00:00 >>JEFF: I am Jeff Martin. I am the Director of Communications and Public Affairs 00:00 for the American Anthropological Association. I am an older white male with graying brown hair, 00:00 more gray than brown than I'd like, and I'm wearing black-framed glasses, and I am 00:00 reporting to you from the -- actually, the confines of my cozy bedroom. 00:00 Again, welcome everyone to "Digging in to Dissertations." 00:00 This is the first of a four-part series that's going to be on career development, hosted by the 00:00 Society for Medical Anthropology and the Society for Psychological Anthropology. This four-part 00:00 webinar series is going to run throughout May. There is going to be one a month. One next 00:00 month in March, one in April, one in May. We are determining the dates and the actual 00:00 content and abstracts, but they will be basically -- the next one's going to be on grant writing, 00:00 the one in April is going to be preparing for non-academic jobs, and the last one in 00:00 May is going to be on article preparation. We're working on finalizing those, so do me 00:00 a favor -- you'll see in the chat I posted a link to our webinars page, and we're going to 00:00 have them all listed there on the webinars page. I also want to take a quick moment to plug that 00:00 we're also having another career webinar series that will be running each week starting 00:00 next week, March 4th, called Pathways to Careers, and it's going to be held each 00:00 week through April 22nd, so we have a lot of career information out there for you. 00:00 Another reminder is that all of these webinars are held on Thursdays, usually held on Thursdays, 00:00 at 1:00 p.m. -- we are going to have one on Friday -- but look for it. 00:00 Again, off that link there. Let's see. 00:00 Back to this webinar. To make this more accessible for everyone, 00:00 we are providing closed captioning, and as you can see, ASL interpreting. 00:00 I want to direct you to the bottom of your screen, if you take your cursor down to the bottom, 00:00 you'll see an icon that says live transcript. If you click on that 00:00 you'll be able to -- you'll enable the closed captioning, which should help you. 00:00 Let's see... Other than that, too, I also want to remind everyone to keep your videos 00:00 off, keep your screens off. It will help us with the bandwidth, 00:00 and just for us to better reach all of you without any interference. 00:00 Let's see. I think that's it. The other thing too is if you -- again, 00:00 you'll see the chat room -- by now everyone should be familiar with 00:00 Zoom -- again, if you scroll to the bottom of your screen, you'll see an icon for chat. 00:00 We are going to do a lot of -- provide a lot of information there in the chat room. 00:00 One of the things I love about anthropologists is that you all 00:00 seem to jump in on this, which is wonderful. 00:00 Someone will ask a question, and even the presenters don't have to respond, 00:00 someone else is responding and saying, "Hey I found this software really works, 00:00 or I found this technique really works." So I love how the chat room is used. 00:00 If you have questions, usually we wait until the end for a Q and A, 00:00 and we do have time set aside for Q and A. However, our presenters were gracious enough in 00:00 that they said, "Hey, listen, we'll answer them right on the spot." So if you have a question, 00:00 start with the word question, so it helps us, and then put your question in there, 00:00 and the presenters will be glad to bring it right up. So that'll be good. 00:00 Without any further ado, let me turn it over to Matthew. 00:00 >>MATTHEW: This is Matthew. Thanks, Jeff, and to Nell and Scott 00:00 and everybody at the AAA for helping us do this. We're all new to the accessible presentation style 00:00 so work with us as we adjust to this. I guess I'm a middle-aged white guy, 00:00 who's bald and clean shaven with some skinny glasses, and a dark sweater 00:00 over a lined shirt in my home office with books that you can't read the titles of. 00:00 Our -- so just to add to what Jeff was saying very briefly, 00:00 annually the Society for Medical Anthropology and the Society for Psychological Anthropology hosts a 00:00 mentoring event at the AAA each November. We were unable to do that this year, 00:00 obviously, and so it's taken us a while, but we've tried to migrate over into this virtual space. 00:00 So I'm the Mentoring and Membership Seat on the SMA, and Dick Powis is, or -- he's technically 00:00 our Graduate Student Seat, but he's no longer a graduate student, and Rebecca Lester is from 00:00 the Society for Psychological Anthropology. In the future, we'll also have Lauren Cubellis, 00:00 who's also from the Society for Psychological Anthropology, for our conversations, 00:00 and our goal is really to have conversations. So, at least this time, I think it's up to me 00:00 to engage both Dick and Rebecca on who their experience with dissertations and writing them 00:00 and supervising other people writing them, and working through revisions and stuff like that, 00:00 but just to reiterate what Jeff said, if you have questions or comments as 00:00 we go, please throw them into the chat. Dick, are you ready for some public 00:00 therapy? [laughter] >>DICK: Sure. Yeah. 00:00 So I suppose we should introduce ourselves first, right? 00:00 My name is Dick Powis. My pronouns are he, him, his. I'm a young man 00:00 with medium length hair, glasses, septum piercing, black button down shirt, black cable-knit shawl. 00:00 I'm calling from St. Louis in my bedroom. I'm surrounded by synthesizers and books. 00:00 I'm also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of South Florida of Public Health, and as Matthew 00:00 said, I'm the chair/liaison on the Society for Medical Anthropology Board for the Medical 00:00 Anthropology Student Association. Rebecca? 00:00 >>REBECCA: Hi everyone. This is Rebecca. My pronouns are 00:00 she, her, hers, and I am a middle-aged white woman with long reddish curly hair, 00:00 and I am wearing a white shirt and a blue -- I don't know what this is -- sweater, I guess, 00:00 and I am a Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where I'm 00:00 calling from St. Louis, and I'm also the president of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. 00:00 >>MATTHEW: Well, thanks to you both. This is Matthew. So, Dick, 00:00 if it's okay you just finished your dissertation, which I want to congratulate you on publicly, 00:00 but could you tell us about your experience of writing a dissertation? 00:00 And what you would change now about the process? >>DICK: Yeah. 00:00 So I -- I gotta be honest, I -- I don't know that there's much I could change about the process. 00:00 I was sort of fast-tracked. It needed to be done very quickly 00:00 after I got home from doing my research, and so I needed to come up with a quick plan, 00:00 outline things, get everything sort of down on paper, and just start. 00:00 So -- and I was not in particularly good shape when I got home 00:00 from doing my dissertation research. So that was a major struggle, but I think 00:00 once I sort of started writing, I think that's the biggest challenge when you get back, 00:00 right, is to just start writing, and at some point -- it took me several weeks 00:00 to put pen to paper, after I got back, and at some point, I had to just tell myself write anything. 00:00 Anything, right? And what I found that I started doing -- and this is 00:00 going to be different for everyone -- what I started to doing was writing vignettes, writing 00:00 stories and not even going to my notes, not going to my journal or anything, not going to my photos. 00:00 I just started writing off the top of my head about the memories that I had, 00:00 and I just kept doing that for months, two or three months, until I sort of had a better idea 00:00 of how I could sort these things out, and then dig into other things, dig into theory and analysis. 00:00 I think it was probably four or five months in where I started to kind of burn out again, 00:00 and I realized that I needed a very rigorous time management system, and again, this is different 00:00 for everyone, but I got -- I had a framework -- I adopted framework from Rebecca Schuman 00:00 on Twitter, who is a number of things: a scholar, academic writing coach, and she has this sort of 00:00 rule of thumb called 555, and 555 means -- which pairs well with your five-page blog 00:00 that I'm sure we'll talk about too -- 555 means that for five days you write 500 words a day, 00:00 or you edit five pages a day. One or the other. 00:00 And for her, that means maximum 500 words or 500 pages. 00:00 I was being rushed a little bit, and so for me 500 was a minimum, 00:00 and it was really good for my mental health to be able to set that goal, and if I wasn't having a 00:00 good day, I knew I could put 500 words of absolute garbage down and be fine and just walk away and 00:00 move on to other things or not do other things. A thousand was my soft-max. 00:00 So that was like if I hit 1,000 words, then I felt really good about it, 00:00 and I could walk away, be kind to myself, which is a big, big part of writing a dissertation, 00:00 and then 2,000 was my hard-max. So if I hit 2,000, I walked away, like 00:00 whether I liked it or not. Because I found that my 00:00 writing tends to drop off as I go past that. And then the other big sort of strategy I had, 00:00 like I said, was writing and revising are two completely different things, 00:00 and so it can get very overwhelmling to be writing things, and then want to edit them or revise them 00:00 as you're going, and questioning yourself. That's not what this is. 00:00 You need to just get words down and move on. Keep getting words down, and move on, 00:00 and then revisit later, right? Revist with fresh eyes, and revisit 00:00 with feedback from you're advisors, right? So yeah, once I sort of figured out that workflow, 00:00 which I feel like I figured out too late, or I would have liked to have known this sooner, 00:00 then everything sort of came together. That was very important. 00:00 >>MATTHEW: This is Matthew again. Thanks, Dick. Rebecca, can I ask you to reflect on 00:00 your dissertation writing experience, and maybe what you would change about it now, 00:00 looking backwards, if that's possible? >>REBECCA: Sure, so my own 00:00 disseratation, you mean? >>MATTHEW: Uh huh. 00:00 >>REBECCA: Yes. This is Rebecca. I wrote up away for my home institution, 00:00 and my relationship at the time took me somewhere else to write up. 00:00 That was really difficult. If I could do it again, I would not do that. 00:00 It's a little easier now with the virtual -- you know, and Zoom and all that kind of stuff, 00:00 you can stay in touch a little more, but back then, we didn't have that. 00:00 What would I do differently? I mean, I did something very similar 00:00 to what Dick talked about where I started with -- well, let me back up a second and 00:00 say one of the temptations, I think, for a lot of students who are writing their dissertations 00:00 is to feel like you have to read and read and read and read before you're ready to write, 00:00 and don't do that, would be my advice. I really want to reiterate what Dick 00:00 said that you just have to start typing, just start writing, getting things down, and the 00:00 easiest place to do that is through vignettes. Memories that you have. Little scenes that you 00:00 remember, and these are things that will often become your full-fledged ethnographic data, right? 00:00 Cause they were certainly salient enough to stand out to you. 00:00 So there's something to them, probably. So yeah, start -- I started with writing 00:00 vignettes, and it took me a while to figure out the structure of the whole thing, and that was 00:00 very anxiety-provoking, and I certainly had -- I remember very vividly times where I thought, 00:00 "I can't do this. This is too hard. I need to, like, do something else." 00:00 Clearly, I worked past that, and was able to do it, 00:00 but expect that those kinds of moments may happen. But yeah, so it took a while to figure out the 00:00 structure, but I think I went about it about as well as I could have. 00:00 I had a really good adviser, so that was helpful. She was very -- a great resource for tips and 00:00 tricks on how to get through the whole process. So yeah, Dick, Dick gave some really a great 00:00 advice. >>MATTHEW: 00:00 Yeah, I -- this is Matthew again. I probably have an experience like both 00:00 of you all, and one of the things that -- as you were both speaking, I was reminded of, is advice 00:00 from Karen Hoe, who was like just start with the stories that stand out to you, and my field notes 00:00 were one thing, and the interview transcripts were another thing, but just starting with the things 00:00 that were kind of indelible in my memory was the right place to start, right? And likewise, 00:00 it took a while to write out a lot of that stuff, but once it started to get written out, there was 00:00 some growing sense of a structure, right? And I have very clear memories of printing 00:00 all of that stuff out and laying it out on the floor of my apartment 00:00 and basically taking a William Burroughs approach of like cutting things apart and re-aligning them, 00:00 and then having to go over to the Word document and redo the document to reflect 00:00 how things should be organized. But it was also, and I think this 00:00 is analogous to Dick's experience, like, there was some real pressure for me to finish, and 00:00 I think that it took me, you know, six months to write 100 pages, and then it took me 00:00 three months to write the next 250 pages, that it was just -- at some point, it was a sprint. 00:00 It was no longer a marathon, and that intensity is not something that I 00:00 advise for anybody, I think. It's really challenging, but... 00:00 So Rebecca, we both had experiences supervising dissertations and being committee members. 00:00 Are there things that, like, you've learned in that role that you think is, like, 00:00 particularly to serving in that role, that you would want to pass on to other people? 00:00 >>REBECCA: Yes, this is Rebecca. There are a couple of things that, 00:00 that from what I've seen in my experience that, that can hang people up in this process. 00:00 Of course, if you have external pressures to get it done, then somehow it manages to happen, 00:00 but even then, people can feel overwhelmed or stuck, might have writer's block, 00:00 there's all sorts of things, and some of the things that I have found that were helpful to 00:00 me and seemed to be helpful to grad students is to continue to remind yourself that this is a task. 00:00 It is not your magnum opus. It is step one in what's going to become the next part of 00:00 your career, and often, it can feel like this is a culmination of graduate school, right, and you're 00:06 going to get your doctorate, so it should be this amazing thing, and yes, you want it to be great, 00:11 but it doesn't have to be perfect, and it won't be perfect, and so accepting that, 00:17 that this is -- you're going to revisit this in the future in articles or a book, or both. 00:22 So this is not the end of your engagement with this data necessarily. 00:27 So to keep that in mind. Another thing that I think is helpful to remember 00:34 is that there are many, many dissertations that you could write with your data. 00:39 There is not like one magical, perfect answer to how it should all come together. 00:44 There's lots of different ways that you can do it. 00:47 So that could be overwhelming, or it could be liberating, depending on how you view that. 00:53 We talked about starting with the early stuff -- or the easy stuff, sorry. Writer's block, 01:00 is something that people often run into. It just seems like such a huge task. 01:05 It is a huge task, and you have a year or more of data that you're trying to put into some 01:10 sort of narrative, and in my experience, when I struggle with that, which I do 01:16 from time to time, what Dick was saying I think is a great strategy with the 555. 01:23 Another way to do it that I had to do at one point was to set a timer and write for 3 minutes, and 01:30 that was it, and you know I might come back later and do three more minutes, 01:35 but that felt like a manageable chunk to me. So even if I couldn't think of anything 01:40 intelligent to say, you can write something for three minutes, 01:43 and that helps to get the flow going. The best dissertation is a done dissertation. 01:51 So you could do all of your training and get up to that point, but if you don't finish that 01:55 dissertation, you won't get the PhD so you just got to get it done, and just write, write, write, 02:01 even when you don't feel like it's any good. That's okay. You're going to do many drafts. 02:05 You might write stuff -- this happened to me -- you might write stuff that you think, 02:08 "Well, that's crap," or, "It doesn't fit with what I'm trying to say." 02:11 You can come back to that later. That might be a chapter in an edited 02:15 volume that you submit, or it could be an article, or it could be part of the book that comes later, 02:19 so it's okay if you write stuff that you end up not liking, or not using. Don't throw it away. 02:26 And I would -- the last thing I'll say is when you get to the defense 02:29 part, remember that you're the expert in the room. 02:34 You are the one who knows the most about your topic, of anybody else 02:38 in the room, no matter who they are. They may be able to, you know, have some 02:41 facility with theory or whatever that you're still learning, but you're the expert on your topic, 02:46 and remember that as you're writing as well, that you have something to say. 02:49 You have experiences that nobody else has, and those are valuable, and 02:55 you want to share that with people. >>MATTHEW: 03:00 Oh, Dick? Please. >>DICK: Hi, this is Dick. I just -- I want 03:05 to build on everything that Rebecca is saying. A little background: Rebecca was something of a, 03:11 sort of allomentor for me while I was getting through my dissertation, 03:16 not on my committee but kept sort of pushing me along, and all of these things that she has said, 03:23 I've heard dozens and dozens of times. On Twitter. From other Professors, you know, in my department. 03:32 Particularly like, you know, "This is not your magnum opus," and "The best dissertation is a done 03:38 dissertation." "Perfect is the enemy of good." All of these things, and I just want to say I 03:42 did not fully appreciate any of these until it was done, and so I [laughter] I just -- I 03:51 really want to stress, like, really think about those, before you finish. 03:56 They will help you. Take that seriously. 04:01 >>MATTHEW: Yeah, thanks, Dick. This is Matthew. I think the 04:06 faculty probably -- we have party lines that we are obligated to say over and over again, but 04:13 the reality of them has to be a lived one, right? I always -- to add to both what Rebecca and Dick 04:21 were saying -- I mean, I try and impress on students that the dissertation is an archive. 04:28 That in some sense what it is it's just a bunch of raw material. 04:33 It's, you know, one step away from being raw material in that you've written it up, 04:37 but it's there to be mined later for articles, the book it's going to turn into, 04:45 if it turns into a book, you know, chapters, conference talks, whatever else it is -- it's 04:50 a living archive for you to mine, right? And I mean my experience was collecting 04:57 so much stuff over time that only some of it could end up in the dissertation 05:03 given the time constraints that I had, and only some of it could end up in the book, 05:08 and so over -- I think I just pin -- fin -- like, published the last thing I'll ever write about 05:13 sleep, until I'm a really old crotchety person, and it was still new material 05:19 that had never been written up because it was just in this archive in some respects. 05:24 And I recognize that that's a particular experience, and other people have other 05:28 experiences, but these are projects that you will live with for a long time in one form of another. 05:35 The other thing I really try and impress on people is to, like, come up with like a plan A, a plan B, 05:42 and a plan C for the dissertation, and the plan A is like the ideal version of it with all of 05:48 the chapters that you want to write, and all of the time in the world to write them in, right? 05:54 And that plan B is going to be a couple chapters less than that. 05:59 And plan C is going to be a couple chapters less than that. 06:02 So, like, if you have to get done, what is that plan C option? 06:08 And you know, to have the conversation with your committee about that, right? That, like, 06:12 this is what you want it to look like, but you know, the reality is that there's only 06:17 so much funding in the world, and so it might end up looking like plan B, or like 06:21 plan C if you get a job offer somewhere, right? And, in my experience, most committees are really 06:27 flexible about those expectations, right? That like, one of the challenges that a 06:32 lot of dissertating students have is they imagine their committee to have 06:37 one set of thoughts, when in fact their committee is much more flexible than that. 06:45 So I always try -- I always tell students to communicate with committee members 06:50 in some regular way. Like set up an alarm. 06:54 Send people an email every month, just to let them know that you're there, 06:59 and that you're working on stuff. You can tell them that you don't 07:02 need a response from that email, but having that communication channel open 07:07 is really critical, especially if anything comes up, but also to make sure that you have a sense of 07:14 what the reality of your committee is, rather than this kind of ideational version of them. 07:22 Cause they're there to help you, ultimately, right? And like Rebecca said, 07:26 they recognize that you're the expert. I mean I think that's especially true in 07:30 anthropology where we all have very particular data that we're -- that we've collected 07:35 and that we're working with, right? Everybody is going to recognize you as 07:39 the expert by the time you are turning in drafts of your dissertation, right? 07:46 We have time for questions if people would like to put them into the chat... 07:56 and while people are doing that, if Dick or Rebecca have last thoughts? Yeah, Dick? 08:05 >>DICK: Yeah, I just want to throw in one more technical tip. 08:11 I benefited a lot from Scrivener. So if you get a chance to use Scrivener -- I 08:19 see Rebecca nodding vigorously, yes -- I think Rebecca got me into Scrivener, actually. 08:25 It's sort of a word-processor-style-writing-app-program, 08:34 but I think it was originally designed for like, screen writers, and so your document 08:43 is sort of organized into, like, index cards and parts and pieces, and you can move them around. 08:51 This was crucial for my writing phase. It was not so helpful in my revision phase, so word 09:00 of warning there, but I swear by it. It's worth every penny. I don't remember how much it cost. 09:05 $30 or something, but yeah, do check that out. >>MATTHEW: 09:14 This is Matthew. Oh! Rebecca? Go ahead. >>REBECCA: Oh yeah. This is Rebecca. 09:19 We had a question in the chat about when it comes to structure and flow of the dissertation, 09:23 how you overcome making a flow as easy as possible to understand for anyone reading it. 09:28 So here is something that I did with my last 09:32 big writing project, and I don't know that anybody -- that, that people would find this helpful 09:38 with the dissertation, but I just will share it briefly, and you can kind of decide from there. 09:42 So it helped me, actually, because I was so close to my data, 09:46 and of course, it all fit together in my head. I knew all the pieces that fit together, and 09:51 then -- but try to get that all on paper can be challenging, like, how much detail do people need? 09:57 You know, you don't want to give too much, but you want to give enough that they're going to be able 09:59 to follow your argument, and what I found helpful was, was kind of displacing my topic, and by that, 10:06 I mean, I was writing about a particular medical condition that I happened to know a lot about, 10:12 and so teasing that part was challenging for me. So I made up an idea of some other condition that 10:19 I know nothing about because it's fake, and then I started to ask what would I 10:23 need to know in order to understand what this condition is, and what these arguments mean. 10:29 So something like that can be helpful too to just kind of take yourself out of what is so 10:33 very familiar and that can help you kind of think about what level of detail is going to be needed 10:38 for somebody who doesn't know anything about your topic to be able to engage with your argument. 10:47 >>MATTHEW: Yeah, I would add to that that the flow is less important than 10:57 it being done in some respects. That, like, my experience reading 11:02 dissertations is often that, like, one chapter doesn't neatly segue into the next chapter, 11:08 and that that's totally okay. The flow is something that can 11:13 come later through the revision process, but like, the, the reality is is that whatever you 11:21 do with your dissertation content is going to be totally different than what the dissertation was. 11:26 So working on the finesse around all of that stuff is not necessarily labor that gets 11:35 repaid very well. But I think to -- boost what Rebecca was saying. 11:44 One of the challenges that I've often found in my own writing and other people's writing is the 11:49 balance between how much you need to tell your audience, and how much you know, and 11:54 the -- one of the challenges with dissertations is that people feel like they have to demonstrate 12:01 everything they know about something, and that's not necessarily a good thing for your committee. 12:06 Like if you get to the point where you're turning in 70-page papers or chapters that are just filled 12:11 with detail, you've done too much, and you need to find a way to let it breathe a little bit more. 12:23 We have some other questions. So Magdalena asks, what kind of advice 12:29 would we give to non-native English speakers? She's a native Spanish speaker and currently 12:34 having difficulties writing in English. Would you recommend to start in Spanish 12:40 and see where that takes her, or should she aim to do it all in English? 12:49 Rebecca's processing. >>REBECCA: Yeah, I would say -- 12:53 I see the benefits of both approaches. 12:56 My -- and you could go one of, obviously one of two ways. 13:01 I think it depends on how -- whether the language issue is blocking your thinking, 13:06 and if you're really trying to puzzle out pieces of your argument, then I would do that in my first 13:12 language and then translate it. If you're writing descriptions, 13:17 if it's not blocking your thinking to write in English, then, you know, that saves you labor 13:21 later, and you know you get used to practicing how you're going to present your material 13:25 in English, but I would say if it's -- if it's getting in the way of you writing, then, 13:31 then by all means start in your first language, and you can always translate it later. 13:35 That would be my take. >>MATTHEW: 13:38 Yeah, this is Matthew. I've had students whose first language, language were Spanish and Chinese, 13:47 and they similarly had experiences where writing in English was challenging, especially because 13:54 their field work was in Spanish and in Chinese. So, like, having to move between their field 14:00 language and analytic language was tough. In both cases, they ended up paying 14:07 copy editors to proofread the final version of the dissertation. 14:13 I don't know if it was entirely necessary, but it was something that they felt like was helpful. 14:19 But I, you know, I think that in many respects, writing to get it out is the most important thing, 14:27 and whatever language that is, is probably the best language to do it in. 14:34 We have some other questions... Erica asks, "It sounds like it may not be an issue for you 14:41 personally as writers, but do you have any advice for those of us who don't encounter 14:45 writing block but instead the opposite? My problem is more often that I overwrite and 14:51 can't keep within myself -- whoops, hang on [laughter] -- self-enforced page limits. 14:58 It's not the worst problem to have, but I guess it's taking too much time. 15:07 I tend to -- I'll buy Rebecca some time maybe, and Dick too, if he wants to add into this. 15:14 I tend to tell people that, like, if a section is longer than 7-10 pages, and I know that's like a 15:21 span, like it, it -- then, it's too long, right? And so, for your readers, you want to make 15:29 sure you can, you know, parse all that stuff out into like 7-10 page sections. 15:36 So... and I think it's often the case that if you've been writing about something for 15:41 more than ten pages, and there's is no sub-heading in there, there should be a sub-heading in there. 15:47 You just haven't seen where it goes yet. So it might not actually be a problem -- without 15:54 looking at your writing, Erica -- like it might not actually be a problem of writing too much. It 15:59 might be a problem of not identifying the, like, the breaks within that writing that you're doing. 16:07 Because there's stuff there. It just might need to be shaped in particular ways. 16:15 >>REBECCA: Yeah, I would add to that, that used to be my problem, but then it stopped being my 16:20 problem, but I agree with everything that -- this is Rebecca, by the way -- I agree with everything 16:25 Matthew said, and I don't know if this is a place where, you know -- where you're maybe giving -- I 16:32 don't know having not read your stuff, but if you're getting into too much fine-grain detail, 16:38 I would practice pulling out your view and start by going back through whatever you've written and 16:45 take the first sentence of each paragraph, and make sure you're not repeating ideas. 16:49 Make sure that those first sentences are flowing in a logical way, and that you're aiming for 16:56 approximately 30 pages a chapter, 30-35 page as chapter, so if you're getting much longer than 17:02 that, then maybe you need to break it into two chapters or rearrange something else. 17:11 >>MATTHEW: So, we have two questions, and I wonder if we can smoosh them 17:15 together for the sake of time. So one is from Anika, and she asks, 17:23 "My question is whether you have any advice regarding overcoming the feeling you don't 17:27 have enough data. This is speaking from personal experience, but I think this is especially present 17:32 for grads who are doing -- did field work during COVID. Our data collection process is difficult. 17:38 And the other one, which I think we can join together, is about the -- from Clay, 17:44 it's about the generic conventions of ethnography, and the importance including a case study, 17:54 is in relationship to an ethnography that's multi-sited, and is more 18:01 focused on kind of larger abstract sites. I... I mean I -- I can take a first pass. 18:10 I mean, I think that the generic conventions of ethnography are really something to contend with, 18:16 and I -- if there is a challenge with committees, it is making sure that you have enough 18:22 ethnographic content in the dissertation to make them feel like it is an anthropology dissertation, 18:32 and that sometimes the -- especially with kind of like multi-sited stuff or institutional 18:41 stuff -- that that ethnographic stuff can kind of drop out in some respects, and so making sure 18:48 that you've enough of it is really important. I think along -- and this goes to Anika's part 18:53 of the -- or Anika's question -- I think if you feel like you don't have a lot of 18:59 it, the important thing is the role that it plays in the document, right? 19:04 So, rather than burying it after some 20-page description of process, or place or something like 19:14 that, lead with the anecdotal evidence, right? Or -- I don't really, I don't really mean anecdotal 19:22 -- but lead with the ethnographic evidence and then leverage that into the other content. 19:29 When you actually look at many book-length ethnographies that anthropologists publish, 19:35 there's not a lot of data in a lot of them -- not to sound like a sociologist. 19:39 But like... That we do a lot with very little in many respects, right? 19:44 And that the important thing is working on the framing in order to make whatever you're 19:50 focusing on really illustrative and tech-like -- texturally meaty for your audience. I'll let 20:00 Rebecca add to that if she'd like to, or Dick. >>REBECCA: Yeah -- this is Rebecca -- I, 20:04 I love the way you put that, Matthew, and I think you're absolutely right that, that it's, 20:09 it's about the role that the data is playing in your dissertation, and if you -- like he 20:13 said -- if you foreground it and then you're unpacking it, and you're analyzing it, and you're, 20:18 you're, you know, bringing all the other stuff to bare, then you can really do a lot with, 20:23 with what may seem like not very much. 20:25 Also, I will say grad students always have more data than they think they do. 20:28 >>MATTHEW: Mhm. >>REBECCA: So keep that in mind too. 20:32 >>MATTHEW: It's true. So I think technically we're out of time. 20:39 That was a little, fast, breezy conversation, and I want to thank you all for being here with us. 20:48 There -- as Jeff mentioned earlier, there's going to be other opportunities over the next 20:53 few months, and we'll try and give you more lead time in registering for them, and we hope 21:00 that we'll have some guests for some of that, but we want to make sure that this is here as 21:04 a resource for you all as we move forward, and just want to thank you again for participating. 21:11 >>REBECCA: Yeah, thank you everyone. It was great to see so many people here, and I wish 21:15 you all really good luck with your writing. >>JEFF: Yes. Hi, and again, this is Jeff Martin 21:19 at AAA, I wanna remind everyone, that you can look -- you can view the upcoming webinars from 21:25 SMA and SPA as well as AAA webinars on career advancement at americananthro.org/webinars.