A local government official struggled to finish their dissertation during COVID while managing crisis workload and low survey response rates. Reframing their mindset and getting support from others kept them moving forward.
Some of my most challenging moments were the intersection of work and dissertation. That's where the reframing really works. How do you stay connected? How do you keep your head in the dissertation game when everything else in your life seems topsy-turvy? You have to remember I was going through this process through COVID, so my work life was just— I was working, there was a lot of demands that were placed on us at the time because I work in local government. So trying to keep pace with what's happening in COVID, trying to keep my mental, my personal frame of mind intact, and then trying to navigate the dissertation. And even at that point, that's when I was really trying to do the survey, conduct my survey, and it was so challenging because of everything that was going on. And disenchanted, disappointed, response rates are low, you know, having to go back out again each time to try to get more people to participate. And you have to, and you need someone to be able to say, you know what, you can do this.
