Metadissertating: Product and Process

Having finished a full draft of the dissertation, I've started thinking a lot more about the process of getting to this point.

I've been contemplating the relationship between process and product.

To earn the PhD, I need to finish the product - the dissertation. Doing so demonstrates competency and the earns me the title of Doctor of Philosophy.

Of course getting to the point of writing a dissertation means that you've jumped through several other hoops. In my program those consisted of:

• a set of preliminary comprehensive exams
• two language tests
• two years worth of coursework
• the comprehensive exam process
• approval of a dissertation prospectus

When you write it all down, it really does seem like the dissertation is just one small thing at the end of that list. But as anyone who has ever attempted to write one knows, "small" rarely seems the appropriate word for the undertaking.

The difference between the way the dissertation looks as just one of a list of tasks to complete, and the experience of writing it is a nice way of distinguishing between product and process. The product - the dissertation - is just one of many tasks to complete, but the process of creating it - the research and writing - is a major, no, the major, task of the PhD.

Particularly as I start to figure out where to begin my editing, I'm realizing that the person/writer/scholar I was when I began the project is a very different person from who I am now. When I look at that first chapter, I can see how much more mature and developed my thinking on the topic is compared to when I began. (I suppose if I looked at early drafts of the prospectus, the difference would be even more apparent. Though it might also be a bit embarassing to see how rough and simplistic my thoughts were then.)

The process of producing the dissertation, while not really counting for anything in the end, is what actually makes the final product worthwhile. If I had not spent the last three and a half years (okay, I'm fudging a bit...) working with the same topics, the same texts, the same material, I would not have been able to produce the dissertation that I have (in draft form anyway).

And I haven't gotten there yet. All the process to this point will mean nothing if I cannot finish editing and defend my work. If I walked away now (not likely!), I would be someone with a M.A. The work over the last seven years would count for nothing, at least as far as my cv and the world are concerned.

I have a good friend who has expressed the opinion that all the effort should count for something - that I've "worked hard". I won't deny I've worked hard. Sometimes I think I've worked harder than others in my position, but that's only because I'm a little thick at times and have to do things wrong before I see the right way! But just working hard doesn't count. My committee doesn't care about what my life has been like while writing this; they just care about what I've produced.

And after all, I need to practice what I preach. I tell my students it doesn't matter how many hours they worked on a writing task, or how much harder it was than anything else they've been working on. If they don't do it, they don't do it. Doesn't matter how hard you work. If you can't produce what's needed, then it's pretty much the same as if you didn't do it at all.

I won't be PhD till the product is acceptable. No matter how many hours I've put in, it won't count until I get those signatures of approval and file that bundle of paper with the university library. The process of creating that product has been a valuable and necessary process. But it won't count for a hill of beans in the real world unless it amounts to a finished product.

The dissertation is a strange interrelationship between the process and the product. You really can't have one without the other!