I forced myself not to plan anything for this past weekend and it left me twitchy. I spent much of the weekend feeling like I was supposed to be doing something, but unsure of what. It has been SIX YEARS since I have lived life without some big, overarching GOAL. On the one hand, I have accomplished something that only a very small percentage of the population ever accomplishes; I graduated. (My transcript even shows my PhD now.) On the other hand, I don’t have the traditional academic career path, so I am not currently preoccupied with finding my first professional position. I have a professional position (and have had for nearly 20 years). I have an academic position teaching at a local community college. I’m not really searching for anything.
In some ways, it’s as though I am mourning my loss; having a big goal gave me a purpose, and for all that it was periodically painfully stressful it also provided some structure and context to my life. It’s not like there aren’t things I need to be doing now:
- Revise stats class for next semester, including reviewing homework that didn’t work this year
- Convert psych 101 class to an online format for next semester
- Turn my dissertation into a journal article
- Learn enough about missing data analysis techniques to determine whether I can use them to fill in some of the problematic blanks in my dissertation and get another article out of that
- Renovate my master bathroom (paint cabinets, replace countertop with tiled countertop and vessel sinks, tile shower)
- Renovate my guest bathroom (paint cabinets, replace countertop)
- Paint master bedroom
- Re-paint living room and probably kitchen
None of those are short projects. Yet none have the overarching purpose that finishing the PhD had.
Maybe that’s good. I appear to need to learn how to live in-the-moment rather than constantly focused on the future. Perhaps that’s the answer to the question: Learning how to be happy with now instead of always looking forward. That would be a new experience.
ProtoScholar 
I fully understand the concept of not knowing how to return to a normal rhythm (whatever that is) after completing the PhD. I will be facing the same at the end of the summer with defense by the end of July. My timeline has been a ridiculous, condensed 3.5 years and I am seeking a tenure-track academic path. With the job market in higher ed being what it is I am thankful I have many years of experience in industry and consulting to provide options, but I’m still a little shocked that I couldn’t have picked a worse time to make a substantial investment in a narrow career path with even fewer options than when I started…it’s all irrelevant though.
To your comment about turning your dissertation into a journal article, I would imagine you can get more than one article out of your work. As I have been going through my process I can envision 4-5 articles at any given time. However, I’ve noted that many of my colleagues lose momentum after defense and don’t return to fine tune their dissertation for more than a year, if at all. Perhaps you and I can do better in this regard as it seems the possibilities are worth pursuing; it’s just hard to do when there’s no overarching big goal, as you say.
Thanks for your blog – I’ve been following for a while and it’s been helpful.
Best wishes and congratulations!
Cori Zuppo
Hi Cori –
When I started writing I had 3 articles envisioned. However I ran into some real data problems that have left me unsure if I can even get 1 published. The other 2 questions I was trying to answer can’t be answered with the data I have, which is crazy frustrating. What I AM doing is investigating missing data techniques to see if I can get at those answers statistically. That could then become the basis of an article or two.
I definitely don’t intend to let it go for a year – I want to have something this summer. If it sits too long I’ll just get buried in other things, which is never productive.