I just read this article and think it is worth reading.
Advising the Dissertation Student Who Won't Finish, By Leonard Cassuto on October 3, 2010, The Chronicle of Higher Ed
A former graduate student wrote me a note a few months ago to thank me for helping him drop out. What's wrong with that picture? Nothing, except that we don't see it often enough.
The problem is that academic culture doesn't credit the decision to stop writing a dissertation as legitimate. In fact, leaving graduate school has a reputation a lot worse than that..... Many see it as a personal failure .....
They stay because the unfinished dissertation is like the wound of Philoctetes in Greek mythology, a festering sore that never goes away. No mere albatross, it stigmatizes its owner in ways that usually leave permanent scars. .....
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