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I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

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Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#141

Post by TeMPOraL »

neodypsis wrote: post #90
croisillon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as long as we paid the semester fee the university never bat an eye

Public universities usually give you a lot less time, think months, and one may also be constrained by visa allowances. Not sure if it's also the case in the US.

Not sure how is it with PhD, but with Masters and below, my experience (context: public universities, Poland) is that even in a public university you can get quite a bit of extra time if you... just ask for it. Preferably not in the last minute. The staff doesn't have any particularly strong reason to kick you out just for failing to meet a deadline, or even failing a class - the rules can be bent quite a lot if they see you're making an effort and want to complete your thesis / learn something.

Just as long as you don't hit an administrative blocker, that is. In my case, I never submitted the thesis, because my request to extend the time coincided with the faculty being split in two and completely overhauled - so instead of extension, I was told that, because of "syllabus changes", I would need to repeat the entire MSc level (2 years) to be able to submit the thesis now. I politely declined.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#142

Post by throwaway28768 »

I did nothing for 18 months when I was writing up. I think the problem was that I wasnt sure what I was supposed to be writing. Instead, get up late, open my thesis document, send emails, go for coffee, go for lunch, read replies, send more emails, go for coffee, websurf and then go to the pub. When I finally figured out what I needed to write, it all came out in 6 weeks. It was no great discovery, just along the lines of: what did you do, why, what's the current state of knowledge, what was the outcome, what worked, what didnt, what's the contribution, what's next.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#143

Post by hnarayanan »

holyra wrote: post #138

Be careful, mental health is really precious... I didn't have the courage to quit my PhD while I was alone (my supervisors were not involved in my work from the beginning; I had almost no comments on my writings, including my thesis...). It took me 5.5 years (instead of the average 3.5 years in my university) to graduate. I extended my 3-year contract with 2 years of teaching and the remaining 6 months I was without…

As someone with first hand experience of this, trust me this is temporary. You will heal from this.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#144

Post by MayeulC »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #56
MayeulC wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been having trouble writing my PhD manuscript for more than one year, so the title clearly resonated with me :) I'm nearly done, I've been doing regular meetings with my advisor and keeping track of progress to help me write. At some point, I guess I realized that any progress is progress, that the thesis isn't going to write itself, and that I don't have to hand over a perfect work. I wish you all the courage t…

I was supposed to turn mine in last week and have written ... 10 pages.

That was me 13 months ago... If can do it, so can you!

I felt completely burnt out back then (still do to an extent). I wonder if allowing myself to work on something else to relax would have helped? on the other hand, it's much easier to just continue once you're on a streak. And you can alway dig deeper, which is so tempting.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#145

Post by dahauns »

xvinci wrote: post #106
theshrike79 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When coding I have a rule: "first make it work, then make it pretty". The MVP can be a complete spaghetti piece of crap, just make it work. When it works, you can iterate on making it elegant. Oh, and if you work for a Corporation, don't tell them it's done when the crappy MVP finally works. You're still "working on it" if they ask. Otherwise the spaghetti crap will end up in production.

Except I've seen too many spaghetti code craps in production to actually recommend this. There is a plethora of reasons why colleagues (or even you) will end up not waiting until code is production ready (e.g.: A new nice task comes in which you'd rather work on, you get reassigned, you get sick and someone else has to finish, you get a great opportunity to show off and say "hey I'm already done no problem", a tester…

As someone who otherwise works somewhat similar to OPs workflow, I have to agree. One golden rule for me: The "vomit draft" version cannot be your MVP. It is never Viable for production.

That said, TDD (with emphasis on driven) is no silver bullet either, especially when working that way - the tests are equally affected and I've seen enouph code bases where the initial test surface was so off compared to what was needed/sensible that it ended up being solely a hindrance and stifling to actual rework/refactor - with people ending up throwing it away and rewriting the tests from scratch, or worst case, simply setting them to be ignored on build.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#146

Post by drosan »

shikshake wrote: post #27

Hey, I'm the author of this blog post. I didn't think anyone would even read it, let alone post it on HN. To be honest it's a little scary how many people are seeing this post since it's basically my 2am anxiety-fueled cry for help. But it's also motivating reading all these comments from people who've had similar experiences and are offering encouragement. I'm reading every one of your replies and they're giving me…

[dead]

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#147

Post by Toutouxc »

shikshake wrote: post #27

Hey, I'm the author of this blog post. I didn't think anyone would even read it, let alone post it on HN. To be honest it's a little scary how many people are seeing this post since it's basically my 2am anxiety-fueled cry for help. But it's also motivating reading all these comments from people who've had similar experiences and are offering encouragement. I'm reading every one of your replies and they're giving me…

I feel like something being a "2am anxiety-fueled cry for help" makes it MORE worth seeing (and paying attention to), not less.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#148

Post by SanjayMehta »

I wrote my thesis by writing the contents page first and then filling out each chapter and subsection as it came to mind.

Whenever I would get stuck on a problem X I would stick it in the contents list in an appropriate chapter as a subheading called "How to solve X" and plod on from there.

Today I use Scrivener which is great for this kind of non-linear writing.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#149

Post by RisingFusion »

KVFinn wrote: post #2

If you're not just making slow progress but literally unable to make a single bit of progress, my goto strategy is similar to what writers call a vomit draft. For writing it conventionally means means writing words without stopping to plan or edit, no corrections allowed, the rule is you just have to keep typing, no matter what. It's about something being better than nothing, creating momentum, and also avoids being…

I took a similar approach with my thesis, I used voice typing while writing my first draft. The other approach I use in combination is writing every heading and subheading to create a document outline, then fill the gaps. The power of these approaches are breaking down the work into smaller manageable chunks.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#150

Post by lotu »

KVFinn wrote: post #2

If you're not just making slow progress but literally unable to make a single bit of progress, my goto strategy is similar to what writers call a vomit draft. For writing it conventionally means means writing words without stopping to plan or edit, no corrections allowed, the rule is you just have to keep typing, no matter what. It's about something being better than nothing, creating momentum, and also avoids being…

I do a similar thing when I’m writing. Except I write on paper and allow myself to make revisions. Being on paper is pretty self limiting as far as edit spirals.

The other trick is when you are stuck instead of writing garbage write down why you are stuck and describe what would go there if you weren’t stuck. Sometimes this gets you to the solution, but if it doesn’t you still have your thoughts on it for latter.

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