CM reached out to me in late spring 2015 for help with her dissertation-turned-Masters-thesis. She was facing a lot of challenges: a advisor who lives on another continent, a looming deadline, and the demands of her job as a Latin teacher. We started working on her thesis in May 2015, setting up a schedule for drafts and revisions. CM finished her thesis revisions on time; in three months, she was able to submit revisions to the entire text before she left for a much-deserved vacation in New York! We sat down together not long ago over a cup of coffee so I could ask her to tell me the story of the thesis.
LSE: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk about your thesis and what it was like to work with me on the revisions. So, what's the story behind your project?
CM: That in itself is something of an epic story. The basic idea for this thesis came from 20 years ago, when I was working on it as a dissertation at Cornell. I was getting ready for the dissertation proposal, but I just didn't develop it into the full dissertation for many reasons. Then I came to Fort Wayne and taught Latin, and I would submit conference proposals based on the chapters I'd been working on for the dissertation, but I just didn't have time to go back to the dissertation while I had a full-time teaching job and kids. When I finally did get time to go back to it, there were no Classics Ph.D.s online except at UNISA [University of South Africa], but they said, "Hey, yes, you can pick up where you left off with that other dissertation!" So, I plugged along for a couple of years on it as a doctoral thesis, then because of the rules they have about what counts as a dissertation, I decided to write it up as a Masters thesis because I thought, "Honestly, if I have a Masters, I can be well-positioned and not be over-qualified for any job I might want."
LSE: At what point did you decide you needed to get help from an editor?
CM: When I was facing the revision process this summer. Thinking about it, I was in a panic. I didn't feel like I could approach the revisions without someone to support me. I had a friend who tried to help, but I didn't end up getting very focused advice, and the text was still in a messy state. I started thinking of whom to ask or or hire to help. If you hadn't said that you'd be willing to help, I would have looked for someone to hire. I wasn't crazy about the idea of spending money on the project, but I realized that if I didn't, it probably wasn't going to come together. I'd found someone on Craigslist and I probably would have gone back to him. I know you're a person of faith and I am not, but if ever I have felt like there was divine intervention, it was when my friends brought my second husband to my door and when you said, "I'll do this, and it won't cost you as much as you think."
LSE: Ha! Well, there's at least some order in the universe. So where is the project? What else is left to do with it?
CM: I still have to do the bibliography and reconcile the sources. Other than that, it feels like the rest is done. I'll get [my advisor's] last round of feedback and do any revisions he asks for.
LSE: Great! What are your hopes for the project, once it's completed?
CM: Well, I feel really confident about the quality of the writing now, so now I'm expecting that any concerns my advisor might have won't be that ginormous. The Masters degree matters to me because it means I have something to show for the years and years of graduate school. And it'll make the job market easier if I want to pursue other teaching positions.
LSE: Let's talk about the editorial process a bit. What were you struggling with most that having a professional editor's perspective helped with?
CM: I think what I struggled with most was handling the overwhelming amount of work I had to do and understanding how to respond to my advisor's comments. You helped me look at it more objectively, so I didn't feel like I wanted to cry about your edits and suggested revisions. Having someone there to coach was great. I would send you things and you would respond and gave me timely feedback, and that was not my experience with [my advisor].
LSE: What do you feel more confident about after having worked with an academic editor?
CM: The feedback you gave me was so focused that it was easy to respond to correct what you pointed out. It also made me think about my own comments to my students: "Oh, sometimes I really do say vague things to them!" Sometimes, I would think, "Wow, that was exactly what I needed [to hear]. Going through the whole process has made me feel like, "Yes, I can do something like this; even if it gets bogged down, I can do this." It wasn't a writing style that I liked, and I won't be writing in that style again, and finding that out was good, too.
LSE: What advice would you give to other people who are writing theses and dissertations and are facing similar difficulties or concerns?
CM: There's no way to overestimate the amount of time it's going to take. What worked for me this summer was that I became more disciplined about a writing schedule. I said to myself, "Ok, I am going to get up at 6:30, write for two hours, then have a break, and then go back and write for another two hours. When we first met at the beginning of the summer, I was worried that even putting in the time wouldn't be enough to meet the deadline. But now I have to write these recommendation letters and having that discipline is good. It was great, seeing that the discipline was actually working.
UPDATE: CM reports that her advisor has already given her some preliminary feedback: "I received a short message from [my advisor] saying that he is reading my stuff and...get ready...he is proud of me. I am pleased but slightly freaked out!" Congratulations, CM!!