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I started this PhD because I wanted to be a professor. I wanted a lab. I wanted students. I wanted to spend my life asking questions and teaching others to ask them. I don't want that anymore. I'm not sure when it changed. Maybe when my advisor told me the job market was terrible. Maybe when I...

1. Sleep is not optional. I thought I could push through. I thought sleep was for people who weren't in a crisis. I was wrong. When I stopped sleeping, my writing got worse. Not better. I made mistakes. I lost track of arguments. I deleted things I should have kept. I'm sleeping now. Not enough...

Dear dissertation, I used to love you. I used to wake up excited to work on you. I used to tell people about you at parties. Now I don't go to parties. Now I don't talk to people. Now I just stare at you and wonder why you're so hard. You were supposed to be my contribution. My legacy. My...

I have a 200-page dissertation to write. I'm at 180. I keep adding sentences, adding citations, adding footnotes. I'm scared to stop. What if I've missed something? What if my committee thinks it's not enough? A professor told me: “You're not writing a book. You're writing a dissertation. It...