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I told a student this last week, and they said it was helpful and they are going to tell their friends, so I figured it might be worth posting here.
I am advising all doctoral students to come up with 3 different dissertation plans right now.
Tier 1: "normal" life
Tier 2: significantly restricted/delayed data gathering. Tier 1, but later, or fewer people
Tier 3: a dissertation you can write using ONLY remote resources.
Tier 1: "normal" life
Tier 2: significantly restricted/delayed data gathering. Tier 1, but later, or fewer people
Tier 3: a dissertation you can write using ONLY remote resources.
You should also decide *now* what your decision points are for moving from Tier 1 to Tier 2 or 3. Make those plans, write them down, and tell your committee.
The reason I'm saying this is that no one knows what's happening in 1 or 6 or 24 months. You don't want to be in a situation where you're just in limbo waiting to hear about whether you can travel or get into this or that archive or whether this or that org will be up & running.
A certain amount of uncertainty is unavoidable right now, but that doesn't mean you want to just wait indefinitely for things to firm up and find yourself 2-3 years later stuck in a place you didn't want to be. Make a plan/flow chart/if-this-then-that decision tree.
when I was planning my dissertation, I told a mentor about financial constraints for travel. he encouraged me to try to do a chapter that could be done completely from the crib. it was the first time a prof ever told me it's okay to make research choices based on practical needs.
to give credit where credit was due, that mentor was @johndiamondphd. and that chapter became Chapter 2 of Ghosts in the Schoolyard, written entirely from archival texts, books, and documents I could get to without paying for a plane ticket.
much like delicious black bean soup you make because that's what's in your pantry, a dissertation you write using the resources at hand can turn out just as good or better than what you would have done under different circumstances.
brb getting soup
brb getting soup
a cool story about black bean soup research! https://twitter.com/merylalper/status/1250883480550100994?s=20
more black bean soup research https://twitter.com/meredithdclark/status/1250867881035870208?s=20
