Initial Fifteen Minutes

The book said to write fifteen minutes a day. Well, actually, the title of the book is "Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day". In an effort to share my experience, I decided why not use those fifteen minutes of writing and start my first blog. There must be others who are working adults returning to school to complete a terminal degree. I'm well over 50, love my job that does not require a PhD, but there is that list that I made when I was 18 and idealistic. I had very concrete goals then and the first one was to complete my PhD by the time I was 25. I didn't necessarily want to teach, I just never wanted to be in poverty again and education seemed the best route out.

Now is the best time to earn my PhD ~ kids are all gone (well mostly), spouse and I are experiencing a comfortable and exciting period in our relationship, love my job (whoops, sorry for the bold enthusiasm), have great health, with a nearby school available to me.

The coursework is over, one set of comprehensive exams are complete, ready to begin thinking about a topic of interest - and what could be more interesting than a topic that involves adults returning to school!

Let's return to the book and a particular phrase that I found meaningful: "... writing in order to think, rather than thinking in order to write...". I found that specific logic to be particularly true for me in answering one of the comprehensive exam questions. It was one of the two comprehensive exams that seemed 'easy' - not because either one was 'easy', but because I was able to complete the answers in sufficient time which allowed for time for expansion and some rewrite of answers. It was during the answer expansion and rewrite when I found my writing promoted my thinking, in fact, to the point that I completely reversed my opinion (which was requested) and came to a startling conclusion that I do not believe I could have attained by just sitting there, staring at the computer screen, waiting for deep thinking to produce the same insight.

Fifteen minutes today - this may be very doable. Late goal of graduating and completing by Dec 2010, but may be able to do everything by June 2010.