Throughout my master’s program I periodically encountered difficult obstacles to overcome. Completing a course in physical hydrology, evoked tears of hopelessness prior to each exam, though ultimately, I pulled through with a “B”. Endlessly solitary, hours in the basement of the Natural Resources building sieving soil samples until my fingertips were somehow numb and sensitive at the same time, were not pleasant. However, by far, the most difficult part of my program was the end.

I once had an ecology professor who informed his class of 90 students that “graduate school is a marathon, not a 50-yard dash”. At the time I didn’t fully understand what he weas talking about. But as I sat at my computer, forcing myself to describe tedious details of how each experiment was conducted and what each graph meant, or might indicate for the fate of forest soils after harvest, the energy-sapping meaning of those words would seep into my very bones.

Upon completion of either a master’s degree or a PhD, each student must compose a lengthy thesis, or dissertation, as PhD work is described. The exact format, even among science programs, can vary widely, but all the information required to publish the data accumulated over the course of the project must be included.

When writing such a colossus, students should keep in mind that the objectives are in many ways twofold. First, to provide material for publication, but second, to thoroughly document the results of your years of work, and in that way help, justify your award of a graduate degree. It is important to keep both of these objectives in mind while writing because it is very likely that some of your work will not be published, for reasons neither you nor your committee members could have foreseen; but it is good to remind all your thesis committee members of just how much work you have completed, even if it doesn’t get published. Additionally, should you or your advisor wish to publish any part of your research after you graduate, it is much more likely to reach publication if it is only a matter of cutting and pasting your beautifully formatted and clearly described graph, or clearly and concisely explained experimental design and statistical analysis.

However, as you sit at your computer, day after day, for weeks or months, no longer adventuring into the wilderness or playing mad scientist in the lab, this task of writing will indeed begin to feel like climbing Mount Fuji as the last leg of your race to the finish line. Not only must you document what will feel like annoying details about the location of manufacture of the carbon and nitrogen analyzer you used and the precise version of statistical software, but, when it comes down to it, …

YOU JUST WANT TO BE DONE NOW AND MOVE ONTO THE NEXT THING!

In addition to the general stress and anxiety that comes with impatience to finish your degree, it is possible you may find yourself subject to what will feels like heartless criticism from you advisors as they read and re-read your thesis or dissertation and provide you with feedback. I believe there are several things contributing to the agony of this process. First, if you are working in the sciences, it is not a common practice to consider emotional reactions to feedback. Many scientists/professors have adapted to a matter-of-fact format that efficiently highlights the areas of your work that need improvement. The idea of a “complement sandwich” is not efficient, nor was it how your own advisor received feedback on their dissertation or their last publication.

I have received written feedback on my own thesis and dissertation and I have never had anyone highlight a positive aspect, or give a complement. Now, it is possible I was, or am, not a good scientific writer, and there was nothing to complement. I’m certain that has been true on some occasions, but I think the most frequent reason advisors don’t acknowledge what is right about a student’s writing, is a continued “old-school” approach to building writing skills in students. It simply has not been historically practiced to give complements but, instead, the focus is on what is wrong with the writing so the student can work on fixing it.

Interestingly, research in learning and the human brain, has shown that negative feedback can be the most efficient way for people to learn, however, this rule primarily applies to rule-based, category learning, where a response is dependent on a specific and easily defined category₁. However, research has shown that when people are learning more complex, information-integration tasks, a combination of negative and positive feedback produces the best learning outcome₁.

Regrettably, even the most up-to-date research in learning, does not adequately quantify the emotional toll that can come with months of negative feedback. I remember receiving the slew of criticisms from my advisors on my thesis drafts, and my poor, silly, human brain immediately interpreted this information as “my advisor thinks I’m an idiot and must hate me for wasting their time with my terrible writing”.

I know, its dramatic, but that’s how it went.

Now, it’s possible I might be more emotionally charged than some, but I have also spoken to several of my fellow graduate students and they appeared to have had similar reactions. It also might be tempting to consider this process to be part of the crucible that forges tough students, and I suppose that’s a possibility too. I know I’m less sensitive to criticism now than I once was, but I’ve also experienced more of life. I’ve survived child birth, recessions, and a global pandemic, so… there are some confounding variables here. Crucible or not, I think there is room for improving the thesis writing process.

The real problem I have with this antiquated process of providing only negative feedback for thesis-writing students is that I know firsthand it is not at all efficient. I have spoken to several of my peers and they all report getting somewhat frozen at several points in their revision process.

After working for weeks or months on a draft and receiving pages of written criticisms, many students felt so terrible about themselves it took several days for them to work up the courage to start working on the edits again. Several reported feeling like their advisors must be terribly unhappy or disappointed in their performance because the feedback was so negative. However, after I graduated I got to know several advisors pretty well, and none of them gave any indication that they were disappointed with their students. I suspect one major contributing factor contributing to the difficulty of this process is that the method of communication is highly flawed. First, receiving negative feedback is always going to be hard to digest, but it is especially stomach-wrenching when there is no mention of anything that the student did correctly, as we previously discussed. Second, the feedback is always written. I’m sure this is done for the sake of efficiency, but when you can’t see the face of the person criticizing all your hard work, it is WAY too easy to assume the very worst.

It might be a better practice if there was some brief meeting or even a phone call to discuss the feedback on a high level, giving the student the opportunity to hear or see the LACK of resentful disappointment in their advisor as the feedback is discussed. I strongly suspect giving science students some evidence that their advisor doesn’t hate them, even though more work needs to be done, could only benefit student’s mental health AND productivity. As I write this, I wonder if I had had the courage to ask my advisors for a quick meeting or phone call before I read their edits, would I have been able to finish faster and with less heartache?

On a similar note, as I tackled my own thesis, I found it annoyingly important to practice self-care. And, I should have done so more frequently, but I know I felt better and worked more efficiently when I remembered to do things like give myself work breaks. Unfortunately, it always felt like I didn’t have time for that. It felt like I was struggling so hard to finish I must press on or I might never finish. However, with it now behind me, I can confidently say I wasted a lot of time mentally running in circles, wondering if I had interpreted something correctly, or re-writing the same sentence fifteen times only to realize I should just delete the whole thing.

I am confident that whenever I walked away from whatever was starting to stress me out and make my heart race as I stared at that insidious blinking cursor on the screen, things worked out better. Walking away and taking a run, a walk, a shower, calling a friend, patting the dog, going to church,…literally anything that was not working on my thesis, for at least 15 minutes, or longer if I had been at it non-stop a long stretch of time, helped me work more efficiently and think more clearly when I got back to it.

As further evidence of the benefits of this kind of practice, I have noticed that all of the full-time, tenure-track, professors at the R1 institution I am familiar with, take coffee breaks, chat breaks, and occasional walks around campus. These breaks are not long but they appear to be regularly scheduled mental breaks from their own work. Work, I might add, they are now familiar with, unlike you, who may be completely new to this kind of mental exercise and who likely NEEDS a break more urgently than an experienced researcher in order to accomplish the task of scientific writing.

If you are a student at this stage of completion, or anyone trying to complete a long and difficult goal, my only remaining advice to you is to try to keep in mind, the words delivered by Tom Hanks in a League of Their Own, “The hard is what makes it great. If it was easy, everybody would do it.” And in the words of my mom, “You’re so close! Just keep going”… just remember to leave yourself room to be kind to yourself as you soldier on.

Sources:

1. Ashby, G.F. and J.B. O’Brien. 2007. The effects of positive versus negative feedback on information-integration category learning. Perceptions & Psychophysics. 69(6): 865-878.

Are you in the middle of completing a long-pursued goal? How did you feel at the beginning of the end? Leave a comment below or reach out on twitter (@LabMom20). If you like this post, subscribe with your email for new posts updated weekly, delivered straight to your inbox.

* Please note, all names, other than my own, have been changed to protect the privacy of others. All accounts are based on my own experiences and memories.

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