At some point on the long march, writes the spouse of a Ph.D. candidate, you just want it to be over

It may sound harsh, but waiting for your spouse to finish her dissertation is a lot like waiting for a sick loved one to die.

"Is she finished yet?"

"No, not yet, she's still hanging in there."

That she would finish has never been in doubt, because she's no quitter. But the predictions of when she would finish are just that — predictions. You know it's going happen, but her condition will only end when she produces the final draft. No one wants a loved one to die, but if that person is suffering through a long illness, there may come a point where you just want it to end. Likewise, on dissertation watch, there comes a point when the waiting itself becomes intolerable and you really just want her to be done with it. No wonder they call them terminal degrees.

My wife has been writing her dissertation for a Ph.D. in English at our state's flagship university. She has been a part-time student while working as a full-time faculty member at the small college where I am vice president for academic affairs. She is also a mom; our children were still at home when she began her graduate work. When our son was young, someone once asked him what his mom did and he said, "She's a gradual student." How truly spoken, for the process has indeed been a lengthy one that culminated in years of living in the grip of "the project."

Three years ago, I, the self-appointed doctor in charge of the case, was telling people, "She will probably be finished in another year, or the next at the outside." I underestimated the tenacity with which she could hang on to the revelations unearthed by her research.

As life is its own reason and will cling stubbornly to the last functioning cell, so the process of writing a dissertation, once rooted in a doctoral candidate's mind, seeks to maintain itself. To put the last word on the page brings the process to an end.

When someone is dying, other activities are suspended for those closest to the dying person. The focus of life shifts to waiting and caring and seeing to the comfort of the terminally ill one. No one told us of the need for hospice care when my wife drew into the final phases of her doctoral program. With no respite care and insufficient palliative care, we suffered on together.

My questions to her about her progress, both the spoken ones and the no-longer-needing-to-be-spoken ones, weighed on her — cruelly, I suppose, though that was never my intent. Imagine saying to a loved one lying on their deathbed, "Are you still with us or not?" Or, "How much longer till you die?"

People never know what to say to the dying or their families. It would be impolite not to ask, but worse yet to convey that you have quit being mindful that death lingers at the door. Friends and co-workers don't understand that even though you may walk around looking pretty normal most of the time, you still have this houseguest who has come for an extended stay and who will not say when he might leave and that you can't just pick up and carry on with life as if he weren't there.

It's inevitable that others will not always appreciate the limits on your movements and especially on your ability to plan for things in the future. You don't plan vacations when you're waiting for a loved one to die or when you're in the latter stages of a dissertation. And even if you do manage a holiday visit with family members out of state, they should be aware that among the luggage you bring will be a laptop with the rough draft and enough resource books and files to stock a small library.

It might seem strange to liken writing a dissertation to a death rather than to a birth, but I'm guessing that those who have been through it understand.

The thing is, with births, you know within a few weeks when it is going to occur. With death and dissertations, the ability to linger on is much more pronounced. The fact that an arbitrary deadline may be set for the project doesn't remove the uncertainty either, for a deadline only becomes part of the core question: "Will she meet the deadline?"

Once a lingering death has at last occurred, murmurs of how much better off the deceased one is also carry the implicit message that the survivors are better off, too, for no longer having to live a life that is on hold. Now they can grieve and receive comfort and go on with life. Post-dissertation people find that a major and sometimes all-consuming part of their energy, identity, and way of organizing life is suddenly gone. And, sadly, in some cases, they find that relationships have died along the way, worn down and overcome by the prolonged process.

When death finally comes, the beloved's remains must receive the ministrations of the undertaker before interment. And when the dissertation is done, then comes the defense. The corpus must be delivered to a somber group who will perform a sort of academic post-mortem. Once all is known about this work, corrections (mostly cosmetic) will be mandated. Care is taken to see that the final printing is made on high-quality paper in preparation for binding and consignment to the library. Arrangements are made for the public ceremonies that signal the end of the process.

To be sure, the ending of the dissertation usually results in new life for the career of the Ph.D. candidate. Doors open into a postgraduate afterlife only dimly seen before. Even judgment awaits, in the form of job interviews and student loan repayments.

But whatever may be the sense of going forward, the dissertation is mostly left behind. Even if it gets turned into a book, that will be a new project — Frankensteinian in nature as the academic work is dismembered and reassembled, and then has some kind of commercial life breathed into it. More commonly, the dissertation becomes a scholarly-article donor, with the most valued parts excised and submitted for publication that will prolong the life of an academic journal and enhance the new Ph.D.'s CV.

It is noon of the day on which my wife is to submit the five copies to her committee, and yet I hear her tapping away at the keyboard in the other room.

Wait, has it fallen silent? Do I now hear the first ragged gasps of the printer as it at last spews forth the document?

No, she's only gone to the kitchen for another cup of tea. Here she comes now to tell me that she sent a message to her adviser and that turning it in a little later will be all right. I think I'll just wait and see. When the end finally comes, it will be clear, but until then, I'm not getting too excited.

(Author's Note: Mary Beth Breland did, I am happy to report, finish and successfully defend her dissertation not long after I wrote this column.)

~~~~~~~~

By Garry M. Breland

Garry M. Breland is the vice president for academic affairs at Hannibal-LaGrange College.