It should go without saying that writing a dissertation is hard. Just getting to the point where you start to write the dissertation can seem like an insurmountable hurdle. Then, when you finally crest the top of the ridge, you realize that academic mountains aren’t triangle-shaped like the ones we drew as children; they’re stair-step Ziggurats and when you reach the top of one arduous climb, you simply have to gear up for the next.

Researching and writing a dissertation is and should be a full time job. The luckiest among us have a strong support structure, perhaps a spouse or significant other who can help handle some of the quotidian tasks that eat up so much prized work time. And I’m not just talking about household chores here–although an extra set of hands to cook, clean, do laundry, or walk the dog is always a plus. I mean someone who can take the car in for maintenance, ask the insurance company about that huge bill, or take the dog to his vet appointment.

By no means are these a necessity, but they seem to make the entire process easier. I’ve seen how much lighter the graduate school burden weighs on people who aren’t simultaneously dealing with sundry real-life issues.

Taking my own case as an example, the year after I finished my coursework I had ongoing medical issues with my gallbladder that persisted for roughly the entire school year. I couldn’t eat regularly and would often have to sit doubled over to relieve the severe pain in my stomach. Fixing the issue required numerous endoscopies and a couple of stents, but eventually the problem was resolved. (Side note: They never technically figured out what caused it.)

Then, in the fall of that year (i.e. ~5 months later) I had to have shoulder surgery to repair a torn biceps and rotator cuff. The recovery time from the surgery itself was around 6 weeks, during which time I virtually couldn’t move my right arm. After the initial period, I had another 5-6 months of physical therapy. Again, virtually another year of writing time interrupted.

While it’s true that neither the medical issues with the gallbladder nor the shoulder accident and resulting surgery and recovery were inhibiting every hour of every day for two straight years, when you add together the time lost directly and the restrictions those stressors placed on my cognitive bandwidth, the total negative effect on productivity is astounding.

A friend of mine, who was a few years ahead of me, faced a similar problem. She was diagnosed with cancer, which she beat, while in graduate school. Certainly she lost more time than what she spent in the hospital for treatment.

I say all of this not to garner sympathy. I am well aware that many other graduate students are living through circumstances that I don’t know about. That’s not the point. The point is that the time you have to devote to your dissertation while you are still in graduate school is a limited and coveted resource, and so many external factors can eat away at that time. Also, once you’ve left the academic setting, it becomes much more difficult to finish your dissertation. Real life starts imposing itself even more forcefully than it did before. If you work in a field unrelated to your academic field or even just not directly in that field, devoting time to writing can be even more daunting.

Finally, every day when I wake up and read the next depressing headline or listen to a new podcast, I’m finding more and more that the value of researching and writing a dissertation about the accusative with infinitive construction in Latin keeps being outmatched by the pull to devote my time to any number of the real-world issues facing us at this moment. Even if completing the dissertation is still very important, as an educated person don’t I have a duty or obligation to devote a considerable portion of my mental bandwidth to engaging with the problems plaguing us right now?

In the end, just like a Socratic interlocutor, I wind up in a state of aporia.