Should I Take a Job if My Dissertation's Not Done?

Here's a guess as to how long will it take to finish an off-campus dissertation. This is rough because I sketched it out during a break in a dissertation defense of a student who had left campus to take a job about two years earlier.

​Some people love graduate school, but most of us want to finish it up and get started with our real lives.

A couple nights ago I met a nice guy from Utah who was finishing his thesis at a university about 5 hours away.  He had just moved here to take a job.  After only two weeks, he was totally immersed in his new job, and I asked him if he was concerned about being able to finish up his thesis.  He said, "Oh, no, not at all.  My university's only 5 hours away, and I've only got a couple months of work left on it."
 
The idea of starting a new life or a new job a few months early – say, before we’ve wrapped up our dissertation – sounds pretty good.  After all, some people telecommute from home, so  it should be a snap to telecommute back to the university and finish up our dissertation away from the anxieties of campus.  For instance, you could now start your new gig (maybe as a professor) in June instead of August.  Your plan would be to move, get settled, wrap up the dissertation, and get two months of a tempting new salary.  
 
When I was a PhD student, someone told me that if you want to know how long it will take to finish your dissertation if you move away, you use a simple formula.  You take your best guess of how long you think it will take to finish, then you triple it and add three months.  So if you think you have 2 months left on your dissertation, and you move away in June, you won’t be finished until following March – in 9 months instead of 2 months (2 months x 3 + 3 months = 9 months).   This is a rough rule-of-thumb, that varies across schools, departments, and people.  Still, when I heard this, I wasn’t going to take any chances.  My lease was up, but I spent the last two months crashing at the apartments of different friends so I could wrap it up before I move away to start my Asst Prof gig. 
 
What happens when you move is not only that it takes time to get resettled and you no longer have the support structure of your PhD program (and the “in sight & in mind” attention of your committee), but you also don’t feel the urgency to finish.  You’re settling into a new role, and everybody's happy to have you around.  But in a few months when your department chair asks whether you’re through, it’s going to be awkward to answer.
 
You might not have the option of completing a dissertation on campus, but if you can, it’s worth sleeping on 
couches until it’s done.

                                                                       ******************************************

Post Note:  Four months after meeting the guy Utah, I ran in to him again at the same game cafe where we had originally met.   He was excited having moved, and he was excited about his new job.   What's notable was that he never mentioned anything about his dissertation, how it was going, or whether it was finished.  Since his dissertation had been an enthusiastic 80% of our conversation during the first time we met, I'm guessing he hadn't made the progress he had expected to make.  

---