Introduction
Not graduating is relatively easy in the early days of one's education. The student union provides a host of alternative activities which effectively crowds out all attempts at studies. At the PhD level, things become more difficult. The doctoral student will quickly discover that it is no longer socially acceptable to spend evenings at the union pub. He/she has to find other strategies for avoiding reaching the end point of student life, strategies which are both socially acceptable and compatible with his/her conscience. Fortunately, there are a number of such strategies which have been empirically proven to be very effective with regards to avoiding graduating and attaining the title of Dr. The purpose of this writ is to provide examples which can stimulate doctoral students' creativity with regards to self-directed activities in the fascinating field of graduation avoidance.
The safest strategy to avoid graduating is, of course, to ensure that the dissertation work never gets off the ground. Many doctoral students have adopted this strategy with great success. The effectiveness of this strategy depends primarily on how well you choose the alternative activity which will motivate not working on the dissertation. Since education at the PhD level contains a course section, an obvious course of action is to focus extensively on said courses, but given that this section can only be extended so far, it is imperative to not burn through it too quickly. Here, lessons learned from the early days of university life will come in handy.
In order to write a dissertation, a topic has to be chosen. This fact lies at the core of an excellent strategy for postponing graduation. When asked how the dissertation is coming along, the answer "I am currently in the process of choosing a topic" will provide extended cover from further uncomfortable lines of questioning. Much time can be devoted to interviewing different people in the selection process. Every and all suggestions should be carefully considered at great length, before finally (inevitably) being found lacking for this or that reason.
Another effective strategy for avoiding progress is the strategy of "but this is not a suitable thing to include in a dissertation". In short, this strategy consists of consistently refusing to accept that the thing keeping you busy at the moment is of sufficient interest or significance to warrant inclusion into the dissertation. This strategy is especially useful for doctoral students who have happened to be included in a research project. By letting the work pertaining to said project be entirely unrelated from the dissertation work, further progress can be postponed with impunity until the project has run its course.
The Penelope strategy
In the Odyssey, Odysseus' wife Penelope was besieged by a large number of suitors during his absence. She deftly avoided giving an answer one way or another by employing the following strategy. She promised to pick one of the suitors once she had completed the weave she was working on. Since she every night tore up the progress she had made to said weave during the day, she managed to never get closer to finishing it. The doctoral student seeking to avoid graduating have ample reason to see Penelope as a role model. Many of the strategies described below can be seen as variations upon Penelope's original strategy.
Of course, this strategy is difficult to apply literally in the context of a dissertation. To habitually burn the pages written during the day each evening would arouse suspicion. But remember:
No dissertation chapter is so good that it cannot withstand an extensive revision!
In other words, there is great potential for extending the dissertation writing process by constantly revising chapters. Additionally, this strategy can be varied: experiments can be redone (there will always be methodological flaws), and if the dissertation is based on gathered data there is always room for suddenly discovered it has to be replaced with different data, and so on.
Another variant is the "just a little bit more" strategy. That is, to suddenly discover that the dissertation requires just a little more material, a few more experiments, an additional literature review, and so on. This strategy has the distinct disadvantage of becoming less convincing over time.
Live dangerously!
As previously stated, literally burning the pages written during the day is an unconvincing approach. But a doctoral student can, by applying carefully considered systematic carelessness, significantly increase the chances of unfortunate incidents substantially slowing down their dissertation progress. For instance:
A time-honored method (cf the Wonderful Adventures of Nils) is to place the dissertation manuscript near an open window, especially during windy days. With luck, the manuscript can be distributed over a great geographical area using this method.
Briefcases and other bags which include dissertation manuscripts should be brought along everywhere to increase to probability of being lost or stolen.
A comprehensively implemented system of loose sheets significantly increases the chances of important chapters being lost, at least temporarily. Avoid putting labels on binders and floppy disks. This simple step can ensure important texts becomes inaccessible for years and years.
Another important rule, which applies to all above strategies, is to avoid keeping safety copies of the dissertation. This is especially effective when using a computer. A crashed and non-backuped hard drive can delay graduating for several years. If diskettes are used, the older, soft kind is recommended, especially in combination with bad disk readers and copious consumption of coffee.
How to avoid working on your dissertation
One category of strategies has the common trait of avoiding graduating by simply avoiding working on the dissertation altogether. This category can be divided into two subcategories: manic and depressive strategies. Manic strategies consist of doing as much as possible which is completely unrelated to the dissertation. Depressive strategies consist of doing as little as possible overall. The two kinds of strategies suit different personalities to varying degrees, but there is nothing preventing you to mix and match. Correctly applied, they both amount to the same thing.
Manic strategies, or "Work promotes health and prosperity, and prevents many opportunities for research"
There are, in fact, many alternative activities a doctoral student can engage in to avoid working on the dissertation. These activities can be divided into academic and non-academic.
The academic activities are primarily all forms of institutional work. The major advantage of this kind of work is that engaging in it is highly socially accepted, and in many cases actually ends up being more appreciated than working on the dissertation. This includes teaching low-level courses and taking on various administrative tasks, which tend to be highly prioritized by the powers that be, and often have the additional quality of being in need of doing with brisk swiftness.
Activities relating to the student union and its various social functions (party committees and so forth) are other examples of excellent things to do to prevent dissertation progress. Helping your fellow doctoral students with their dissertations is an excellent activity with high graduation-postponing potential (for the helper, that is). (Conversely, one should of course avoid accepting too much help from other doctoral students, as this might inadvertently lead to making progress, or worse, graduating.)
In the non-academic world, we also find suitable activities: having a job (motivated by the student's economic situation), engagement in civil society, sports, evening courses, and so on. There is also the big Dissertation Delayer, particularly for women, known as the Family. This requires its own section, which is why we won't discuss it further at this point. Instead, we want to highlight romantic affairs as an activity with great potential to delay any and all dissertation-related progress.
Depressive strategies
Here, too, we can find a literary role model: the protagonist of the 19th century Russian author Goncharov's novel Oblomov. Oblomov spent most of his life in bed, meditating over all the nice things he would do once he managed to summon the energy to get up. With this role model in mind, you will surely find much inspiration in your efforts.
A depressive strategy worth its salt should not only prevent dissertation progress under the time it is deployed (if this is the correct term for doing nothing), but also contribute to the doctoral student's general discomfort and overall lack of capacity to perform. Physically moving as little as possible is an excellent principle with a high return on energy invested. (Note the manic corollary to this strategy: do all the sports! Everything that works, works!)
A drawback of going full Oblomov is that it is difficult to combine with having a clear conscience. Therefore, a modified depressive strategy is recommended. This consists of filling your time as inefficiently as possible. Here, there is no end to the possibilities:
Running errands at the bank, post office or other government institution are perfectly socially acceptable activities, which can gobble up a lot of time and effort, and have the additional benefit of having to be performed during office hours - i.e. the time usually spent working on the dissertation. Good planning can increase efficiency significantly. For instance, avoid running more than one errand at a time.
Things in need of repair can fill a lot of time which otherwise would have gone to writing. Especially effective is to employ plumbers or construction workers who do not arrive at the appointed hour.
Appointments to doctors or dentists (not to mention therapists, or better yet psychoanalysts) are excellent opportunities for making zero progress. The ideal is of course to pick practices that lie quite a distance away, scheduling mid-day appointments, so as to maximize the working time spent moving to and fro.
Family
As mentioned above, the Family is an especially important potential dissertation delayer, especially for women. Here are some handy tips for exploiting this opportunity to its fullest extent.
- The kids should be well-planned and well spaced, such that there will always be two or three toddlers in the house during the critical dissertation years.
- Daycare centers and other such rational options should be avoided. If it can not be avoided, pick a daycare center committed to radical parental participation and community cooperation. If possible, pick two different daycare centers spaced far apart to increase time in transit. Also keep in mind that kids do not fare well by being more than six hours a day at the daycare! By carefully following this rule, it is possible to reduce efficient working ours per day to about five (or four, with sufficiently long transit times). (Alternatively, it is also possible to break this rule and instead spend the work hours nurturing feeling of guilt about this state of things, which is also an efficient way of reducing productivity). The ideal strategy, though, is to employ the good old play schools, whose three hour schedule make impossible any rational activity on the part of the responsible adult.
- The non-dissertation writing parent should pick a job where being absent for even a single day is strictly impossible, combined with working hours which make dropping off and picking up of kids wholly the responsibility of the writing parent.
- Plan your apartment such that secluded work spaces are avoided. The children should have access to as much of the apartment as possible. Placing the dissertation works pace in the shared bedroom is an efficient way of preventing work during night time, which otherwise holds the inherent potential of boosting the making of progress.
- Pick a partner with little or no understanding of research and the conditions under which it is conducted. A hostile attitude towards research has a very significant potential for dissertation delayage, especially if it is combined with general dudebro machoism. Naturally, the kids too can be taught to hamper progress at every turn.
- The strategy of living dangerously (see above) can be effectively applied at home too. Small children are particularly effective at destroying manuscripts and diskettes, if given the opportunity. Pets are viable substitutes for children. A cat, for instance, has a high probability of acting out on a strategically places manuscript pile.
How to best manage your adviser
The adviser is many times an obstacle facing a doctoral student wanting to avoid graduating. A lot is won by choosing the "correct" adviser (although this is sometimes as difficult as choosing correct parents). By "correct" we mean an adviser who either (i) leave the student alone, or (ii) participates, but whose input is sufficiently destructive to not accidentally contribute too much to the process.
To have the biggest chance to get an advisor of type (i), the following traits should be sought out: (a) senile, (b) alcoholic, (c) ignorant of the dissertation topic (if applicable, see above), and (d) disinterested in general. Fortunately, many universities boast a hearty supply of such persons.
Choosing an adviser of type (ii) is risky, since their destructive capacity sometimes affect the student in unpredictable ways. Properly handled, however, a type (ii) adviser can be efficiently employed in the dissertation delaying efforts. Especially if he (it's usually a he) can be used to cultivate a low sense of self-esteem (more on this later).
In the unfortunate case of getting an ambitious adviser with a constructive attitude towards dissertation writing, all hope is not lost: there is a wide range of strategies to employ to get around this. We will detail them below.
Defensive strategies: how to avoid your adviser
In order to satisfy the demands of the social setting and conscience, a doctoral student should seek out their adviser at least once per semester. Generally, dates which are not immediately connected to the deadline for student grant applications should be chosen, to avoid giving off the wrong (correct) impression. However: seeking out your adviser is not the same as actually meeting them. A careful study of their habits makes it possible to strategically pick times to call or knock when they are not available. Upon subsequent questioning of why you haven't talked to them, you can with a clear conscience refer back to your frequent failed attempts at communication - "I've been trying to get a hold of you all week, but you're never here". Another strategy is to refer to how busy they are, and how you didn't want to be a bother or intrude. A slightly ruder variant is to claim that you've previously made a deal that they would initiate contact.
It is of course sometimes necessary to avoid the general campus area, if the risk of bumping into them is too large. Upon chance encounters, it is advisable to have some other reason to be there, which can be used to deflect the question of how the dissertation is going.
If you have made an appointment, it is usually a good tactic to be there at exactly the appointed hour. Should the adviser be ever so slightly late, you can with a clear conscience claim to have been there (preferable leaving right after having placed a passive-aggressive post-it note on their door).
Offensive strategies: a good offense is the best defense
Some of the strategies in the previous section contained aspects of being on the offense, but it is always possible to go all in. The core principle of an offensive strategy is to disarm your adviser by placing them in a morally disadvantageous position, normally by instilling within them feelings of guilt. Here are some handy phrases to use when your adviser expresses displeasure at your rate of progress with the dissertation:
- But you never read what I write anyway.
- You only had bad things to say about the last draft.
- When was the last time you wrote an article?
- You are only going to use my results for your own ends.
- Why haven't I received my funding?
- There is no point in graduating, there are no jobs to be had anyway.
- Sure thing, you will have the draft by tomorrow!
- Yeah, it's been slow going, but now I'm really getting into it!
- I suppose I could send in the chapter now, but I have so many great ideas, so I have to write them out as well!
"Not today, but soon...": some ways of justifying why you have not finished the promised dissertation chapter
My ink ribbon snapped
(slightly more modern variant: my printer toner expired)
My mother in law turned 70
My son had a math test
My cat had kittens
I have to get the car to the repair shop
The metro is on strike
I'm waiting for an article from overseas
I'm waiting for a printout from the computer central
I'm waiting for comments from [insert name here]
I found a math error, so now I have to redo everything
I haven't been inspired
I'm in love
I have a cold
Was I really supposed to hand it in today?
I forgot the manuscript at home
My husband promised to post the manuscript, haven't you received it?
How to handle your extended social situation
Your adviser is not the only obstacle you will face in your effort to prolong your studies. Any long-term dissertation delaying stratagem has to include ways of deflecting questions and attacks from your extended social situation. Relatives, friends, acquaintances, and (lest we forget) colleagues and other doctoral students often tend to show a non-zero amount of interest in how you're doing and when you plan on graduating. You can, of course, employ the same strategies as have been outlined above. You also have the option of blaming your setbacks ("setbacks") on the incompetence or malignancy of your adviser (see the section on "Strategic paranoia" below). When it comes to non-academic relatives, the opportunities to strategically bamboozle abound, since they often do not know the specifics of what writing a dissertation actually entails.
The possibly most difficult proposition is to keep your fellow doctoral students out of the loop. They know the specifics of what writing a dissertation actually entails! But the experienced dissertation delayer knows no fear, and finds solutions to every situation. For instance, the Chutzpah-strategy can usually be gainfully employed, but requires having the personality to back it up. It simply consists of, at every possible opportune moment, declaring that the dissertation is almost 100% complete and that you're ready to defend it this very instant, would it be possible. Which it won't, because reasons, possible adviser-related. A slightly milder variant is the general boasting strategy, where you namedrop the prestigious persons who have read your manuscript and glimpsed the bright future to come.
Oftentimes, even simpler strategies can be successfully employed. Younger doctoral students will often find themselves distracted should you ask them a sufficiently specific question about this or that author.
"Get married, get divorced, join a club or something"
The heading is a quote from an old Hasse&Tage skit which makes fun of the kinds of vapid relationship advice put on offer in tabloids. It just so happens that these very same vapid pieces of advice work marvelously as strategies for delaying your dissertation. The basic principle is that any and all life changes draw time and energy away from the dissertation, and thus fulfill the objective of delaying it. The general strategy can be formulated as "Change", where the thing to be changed can be chosen arbitrarily. For instance:
- Change partner
- Change place of residence
- Change job
- Change car
- Change adviser
- Change computer
- Change word processor
- Change dissertation topic
How to cultivate low self-esteem
A genuinely abysmal self-esteem is an invaluable resource for a disputation delayer. The challenge is to cultivate it in the desired direction, without accidentally allowing constructive input from your peers to hamper the process.
The core of the bad self-esteem is a hypothesis about reality, specifically that you as a person is insufficient. In this context, it can be formulated thusly:
- I will never be able to complete this dissertation
- They're just saying that to make me not drop out
- They haven't read it correctly
- They don't understand any of this anyway
- (if applicable) They probably just want to seduce me
Strategic paranoia
A paranoid outlook on life can also be an asset for an intrepid dissertation delayer. One advantage is that it removes the necessity of a negative self-image (which can be quite painful to carry around with you), by placing the blame for one's failures to the (supposedly) hostile situation at large. The core principle for the paranoid explanatory model is that "it won't even matter if I try, since everyone is going to actively try to undermine my efforts, due to p", where p is a proposition about the world at large. We will now exemplify some possible values for p.
Discrimination
- I am an immigrant
- I am a woman (or, of applicable, a man)
- I am working class (or, if applicable, upper class)
Sexual harassment
- My adviser wants to get revenge on me because I rejected their advances
Jealousy
- My adviser is jealous because I am smarter than them
Wrong paradigm
- Everyone at this university follows the X school of thought, while I follow the Y school
Creative paralysis
A true dissertation delayer have to master the subtle art of placing themselves in a state of creative paralysis. This state can be achieved in a multitude of ways. A primary set of strategies consists of making further progress contingent on some factor or event outside your direct control. You might, for instance, ask the most busy, least cooperative technician at the shop to come fix your computer. Whilst awaiting said computer to be fixed (whilst also not being too hasty in reminding said technician to come fix it), it simply is not possible to continue working. Similarly, it is fair game to await a colleague's response to the current draft, to await a statistician to double-check the data, and so on and so forth.Another variant is to have some problem which one really ought to tackle, but which for some reason or other is too much effort to do right this instant. Bibliographical references is an excellent example. You find a reference in a bibliography to a book that is not in your local library, and then spend several depressive weeks gathering energy to go to the one other nearby library where you know for sure the book awaits. (To be sure, there are interlibrary loans, but those take a long time. Also, where even are the forms to fill out for such loans anyway?) Even better is of course to have a reference to a work which 100% most certainly contains information absolutely essential to the dissertation, but which can not be sought out. Such a state of things can delay progress for years on end.
Shorter bursts of creative paralysis can be of use, too. "There is too little time left to do anything meaningful anyway" is a particularly effective method in this context.
Let us conclude this summary of useful avoidance strategies by reminding you, dear reader, of a number of distractions which can be employed to interrupt of delay a working session:
- Computer games
- Beautiful weather outside
- Major sporting events on TV
- Phone calls
- Cleaning your desk
- Water the flowers
- Visit the loo
- Check your mail
Appendix: schedule for two typical days of a doctoral student
The following work schedules are representative cases based on empirical studies which will be presented in my upcoming dissertation (Ask, forthcoming). The most important finding of these investigations is that the effective working time per day for doctoral students of all personality types trends asymptotically towards a period of time which I refer to as Ask's constant, which equals to exactly 29 minutes.
1. Typical workday for depressive doctoral student
10.00 Wakes up
10.00-10.30 Meditates over the perils and hardships of being a doctoral student
10.30-10.45 Gets dressed
10.45-11.30 Eats breakfast and reads the newspaper
11.30-12.00 Looks for a lost article
12.00 Leaves home
12.10 Misses the bus; the next bus arrives in half an hour
12.10-12.40 Awaits the next bus
12.40-13.00 In transit to university
13.00-13.15 Discusses the perils and hardships of being a doctoral student with a peer
13.15-14.10 Lunch
14.10 Finds all reading spots in the library already taken; goes to cafeteria
14.40 Returns to library; finds reading spot; claims it
14.45-14.55 Queues to retrieve a book
14.55-14.59 Sharpens pencil
14.59-15.04 Visits the loo
15.05-15.34 WORKS ON DISSERTATION
15.35-15.50 Smoke break
15.51 Returns to reading spot
15.52 Realizes that today is the last day to pay the rent, and that the bank closes half past four
15.53 Leaves the reading spot
15.54-17.30 Miscellaneous errands
17.30 Returns home; tired to the bone
17.30-18.00 Reads the evening news
18.00-18.30 Prepares an evening meal
18.30-19.15 Eats the evening meal
19.15-19.30 Does the dishes
19.30-20.00 Watches the national news on television
20.00-22.00 Really ought to do more dissertation work, but gets stuck watching a movie on TV
22.00 Falls into bed, exhausted
Effective dissertation work time: 29 minutes. (=Ask's constant)
2. Typical workday for manic doctoral student
07.00 Wakes up, immediately arises and gets dressed
07.10-07-40 Morning gymnastics
07.40-07.50 Breakfast, reads the news
07.50-08.10 Bikes to campus
08.10-09.00 Prepares for teaching
09.00-10.30 Teaches
10.30-10.40 Drinks coffee
10.40-10.59 WORKS ON DISSERTATION
11.00-11.55 Meeting with student union
11.55-12.30 Lunch
12.30-14.00 Substitutes for sick guidance counsellor
14.00-14.45 Meeting with the faculty work group for increasing graduation rates among doctoral students
14.45-15.45 Plays badminton
15.45-15.50 Drinks coffee
15.50-16.00 WORKS ON DISSERTATION
16.00-17.00 Listens to guest lecture
17.00-18.00 Prepares post-lecture seminar (buys wine)
18.00-21.00 Participates in post-lecture seminar, engages in conversation with the guest speaker
21.00-21.20 Bikes home
21.20-22.00 Grades essays
22.00 Falls into bed, exhausted
Effective dissertation work time: 29 minutes. (=Ask's constant)
