On Dissertation Writing Camp

Draft 1: 29 May 2025

Last week I had the really nice opportunity to take part in a university-sponsored dissertation writing camp. Earlier iterations of this site spent much more time reflecting on the things I experienced, rather than just thinking about things, and so it feels reasonable to do so now. It ran from Monday to Friday, 9am to 430ish pm except for Friday which ended around 1300.

Each morning started with a fifteen to twenty minute presentation about some important part of the dissertation process, reminders for the camp in general, goal setting time. Because I respect the idea that copying wholesale is never appreciation, I’m not going to list every activity we did or every presentation’s content.¹ Goal setting was, despite how ridiculous it felt to me every day, really helpful, if only because it let me set my mind at ease knowing that I had things to do. It also helped me realize that what I set as a minimum goal is really almost always about what the actual amount of work I’ll do in a day. I’m sure that there is a lot I could say about how² I consider my level of work always the minimum. I did slowly lower my expectations over the week, which was also probably good.

Something I found really interesting was just how much I not only knew a lot of the writing advice, but how much I had internalized it. I no longer write a first draft with any expectation of it having anything but potentially the content that I want in the final version.³ I know that habit is important in writing, and I know that like passive voice generally bad, unless trying to distance self from the project.

I also found it really interesting how different my reality is from those around me. I mentioned that my goal each day was usually in the 2000 to 4000 range and got a lot of shocked looks. When I said that I absolutely hit that goal every day, they definitely did not look at me like I was fully human. For some, this made sense. Especially if I was working on a later draft of one of the chapters, there’s no way that I could get that many words out. As someone who was literally just vomiting words on the paper because I can’t edit an empty page, though, it felt strange to know that they were writing so little.⁴ I do know a number of people were reading literature or otherwise gathering knowledge, and I’m sure that some are of the team that like it’s important to get the final words on at a time, which is a totally valid take.⁵

It was really interesting to see that so much of what I find hard about the thesis⁶ process is shared not just between fields, but between like the entire graduate school. I’m very glad not to be a literary studies candidate, because I absolutely could not write hundreds of pages of text without many pictures, and the fact that they do is so impressive. In general, though, every time that I wanted to start playing a game instead of working, the fact that I would look around and see my explicit peers working hard meant that I did not. I did get up for a lot of walks, but like that’s so fine.

The lunchtime seminars were also cool. On Monday we kind of just went over the most normative writing advice⁷. Tuesday was something similar. Wednesday was an absolutely incredible seminar about mental health.⁸ Thursday we learned about the absolute requirements from the graduate school about our thesis⁹.

The closing sessions were often something similar, though tended to also have some element of interactivity. I liked them, in general. It was nice chatting with people and reflecting on the goals I had.

On Wednesday of camp, we were all hitting the midweek slump. I suggested a rousing “one, two, three, team!” to wake us up, and people semi-begrudgingly participated. As we closed for the night someone shyly raised their hand and asked if we could do it again. I felt so seen then.

Really, that reflected the broader takeaway I had from the camp experience: I wanted more camp. I, for one, think that an overnight writing lock-in would be really productive for me. More than that¹⁰, though, one of the explicit goals of the camp was that we bond with one another. Camp-like activities¹¹ are a great way for people to bond. People seemed generally receptive to the idea, but no one really seemed to want to put in into practice.

The camp coordinators were also fantastic. All three are members of the writing center during the regular day, and they set up fifteen minute slots for us to talk about whatever was going on with our thesis. I’m not sure if I used those correctly, because in general I kind of just went and said “I think this” and got told “yeah, sure”. That reflects far more on me, though, because I did not have a clear goal for what I wanted in the conversations, and I do know the low hanging fruit that applies to all people.

All in all, I really loved the week, would absolutely do another one if ever given the chance, and recommend anyone else to do one as well.¹²

Daily Reflection 29 May 2025

no, it’s not that I don’t remember them all, that would be ridiculous↩
ughhh I hate that my default for h is always left index, not the right, as is appropriate↩
wow yesterday’s folly is such a good case study in what I do↩
ok let’s see, we were there 9-430, 9-930 and 16-1630 were both group times, and 1215-1300 was designated talk time, 1145-1215 was lunch, so 9:30-1145 is about 2.25 hours, and 1300-1600 is 3, so that’s a little over 5 hours. 400 words an hour feels like such a small number. That’s (breaking out calculator time) just over 6 words a minute. I cannot imagine staring at a page for ten seconds at a time, only to quickly write a single word↩
I remember reading the writing advice that some people edit as they go so that each word is great on the page and others edit draft after draft, neither is necessarily bad↩
still not totally sure what the difference is, found it absolutely incredible that they kept abbreviating dissertation as “diss”, because “I worked on my diss all week” feels like something that someone who loses a lot of ad hominem (I don’t use italics for Latin because I am not a coward) arguments would do↩
do it, schedule it, make deadlines, etc↩
the professor giving that talk is just my favorite professor, and everything she teaches about always resonates hard↩
and I am my father’s son, asking questions that no one had ever considered. Highlights were absolutely “if you’ve removed maximum abstract length, is there a minimum?” and upon being told no, “so a blank abstract?”, and “if someone on the committee dies between approving the graduation and signing the e-form, what do we do?”↩
oof I use this phrase far too much↩
and anything culty, in general↩
wow look at this, I managed to do a full post in under an hour.↩
yes, one of the first things I considered when moving into my current apartment was that I put the bed in sideways from ideal. No I have not done anything to rectify that issue in the past five years↩
I’m trying to think what my ideal way of relaxing/lounging is when I’m trying to write or read or type on computer or draw or whatnot. Beanbag chairs have the nice part which is that their amorphous nature means that I’m always supported, but struggle because of the whole “no place to rest anything, there’s something inherently weird about being a single person who owns a beanbag chair, ”I don’t know if I like the way that they sit in the room, and I cannot recline, which is a large goal.↩
it was half finished before naptime↩
is what I’ll call an entire box of Kraft mac↩
since I’m starting work at 700 today, I’ve also just started well before the usual stretch time.↩
both because I took up computing resources and because I will now have a lower priority for submitting jobs myself. Hmm we have computers in the lab that we aren’t always using, could consider using those.↩
SSC, AAT, if any vib states were good, what happened to the computations, etc↩
thanks dissertation camp↩
if very low down↩
there’s the issue that at a certain point, mess and slightly more or less mess feel identical↩
mmmm off by N numbering↩

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On Dissertation Writing Camp

Draft 1: 29 May 2025

Daily Reflection 29 May 2025