Trying not to hyperventilate...

So, I understand from friends that have completed their doctoral work that every dissertation has a major meltdown, freak out, breakdown, whatever you want to call it. And, even though I understand that intellectually, it's not making me feel much better. While you might not realize that I'm freaking out by looking at me, I am definitely freaking out. My stomach has been upset all day, I'm a little nauseous and if I had to have this conversation out loud, I'm pretty sure that I couldn't get it all out without crying. Plus, I've been obsessing about this all day.

My dissertation (research that I planned out myself...perhaps bad planning) requires me to complete 40 interviews with students who are leaders in student organizations. I completed my 40 interviews in November and December. The interview protocol that I'm using has 6-10 words that I need to have the interviewees talk about and then I have to come up with the questions that will get the person to speak meaningfully about how they make meaning of those words and/or situations where these words would describe their perceptions. So, I'm given some structure, the rest I come up with as we talk. While I was doing the interviews, I had some uncertainty about how well I was coming up with questions. I reached out to the researchers that trained me in the protocol and another friend who is a faculty member at another college now, she also used the interview protocol in completing her dissertation. I got no response from any of the three people and I was in the middle of getting these interviews done. I felt like I was getting better as I went through each interview, so I just kept going.

I got all the interviews transcribed, which cost me a total of $2,600 - the standard cost of having someone who knows what they're doing do the job. The turnaround time and the relief of not having to do that myself was totally worth it.

Every third interview needs to have another rater score it with me in order to prove validity in my ability to score the interviews. This means I needed to have about 13 interviews also scored by another rater. I contacted folks at my grad school that have also been trained (I've never met them) and got 2 to agree to help out. I got this email from one of them yesterday,

"I have read the interviews. Based on my training, I am having trouble finding enough structure to accurately and comfortably establishing a rating. I am happy to talk about this if you like. I don't have a lot of experience rating interviews so maybe best to use another rater instead."

I immediately emailed the other person that I provided interviews to and asked if they had the same problem, because I wasn't sure if it was just that person or if it was my interviewing. The other person has had more experience with the interviews and looked over two of the interviews that I had sent the other person and said that indeed they did need some additional information, but that she thought that I could go back and contact these same people to ask some additional questions. She was able to suggest some good follow-up questions. She's got 10 other interviews that I had previously emailed and wanted to know if she should continue to review them. Good feedback, right? Helpful...tried to keep me from freaking out...and I really appreciate it. However...(you heard that coming, right?)...the more I think about it, the more freaked out I get. I'm totally obsessing and feel like I'm going to throw up.

If I have to go back and ask follow-up questions of the rest of these people (approx. 35 students) and get additional responses transcribed prior to moving on with my research, I don't see how I can graduate in May. Again...this doesn't sound like the end of the world, does it? However...(again...you had to see that coming)...my husband has taken the week off in May when graduation will take place and is counting on the fact that we'll need to actually go to graduation (a 10 hour drive from where we live now) and we've paid $2,600 to have interviews transcribed and I don't think I have more money for additional transcribing. I feel a TON of pressure to just get this done. Some of that pressure I put on myself, which I needed to do to kick myself in the butt and really start working on this. But, now I'm feeling like there's additional pressure and I can feel myself wanting to just shut down.

I need to go back through all my transcriptions, analyze them and figure out if I've got the information I need before I have this other rater continue to rate them. At least that was her recommendation. Now, I'm not even sure that I'm going to be scoring them right because I had been thinking that these other interviews had what they need. And, of course, here I am sitting here writing this instead of actually doing something productive to work through this.

Well, it helps a little to put this out there. Although, my stomach still hurts and I'm still nauseous. I'll try to hyperventilate quietly...