Reasons Why I Suck...

So, I am here in NYC for another (incredibly expensive) week of meeting with my committee. I had a red-eye flight from Ohio yesterday, followed by a 4 hour meeting with two of my committee members (I meet with the third tomorrow). I came away from the meeting feeling like a complete and utter failure. To be fair, that is not at all what my committee intended. In fact, they made a point of telling me I am still on schedule to submit the dissertation in January and schedule oral examinations in the spring. So why am I so upset? In brief...

1. Chapter 2 of the dissertation is titled, "Review of Theory and Research." My committee chair gently pointed out to me yesterday that I have neglected to include any research in the literature review- it's all just theory. I now need to go back and review 51 years of research (starting after the launch of Sputnik, which is a vital date in the development of gifted education in America), read the research, summarize it in notes for myself, and weave it into the chapter. This also means I have to re-familiarize myself with SPSS, ANOVA, regression analysis, etc., etc.

2. Also related to Chapter 2: I have to throw out the section I wrote on Bakhtin (which took me the better part of a year to research and write) and start over with another theoretical paradigm for my data analysis.

3. I included way too much raw data in Chapter 5 (I totally agree with this, my decision to do so is long and complicated and I am happy I can rewrite it), so I have to scrap about 70% of that chapter and replace it.

4. All of Chapter 6 is worthless. I was instructed to delete the entire thing and start from scratch. I agree with this as well, but I am not looking forward to rewriting it, especially since it was written at the explicit instruction of the third committee member (with whom I meet tomorrow and who will tell me something completely different re: revisions of this chapter).

5. My tone is completely wrong according to my advisers. I have to go back and radically alter my syntax. I estimate this will take about 30 hours (and that's without including time consulting the OED for guidance).

6. Worst of all...my writing has failed to adequately capture my participants' personalities and intentions. One of my committee members said my writing makes them sound "precious, egotistical, full of themselves ," and sound like they have a distinct "superiority complex." This is the comment that completely broke me. I can take all the criticism directed at me- I expect it and that is what editing is about, after all. However, the thought that my lack of skill and inability to write well caused these participants--whom I respect deeply--to appear as caricatures of mad scientists or evil geniuses is more upsetting that I can even describe. I feel like I should trash this entire project rather than libel my participants in this way. I cannot stand the thoughts of misrepresenting them, especially when there are so many pernicious stereotypes of gifted individuals that already exist.

I just want to pull up the file and hit "delete." I just want to not feel like I've betrayed the school or its teachers.