Investment Metaphor #11: D-Day

Oct 14

Oct 14 Investment Metaphor #11: D-Day

No, not that D-Day. I mean "Dissertation Day." Today is my first official D-Day. You see, in addition to being an up-and-coming personal finance writer, I am also a Ph.D. candidate in the philosophy department at UC Santa Cruz. I have been a grad student now for approximately six years, from 2001 until now, and it is time for me to be finished. Most of my grad school career has come quite naturally for me, from completing my coursework, writing an M.A. thesis, and achieving the rank of doctoral candidate. The only remaining hurdles to jump through are the completion and defense of my dissertation (the D-Word).

Up until now the dissertation has seemed to me to be an insurmountable task, filled with anxiety, anguish, skepticism, inadequacy, struggles and general loathing for academia. I have viewed my dissertation as some nebulous non-existent future entity, whose completion was nowhere in sight. So to counteract the heavy dissertation burden, I have decided to change my mindset. Rather than viewing my dissertation as a future, uncompleted project, I have decided to think of my dissertation as the very stack of writing sitting beside me right now. True, it is not finished; true it is still incoherent; true it is still amateurish; but it exists; I have a dissertation.

And so in the interest of having a finished dissertation, I am devoting every ounce of free energy I have to dissertation work; hence "D-Day." Today I have secluded myself in the local coffee shop with nothing but my new laptop and my dissertation materials. I have given myself the goal of having a completed dissertation in six months from now. By the end of March 2008 I will have a completed dissertation with only the oral defense of my dissertation left until I am Dr. Z. I have been here at the coffee shop for the last six hours, and I have written twelve pages or so. In total I have 23,495 words of my dissertation sitting beside me in a stack so tall it makes it easy to believe the project will be done in six months. I need your help dear readers to keep my optimism, to stay focused, and to finally be done with the grad school nightmarish hellhole.

I suppose I did promise you a substantive investment metaphor, so here's a quickie for you: it is easy to view retirement like I have been viewing my dissertation, as some nebulous non-existent future entity. However, it is the steps you take today that will lead to the retirement of your dreams, and there are indeed steps you can take, no matter what your financial situation, to stay on the straight and narrow path to your final goals. Just as it is the short-term and immediate goals and work that I am pursuing right now that will someday lead to a completed dissertation and a Ph.D. in hand for me. Do not procrastinate, do not waver, take small user-friendly and bite-sized steps, and your goals will be reached if only out of sheer tenacity and stick-with-it-ness. Ph.D. or retirement, do not ignore the little steps that lead to the successful completion of a seemingly endless voyage.