timeline for finishing papers/dissertation and graduating?

[breadwinner]

Hi everyone, I hope you're staying sane during the quarantine. I am nearing the end of my 4th year in my PhD program in Biology. Up until about a month ago I thought I would be able to graduate at the end of my 5th year, but my advisers very suddenly decided they wanted me to do more experiments. Meanwhile some of my committee members have emphasized that I should stop doing research and just write everything up and try to graduate. I very much side with them. Unfortunately, I feel pretty powerless against my advisers and they do not seem to understand why someone would want to try to graduate in 5 years as opposed to just working and working until the research seems full fleshed out in every possible direction. Further, they drag their feet on editing my documents and will at first approve something and then later decide it needs to be held back for longer just in case more changes occur to them. I do feel that my research is about 80-90% complete in terms of the original expectations for the project, but my advisers are very fickle with what they want from the project and so according to their new desires for the project I'm only about 60-70% finished.

A few people have suggested that I need to stick up for myself more and create structure that will get my advisers to adhere to a set of expectations so I know what I need to do. This would possibly involve a checklist of very specific goals and times for things to be completed by which we would all have to adhere to, meaning I put in the work and they agree to do whatever editing they want and sign off on it within the time-frame, as long as my work is good enough. But I am not sure if this is normal or reasonable for someone in my position.

I heard that some students have a contract or timeline like this with their advisers, but I haven't met any who have told me that they have one. I wanted to see if anyone has been in a similar situation and created such a document or used different techniques to bring advisers around to their side in terms of graduating and being allowed to finish pieces of writing. Any stories or advice?

[jujubea]

I am in a totally different field but had a somewhat analogous struggle. 

1. What worked for me is I began to repeatedly remind the worst holder-upper how long I have been in the program with very specific numbers (X years X months), and why it is unacceptable and embarrassing to not be done with that particular phase when I apply for grants or scholarships or awards or prizes or jobs.  It would be especially helpful if you could reference your university's time expectations for a PhD like yours, and norms for your field if you are beyond them. Part of why this was effective is because I did it repeatedly. Almost every meeting I opened up with some variant of "Well, I'm X years and X months into the program and this is really not good so I'm really trying to finish this up..."

2. I also began to express in various socially appropriate ways that I was burnt out on this phase and that I just needed to get it over with and finish, while also openly recognizing and acknowledging to this person the validity of the claim that it had shortcomings and things left outstanding.

3. I also began to express (with excitement, feign it if you have to) ways that those shortcomings could be addressed by me in the future (by re-writing the chapter to include that new data or analysis and turn it into a publishable paper, for example). 

Because time-norms was an issue in my case, I also confidentially went to the administrators in my department (whom I had good relationships with) under the framework of "wanting to share my progress and update" them. During those conversations, I expressed number 1 above, and my concern based on those norms that I "just need to get this done." I was able to get them on my side, which I felt was a "just in case" but I don't actually know whether they spoke to the holder-upper or not (and I never asked them to, and ultimately didn't have to).

Another thing I became better at is academically arguing with the holder-upper. Rather than simply not wanting to do the additional research, or simply wanting to just be done with the thing (both of which were true), I developed academically based arguments for why my current research and data were more than good enough, and beefed up my analysis of that data just a little bit. This equipped me very well when telling the advisor "no" while also asking for their blessing. I showed them through academic arguing that I could stand on my own two brainy feet when defending and championing my data and novel analyses. 

Totally different field, but hope this helps at least a little.

Sorry you're going through this though...

Edited May 6, 2020 by jujubea

[Modulus]

Probably not very helpful at this point in OP's diss, but I wanted to bring up for anyone else visiting this thread that a pre-registration can be a saving grace in these situations.

There are lots of reasons to consider pre-registering your research (whether you're running clinical trials or not), but one that is often understated in these conversations, but which my own mentor brings up often is that it protects you from this sort of never-ending research rabbit hole.

Whether that's from picky editors and reviewers, supervisors or co-authors, or even from your own drive to run "just one more analysis" or "but what if I..." until you've spent 3 years ABD, you can always say "That is beyond the scope of the project I pre-registered." Of course, this doesn't actually limit you if there is a crucial point you did not consider beforehand and a good rationale for post-hoc testing, but it can be protective all the same.