Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Where the Rubber Hits the Road

One of my fellow department bloggers over at Working to Live brings up an important dilemma for graduate students involving ways to make the most out of program requirements by making them do "double duty." Every department has its own culture, expectations, and program requirements. In Family Social Science here at the U of MN, it is common for students to aspire to use one or both halves of their written preliminary examination as building blocks, a foundation, for their dissertation.

I, too, had this as a goal. To inject another metaphor into this post, I thought it might be efficient if I arranged my program such that the work I did for my early requirements drove me --safely and without incident--to my dissertation. I'm not sure, however, how successful I have been. And frankly, now that I have passed both exams and am working on my dissertation proposal, I no longer care about that. I now feel that the road to the dissertation contains too many unknowns for me to have tried to predict back at prelim time what I need to get here. Whether I drove to the dissertation via my written prelims or whether I took another route, the best advice in either case now that I'm almost there is "Fasten your seatbelts; It's gonna be a bumpy ride."

Not that the written preliminary exam is useless. Early in my program I was aware that these written exams had to serve two original, traditional purposes, namely (1) demonstrating (for my faculty) that I have synthesized the knowledge imparted to me in my many semesters of coursework and (2) credentialing me for the next phase of my graduate program. But I then was aware of this third, "building block" or "driving" goal. In fact, I specifically recall being straight-jacketed for quite a while with the anxious idea that whatever I planned for my written prelims had to be "good enough" or "relevant enough" to serve as a springboard for my future work.

I resolved this dilemma--and in the process, was freed from my stylish white jacket with the tie-down wraparound sleeves--by ranking these goals by order of priority:

Number 1: The credential--If I got that, if the faculty said "Yeah, she's ready to move on," and signed off on my paperwork, then I will have been successful in navigating one more hurdle in the graduate school race.

Number 2: Demonstrating Knowle--Wait! Shouldn't that be number one? Don't you have to demonstrate knowledge effectively in order to be get the credential? My answer is...You've got your questions and answers mixed up. If you're asking: "Don't you have to have a firm grasp of the necessary material first before you can be successful in the next stage of your PhD process?" then I would say "Yes." Definitely.

But the issue here is what did I need to show faculty before they allowed me to pass go. And I figured that I needed to show that I was well prepared--not "exceedingly competent," or "the bestest damn graduate student ever to sit for a written preliminary examination in the entire history of the department." I felt after I had done the papers that there was so much I knew that didn't get into either paper. But by letting go of this, letting go of the idea that with the papers I first and foremost had to dazzle 'em with my expansive and deep knowledge, I was enabled to actually write better papers.

Number 3: Written Prelims as Springboard--Just icing. Gravy. Nice work if you can get it (and if you get it, won't you tell me how). But for me, not necessary for my future progress. You may argue, "Well, the dissertation will move more smoothly if you are able to use the writtens as a foundation." Maybe. I'd like to see the proof of this, though. Now, skills learned as a result of writing the two prelim papers will definitely help with the dissertation, and it is very definitely helpful if you do not have to go get a whole new body of literature to begin the dissertation.

But the type of "springboard" folks are usually aiming for is more akin to using the whole of one of these papers--for example picking up the Critical Review Paper, dusting it off, and pasting it into their dissertation proposal as their lit review section. Well, nice. But to me this sounds a little like the promise every about-to-be-wed friend and family member has given me regarding the bridesmaid dress she picked out for me: "And it's so nice you'll be able to wear it again as regular formal wear."

Yeah, right.

What set me free and allowed me to drive forward was the conviction that my papers had to "satisfice"--be good enough to open the door to the oral prelim exam.

Well, your mileage may, of course, vary. But this worked for me. (So far, anyway.)

Posted by perry032 at March 4, 2005 02:27 PM | TrackBack
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