The PhD Chronicles: Those Dang Edits!

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

For those early on their doctorate journey or not on it all, after one defends their dissertation. there are often edits to be completed. 

So for those just tuning in, I defended my dissertation on December 10, 2024. It went well but as is expected, there were edits that I need to work on. The edits recommended by the committee were not anything that I felt was unexpected. They all made sense and were things that once they mentioned them (in the defense itself or afterward), I could clearly see why they were needed. They're not that bad, but they do require time. 

If I was a bit more focused, I could probably have done them within 1-2 weeks of when I defended, but instead, I passed them in early February.

Right after the dissertation, I decided to take most of December off. Between starting a new job and defending my dissertation in the first week and half of December, I was largely done for 2024. I did do a little bit of work between Christmas and New Years but not much. The rest of the month was a bit of catching up on so many things. 

But as January started, I knew I had to get going--and also, the beginning of January was filled with a variety of talks and workshops that had been booked back in the fall cause that is a peak-request time in higher ed for me to do some of my AI work. So it wasn't until the middle of the month that I managed to get my rhythm with consistently working on the edits.

But I finally got into a rhythm and systematically worked through the list. I've heard lots of horror stories about edits, but everything in front of me made sense. The fact that the concerns and recommendations made sense allowed me to feel even more grounded the work that I did and the ability to fix them to the degree that I was satisfied. A feeling that I did not necessarily feel throughout much of the previous process. Still, they take thought and time. 

And the edits have been submitted and it appears they are close to being accepted (heard back from most of the committee).  This means that shortly, I'll be able to move forward with the final phase of the dissertation, formatting for dissertation publication. There is definitely a post coming about that because I can already see an issue arising (surprise, surprise, it has to do with open licensing). 

Still, the edits are an interesting time to revisit my dissertation and see it more holistically and all the connected parts as a finished (or close-to-finished) work. So much of the project was done in parts that getting to see the whole is really powerful. Even the defense itself, I didn't see the whole but largely focused on the second half (clarifying how the research went, sharing findings, and insights from the findings). While I don't think what I wrote is great, I do think it is good work. One of my committee members said that she thought it could be a book right out of the gate in her feedback and so I'm chewing on that. 

In other related news, during the break, I also took the time to take all of the posts in this series and put them into a Google doc. There are over 60 posts that I've done in this series (the PhD Chronicles) and it amounts to over 150 pages, single spaced. I'm wondering what I might do with that as a collection when all of this is done. Maybe there's another book in there to share out with the world. 

 But here we are, one more step accomplished--one more step closer to the fully-finished line. 

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