My concern was and continues to be not only the tragedy of "all-buts"
who never finish doctoral dissertations and then feel burdened for years
afterward to explain to those who care not. Ihere is the additional tragedy
of those who end up with a distasteful reguired experience with no research
or publication thereafter,

Why should there be such a heavy investment supposedly in learning to
produce a result never thereafter produced again? Whether judged in educa-
tional or investment terms, the human as well as the material waste seems
difficult to justify. Though many factors may be involved, the case for the
concentration of this treatise seems impressive.

The relative lack of attention to the early stages and the freguent lack
of capacity on the part of mentors more fully to assist in the early stages
together seem to produce more floundering, more anxiety, more self-doubt,
more sense of inadeguacy, more misunderstandings, more delays, more incom-
pletes, more manufacture of needless busy work to keep distracted, more cost
and trauma and resolve never to tangle with inguiry again than anyone needs.

Surely, this cannot be an effective planned way to weed out those less
suited to a life of investigation or scholarship of one sort or another.

And surely, while sadism may be among the human endowments, it cannot be so
rampant as to explain the observations described in any sizeable number of
cases.

At this point, my interest is not so much in the numerical count or in
salvaging people after troubles arise. It is more in not letting things get
to that pass in the first place. A more positive aim is to increase the zest
as well as the capacity of those who do survive so that they will want to put

their newly developed abilities to work again and again.