didelot

For humanities grads, don't ever take more than one incomplete per year if you can avoid it! You get stuck writing at times when you don't really have to be writing, or want to be working on your own stuff. I had never taken any until this past semester (my last semester of coursework, a family emergency came up at the end), and I still haven't finished one of them. If you have anything you need to do over the summer (teaching, writing, family stuff, other jobs, etc.) those papers will catch up to you really fast!

It is for mine. Many people, especially if you apply for outside funding to complete your dissertation writing years, will relocate. I'm planning on doing this after my residency requirements are up.

I'm wondering if any of you have realized that your subject didn't particularly fit within the scope of your department and have contemplated leaving, or left to go somewhere else. I am in no way thinking about quitting - I am very attached to my topic - but my research is interdisciplinary and has not been welcomed in my department, so I am definitely considering reapplying to other programs in another field to start over, keeping the project. I'll be ABD shortly (although I've gotten this far very quickly and don't have a terminal masters) so it seems like a waste to leave and start over. At the same time, I feel like, because of the breadth of my subject matter, it might make sense to spend more time in school. I don't think I'd mind the extra course work, especially since it would give me some time to really establish my second research language, but I don't want to lose the momentum I have going where I am, since I am so desperate to finish and move. This seems like it might be a fairly common issue in the humanities. Does anyone else have experience with this? Has anyone started over somewhere new?