Learning to Move Past the Starting Line with Dr. Melody Bacon
Dr. Melody Bacon [00:21:01]
use those going. But for me, it was really a matter of not getting overwhelmed. And that’s how I got through my graduate program. You know, you start at the beginning and say, Oh, my God, I got to do all this. No, no, no, I just need to do this semester. And these three classes. In this case, it was I just need to do this one, phrases for this one journal article. And, of course, a lot of times, once I did that, I’d go on to another one, because I kind of had the energy for it. But I always gave myself permission, if I did it, and I was kind of done to be done. You know, rather than, okay, I’m sitting here, I got to sit here for five hours. And I don’t think I ever have quit, but I always give myself permission to say, Okay, if after half hour an hour, you still don’t want to do this, don’t. you know, and somehow that gives you the sense of, you’re not being compelled or held, you know, imprison, you know, you have the option to say, Okay, today, my, my brain is not working. So there’s some tricks that you can do that I
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:22:01]
think are helpful to not overwhelm yourself. In speaking one of those tricks, I remember something else that you said I was going to comment on earlier, was that you literally scheduled out your time with yourself with your dissertation. And that’s something people have to understand, this is important. A lot of our students, particularly women, for some reason, it seems to be a little bit more prevalent with them, think that I don’t even know the right way of saying this, but they feel like they’re being selfish. That’s why they say you’re being selfish, with your taking time and effort and energy away from family, or away from other things to do this thing for yourself to earn this doctoral degree. But this degree is going to make you better able to care for these folks, in a lot of ways, it’s going to provide a really good, you know, role model for your kids,
Dr. Melody Bacon [00:22:53]
Exactly. Lots and lots of things. And so sometimes you do have to get over this fact that being selfish is wrong, it’s okay to be selfish sometimes. Because that’s, you know, when you if you still remember flying on airplanes, right, maybe you look at the little card, and it says what to do. And in the event of a crash, you put on your oxygen mask first, then you put on the little kids oxygen mask, because we don’t want you passing out while you’re trying to fumble with the kids oxygen mask, you’ve got to take care of yourself to be able to take care of others. So that’s something that a lot of people like, well, if I get to it, and all this sort of thing, you’ll never get to it,
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:23:29]
you got to do it, you got to prioritize
Dr. Melody Bacon [00:23:31]
And everything will come in to fill the gap. Nature abhors a vacuum. So I agree with you, I think that your commitment to some passion of yours is important for your kids to see. And you would want that for them. Well, they are somebody in your life called the guilt trip card. Okay, just play on it. However, the other benefit to the family is that they get to learn how to accommodate somebody else, which is a life skill. And so you’re giving them the opportunity to be just as caring toward you as you are toward them. And not because you’re trying to teach them anything because it’s just a natural outcome of “this is mom’s time for what’s important to her.” And when she’s done, we’ll go do something, and what can you do to entertain yourself while I’m doing this? So I think though, it’s also speaking from a psychological view that we can come up with a million excuses. And they’re always legitimate. I have my kids, I have my work, I have the, yes, I gotta pay my bills. You know, and at the end of the day, you know, I always say to myself, But other people have done this. So I can too and they had to have had the same Nobody gets this whole cart blohsh. And even then somebody let’s say you didn’t have to pay bills, you could just work all day long every day on your dissertation. And you have this fantasy, you would do it? No. Oh, it’s not me out, you know, I need to take advantage of going to the beach
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:25:22]
Down the road. And there’s a, you know, I want to fix this, this six hour meal instead of
Dr. Melody Bacon [00:25:29]
Exactly. I mean, everything else is more fun. And I love the product of when I’m done writing. But getting there, it’s work. I mean, you know, it’s rewarding work. But it’s a lot easier to go lie on the beach and read a good book and sip of my time and you know, come on. So, it is that kind of selfish? I got to do this to get to where I want
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:25:57]
Years. What is where am I going to be versus to get this dissertation done over the next year or two? Where am I going to be
Dr. Melody Bacon [00:26:06]
It’s an investment.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:26:08]
It’s an absolute investment, plays into something. I’ve been thinking a lot about lately working with some folks on about intentionality, you have to understand, yeah. Where do you want to go? What do you want to not do? What do you want to be doing now? But what do you want to be doing a year from now? 5, 10 years from now? And what does it take to get there?
Dr. Melody Bacon [00:26:28]
Yes. Yeah, you have to see yourself invest in your future self. Yeah. And the career you
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:26:36]
want to have, and all the most people. So there’s this paradox that I do see, with with the students I talked to, which is all these things you talked about, I have this I had that I had the other all of these things that are, you know, imposing on my life. But then I say, well just quit the doctoral degree program then. And nobody says, 3% of the people in this world don’t feel right. Reprogram. So just quit. No way I can quit. I don’t quit anything I started. And there’s comes all these other flood of emotions coming that can Yeah,
Dr. Melody Bacon [00:27:11]
they get in touch with that. And I just finished working with students that their final research course, which is proposal development, and there was a lot of there. I say whining, and this is hard. Yes, this is why most people don’t have a doctorate. Right? Of course, this is hard. And you can do it. Right, because you have already gotten this far. And that’s what I told them because we had our final classes. So okay, you guys, I’m begging you, you have spent every for last two years, every Thursday night in class. Don’t fill that time in with anything else. That’s your dissertation time. Okay? Now, you might have another time. But don’t tell yourself, you don’t have time to work on it. Because you’ve got the class for two years. Plus, you did all this writing. So just don’t let it expand into you know, because everything does, so I’ll hopefully they will do that. However, I did also recommend your services and others because they are out on their own now, you know, there I explained to them, your dissertation chair is not your editor. Now, some may do that, but I don’t. I’m your mentor, I’m available to you. I you know, at the same time, you know, you you could find assistance with someone who can really be there more for you, a coach, someone that can you have an agreement, you can call them I’m stuck or you have weekly check ins, whatever. Because there is more than just the logistics of writing. Here. It’s as we’ve been talking, there’s many things about the overwhelming, the perfectionism, the paralysis that can take place. And so using an and an outside resource, and then our profession, as psychotherapists, I always tell my students, look at your telling people to come to you as a resource. How do you not use one? I mean, you’re kind of talking out of both, oh, I don’t need to use a resource, but you know, you need to come to me. So I think again, it’s one of those modeling, walking the talk because it’s a quite a problem and getting to myself. Fast forward, got the doctorate, started teaching, in addition to building a practice, and working all those these years with doctoral students as well, and seeing the challenges as we’ve talked prior about coming in and adding, what’s cool on to a life and then finding the challenges of writing this dissertation after, they’re also now, you know, doing other things, career wise and family wise and all that. And some of the things I mentioned earlier, you know, starting while you’re in your coursework, of setting aside time, and all that has come out of those 20 plus years of working with students, and realizing that they’re missing some of the structure of school that allowed them to get those all those papers done, because, you know, I always say, you know, if you have written, you know, in the course of your lifetime, you’ve written a dissertation easily, you know, kind of squat about 10, 20 page papers or so. So, but you did them one at a time, right? And that’s how you do a dissertation. You don’t do a 250 page dissertation all at once, you do it a little at a time. But those are the things that are really, really get in the way of getting it done is that and I think, to your point, to the perfectionism, you know, always, because I see it in students way before when they’re turning in stuff for class. And I always say, look at good enough, I know it’s the the American theology, so to speak, is, you know, perfection is the only thing that’s acceptable. And so it’s kind of heretical to say, Good enough is good enough. But it really is good enough. You know, and, in fact, I sometimes have my students watch a really good Netflix documentary called Losers. And it’s excellent, because it takes these people who failed, quote, unquote, on the big screen of, you know, television, I’m one I think one of the first ones is somebody who was in the Olympics, I don’t remember what sport but all eyes were on him. And something he came in second, which is losing, right, in my view, it’s like, you’re second in the whole entire world, but you didn’t get the gold. So what happened to him afterward? You know, well, he ended up with this amazing career, doing something he wouldn’t have. And there are several stories like that. And I have my students look at that. Because when you tell yourself, you’re a loser, because you didn’t do this perfect thing. You know, you’re kind of, right? You’re, you’re telling yourself that wasn’t perfect. And I know, because I’ve seen people that will deconstruct everything they’ve done already, you know, what, I should have done this and that and the other thing. So to avoid having that painful, deconstruction, people are afraid to even get off the starting line. Right. And so then you end up Never writing anything, I have a student right now, who is just really struggling with that, I don’t know if she’s gonna be able to, I mean, I can’t help her with that deep seated issue. And I’ve been begging her to please call you or someone please, because the only thing that, she’s fully competent. And that’s the other thing to tell yourself, you know, if you’ve gotten a doctoral program, they didn’t just admit you to be nice. They know you can do the work. And then you’ve gotten through your coursework. And your teachers didn’t say, Oh, you know, you’re a nice person, I’ll just give you an A or B or whatever, right? So you’ve done all this, you’ve already proven your competence to do a dissertation.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:33:46]
You know, you have to get it done. What we found is actually one of my early students. Her dissertation was on the types of support that doctoral students need to complete a dissertation remotely. And about two people who left traditional university campuses and moved with their spouse or for whatever reason, they were separated from the traditional campus, and others who went to schools that didn’t have that kind of traditional campus or cohort and whatnot, which we see so much of today. And, and what she found is there were three things that showed up over and over again. One was what we call operational support. Tell me what to do and how to do it. Like I haven’t done it before. I don’t know. And I tell folks, the most powerful word in the English language is “yet.” I don’t know yet. Because I don’t know is like, you know, despair and frustration, I don’t know yet is hope and optimism and also understanding that I can do this thing. So I don’t know how to do this yet. Tell me how to do it. Then there’s emotional. You need someone who can kind of be a cheerleader for you. We talked about people who can celebrate and commiserate with you because you will need both along the way. And one of the things that she found that was very interesting was that at least one person in your life has to be both. If all of your emotional support is coming from people who really don’t know what you’re going through, a taunt at some point, they say, I know you can do this. And you’re hearing, if you’re so smart, why have you got Why aren’t you doing this? Why are you having so much trouble? That’s what you’re hearing. That’s not what they’re saying. The theory. I had a lady called me up one time and said, You know what, I need your help. You know, last night, I told my husband to shut up. He didn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. I said, That’s not what I do. And she’s like, No, she was pounding on the table. It says, You’re the dissertation doctor, that, you know, you’re the one I need. I was like, Okay, I don’t remember where I said I was the dissertation doctor. But let’s continue the conversation. And what her husband’s crime was when she said, they really get along. They don’t argue. He’s told her, Honey, you’re smart enough. I know, you can do this. Yeah. And that’s when she hit him with the what the hell you’re talking about? Because he didn’t, he really didn’t, he didn’t know what she was going through. A he didn’t. For in her mind, he didn’t know whether she could do it or not, he wasn’t qualified to make that assessment because he hadn’t been through it himself. And so you need to have some of that in your life, at least someone who’s been through it before, or perhaps is going through it with you that that can that can work as well. And then the third thing turned out to not be critical. Those first two are critical, if you don’t have that, no one succeeded. Unless they had both of those things. The third thing that was less critical was what what she called, What did she call it ancillary support, I think, but it was creating more time for you essentially, it was, you know, if your boss at work says, Oh, you don’t have to take that extra stuff home with you. Because when you get your doctoral degree, you’re gonna be more valuable to our company, if your kids at home, take on some of your chores, or maybe your significant other takes on some of your chores at home, or, or, you know, your husband takes the kids out of the house for the weekend so that you can, you know, just concentrate instead of having all this buzz going on, or, or more interesting things that you want to say, Well, what are you doing over there? any of that stuff? That wasn’t critical, but it was nice. It was a nice to have not a half day. That’s a great topic. Afternoon. Yeah, it will. It was really interesting how, when we were going through it, I was like, Oh, this is a nice little topic. It’s so meta, and all this kind of stuff. She was one of my early students. And we got it done. And it pleased her committee, and I was like, okay, that’s fine. It was after the fact that I’ve been doing this for years and years, I really started to appreciate. Yeah, she’s right. The stuff we found here wasn’t only, you know, things that showed up in her data, but it’s really generalizable, it shows up in my practice far and wide. So, you know, she talked to maybe 30 or 40 people I’ve dealt with 1000s at this point, and, and helped hundreds so did, to hear these stories over and over again, it’s very important for people to understand that these are some of the things that everybody deals with. Because that’s the way that’s another thing a lot of people feel this is just me, and it’s
Dr. Melody Bacon [00:38:13]
because they’re on their own, I have a dissertation, what I call cafe, which is once a week zoom meeting that people can just pop in, they can come in, they can spend 10 minutes and but what I found a big help in that is people are in all different phases. Some people just starting, some stuck, some going through IRB application, some data analysis. And so they can often tell each other things. Like one example is a student who had just about ready to defend her dissertation, and another one who was just starting out, and we at our school, we have some methodology experts that you can make appointments with. And she said, Okay, so here’s what I learned, you know, make an appointment with him at the beginning of chapter three. So she had all this stuff, you know, then when you get your data collected, check in with him again, make sure you’re on the right track. And then and so that’s the kind of thing that is immediate. She’s right there in the trenches at that moment. And it was really helpful to everybody else, plus, they can see someone who’s just starting out, someone’s a little bit in front of them. You know, it’s encouraging, okay, as opposed to someone like myself or yourself where, you know, everyone’s gone. Yeah, that was forever ago, you know, what do you know? And so, the cohort experience of we’re all working on our dissertations is there’s something really important about that. That’s, you know, less quantifiable, but, you know,
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:39:51]
it doesn’t necessarily have to be a cohort. You don’t have to be in lockstep. Oh,
Dr. Melody Bacon [00:39:53]
No not for. Yeah, exactly. You’re in the dissertation conundrum.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:40:03]
You can help them. But also, as anybody who spent any time in education knows, if you really want to learn and understand something, teach it, and you’re helping the people that are behind you. That’s always good to you, because it’s helping to really, you know, drive these points home so that you really internalize them, you really understand because you’re still going to be responsible for those things until they put the hood on and flip the tassel around. So
