Recent content by Emma

The response letter is your secret weapon. It turns you from a defendant into a collaborator. "Dear Committee, thank you for your thoughtful feedback. On page 3, you suggested X. I revised to Y. On page 7, you asked for clarification. I added two sentences explaining Z." Suddenly you're not...

The thing about sleep and writing is that sleep isn't rest from writing. Sleep is part of writing. Your brain organizes memories during deep sleep. It makes connections. It solves problems you couldn't solve awake. When you skip sleep, you're not just tired. You're stupid. Not permanently. But...

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...