Hey everyone,
Hopefully, this post can help others who find themselves in a similar situation right now. To catch folks up who haven’t seen my prior posts, I’ll take the next two paragraphs to summarize (if you know, skip them and save some time).
I’m soon to be a 4.5th year Ph.D student who finished dissertation data collection back in January after some snafus. The most notable one was missing a 4th answer for a multiple choice question participants (correct answer was still in thankfully) had to answer. The program, rarher than blank out the fourth answer, duplicated one of the already existing ones. I thought this would’ve ruined my data collection up until that point when I was halfway through it (I also realized there was, in fact, a fourth answer all along), but thankfully my advisor said that I didn’t need to start over since the error was consistent. I was also able to collect some follow up data with the error corrected. He even told me I could combine that new data with the old data since the differences are that minor apparently. He even said I don’t need to bring up that missing error when I start writing up the results and discussion sections (which I still need to do).
Up until this point, my graduate school experience has been the exception and not the rule in a lot of cases. Notable examples include my low Master’s grades (3.48 GPA and a C+ in Research Methods, which I remember made my Master’s graduate director gasp) and lack of guidance at the Master’s level even though my department knew I wanted to do a Ph.D. For example, my Master’s advisor said he was only in touch with one student after they graduated in this case. When I got into my Ph.D program and wanted to continue and/or work on new projects with my Master’s advisor, he’d ghost me. My performance was so underwhelming they insisted I have a “Plan B” because they didn’t think I was competitive enough to get admitted to a Ph.D program. This didn’t end up being the case, fortunately. My parents re-hired a coach who helped me with my graduate applications and review my email correspondences and whatnot so I could try to get my foot in the door. After COVID hit, I defended my pilot data for my Master’s thesis and graduated a semester later than normal while I was dual enrolled in my Ph.D program. Even though I was accepted into a Ph.D program and did fine in my classes there, my advisor called me because the committee wanted to pass on what a Ph.D program was like and that it was “trial by fire and always changing.” Eventually, my first Ph.D advisor drops me as I worked on my quals project with her (fortunately, I passed under her). I switch to my current advisor who is the chair of my department and he tells me my CV is a “bit lacking.” Within the time I worked with him, I managed to do the following: Earn a fellowship where I need to do faculty or staff service to keep portions of the funding, adjunct instructor for a semester at a community college, full time visiting instructor at a SLAC, and am now an intern at a top 10 children’s hospital in the country.
Now, I’m having difficulty managing everything on my plate and am looking for advice. Fortunately, since I’m done with dissertation data collection, my advisor said he would not need me in the area and I didn’t renew my lease for that reason and paid my last month of rent and utilities at this point. Everything’s also moved out of my apartment and in my hometown now (this internship is 20 minutes away from home).
Here’s what I’m juggling right now:
1.) Internship (40 hours a week and ends on August 5th). My boss said he’s checking if there’s enough funding to hire two of us who are graduating soon (me and another who is an undergrad are the only ones I know close to graduating. Everyone else is years away still).
2.) Writing up Results and Discussion of dissertation
3.) Applying for jobs and everything else associated with it in my case. For example, I have an intake appointment with Ohio Vocational Rehabilitation in August to work on the job search process together. I’m living with my parents indefinitely until cost of living is more affordable and I get my recently diagnosed health issues (e.g., MDD - Moderate that recurred recently, sleep apnea) under control.
4.) Maintaining active lines of communication with my boss and everyone else. Once this internship is over, I’m slated to be 3rd or 4th author on a couple of manuscripts and I can stay in touch with them via Slack.
At this point, graduation in December 2024 is most definite given the immense difficulty I’ve had balancing everything. I know the dissertation has to come first, but I’m so exhausted at work and moreso after I come back to the point I have zero focus and attention. Even my advisor went ahead and did the analyses for my dissertation in SPSS itself partially because he didn’t want to wait on me (the other reason was so he could make sure the results on my end matched his, which they did).
Looking for any and all advice.