Balance and Dissertations
At 7am on August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire suspended between the roofs of the World Trade Center Towers. For Petit, balance was a life-or-death matter, just as it is for your dissertation…
As workers made their way to their offices below, Philippe Petit walked across a wire, 1,368 ft above the streets below, spanning the 138 ft gap between the twin towers. For the next 45 minutes he walked back and forth across the wire a total of eight times.
He walked.
He danced.
He lay down on his back.
He knelt and saluted the crowd which had gathered below.
The “coup,” as Petit called it, was an amazing combination of planning, daring, technical expertise, performance, and teamwork. Indeed, the balancing act started long before Petit stepped out on the wire.
Doctoral students face a similar balancing act. In addition to the the typical classroom skills you’ve been honing since middle school, you will have a master:
planning skills,
organizational skills,
APA & academic-writing skills,
project-management skills,
time-management skills,
political skills,
and more.
It is important that you recognize the need to master each of these aspects of the dissertation process. It is important that you obtain support to provide the skil sets that you don’t currently possess. And, it is important to determine which skill sets you want to develop for future utilization and which you can borrow from colleagues, coaches, and consultants.
