Date of Award

11-25-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Rhetoric and Writing

First Advisor

Cynthia Nahrwold

Abstract

"All But Thesis: On Dealing with Academic Anxiety at the Graduate Level" is a marriage of autoethnography and memoir framed in principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) that recounts my struggle with academic anxiety at the graduate level. I found no other first-person narratives on this topic, so my thesis sets out to bridge that gap. Psychology and the library, educational, and informational sciences fields discuss perfectionism and procrastination as causes of academic anxiety, so here I explore the roles those concepts play in my own anxiety issues. A reflexive journal quantified my progress throughout the semester, it rates my anxiety level from 1-10 and records my feelings on that particular day. That data was then turned into a graph and word cloud for further analysis. Based on what I learned during this journey, I compiled a list of 10 steps I used to overcome my own anxiety and general tips for teachers of anxious students that may be helpful to readers.

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