasible.
"I wrote in the same place every morning - at my same computer, with the same cup of tea and the same cat that's sitting next to me right now," said Crowley, an English Ph.D. candidate this spring. "Routine goes against my character, but I force myself to write every morning, at least for a few hours."
Every other week, Goldthwaite joins a group of graduate school friends that are "wrestling" with the same issues of motivation and writer's block. Over lunch, he updates his friends on the current status of his project: the portrayal of rock 'n' roll music in contemporary literature.
"We make promises about what we'll have done for next week," Goldthwaite said. "We feel obligated to follow through."
Each graduate student handpicks the committee that oversees the dissertation project. Three members hail from the student's department, the remaining person a faculty member from within the University.
After outlining a basic plan of attack for their research and writing, Ph.D. candidates refer to trusted advisors as often as weekly for reassurance and guidance.
"If you're doing it right, you'll have met with individual committee members a lot" by the time of the dissertation defense, McGuinn said.
Graduate students certainly will have had ample time to have those discussions, at least. Students involved in English, government and psychology graduate programs generally dedicate four to 10 years slaving over papers completed with an average of 150 pages in length.
A number of roadblocks slow down the journey, however, leading to this increased time commitment.
"Plan on every step of the process taking four times the amount of time you originally thought," Sbarra said, whose 25 hours of dissertation research per week combines with the time he spends either working with clients or at the Mary D. Ainsworth Psychological Clinic in the University's psychology department.
McGuinn recognized that his love for teaching conflicted with his educational goals. The former high school teacher served as a teaching assistant for several government courses at the University while he was working on his dissertation. These outside responsibilities forced him to push back his dissertation defense until next summer.
For these Ph.D. candidates, the extreme amounts of time spent on their dissertations and related school activities leaves a paying job out of the question.
As a result, McGuinn knows that his graduate student lifestyle leaves him with a salary "only slightly higher than a Domino's pizza guy." Fortunately, the Miller Center offered him a fellowship that provided $15,000 for his research on changes in federal education policy.
But, in the end, all the hard work and low pay has been worth it for these dissertation candidates.
Sbarra said he recognizes that while all graduate students have a "natural anxiety" about being evaluated on their oral defense, the process leading up to that day should have prepared students efficiently to know what the committee will say about their work.
The committee isn't "looking to discredit you," Sbarra said.
Psychology Prof. Timothy Wilson, the department chair, said that candidates often underestimate how much more they know about their topic than the committee. Wilson, who has chaired 12 committees and served on over 20 more, said rather than viewing the oral defense as a "tribunal grilling," students should capitalize on the opportunity to show off their knowledge.
For Crowley, the final step in the process brings everything full circle.
"This is necessary if this [dissertation] is going to turn into a book down the line, which is essential to getting a job and getting tenure," Crowley said, in anticipation of the defense of her dissertation, "Gender and American New Age Culture."
Within the next few weeks, she will sit down for an hour-long discussion after her committee has read over her completed manuscript.
She hopes to respond to their criticisms with "grace and openness"
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