Completing the Dissertation Introduction — Nels P. Highberg, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Illinois at Chicago; Senior Lecturer, Ohio State University    I must be honest and say that, while I spent the weeks following the 2003 Conference on College Composition and Communication working with the writers whose essays make up this section of Lore, all of whom met the deadlines I set and wrote engaging essays, I am sending it to Lore’s executive editor late, much later than I intended. And my lateness results from one primary reason: I have spent May completing and defending my dissertation. Frankly, my primary feeling for many weeks has been of exhaustion. At this moment I have some revisions to make, and then my dissertation will be filed away in my university’s library. The process is about to end. And I will get some sleep.     While the process of completing my dissertation at times felt like a lonely undertaking or a confusing or daunting one, it's one that everyone in this section of Lore has faced. Some finished and moved on to tenure–track jobs, some finished and moved out of academia, and some chose not to finish at all. But they all confronted the dissertation head on and made choices about how to handle it.     The foundation of Lore resides in the narratives that emerge from our practices as well as our reflection on those narratives. There are no magic bullets that will make dissertation writing simple for everyone, and there is no divine sign to tell us when we should stop and move to something else. But these narratives chronicle how some have concretely functioned as ABDs. Read on. In the meantime, I have some citations to check and margins to measure.      It’s Go Time! An Open Letter to Dissertation Writers      Melissa Nicolas, Assistant Professor, Pennslyvania State University, Berks–Lehigh Valley College      Is It Worth It?      Jodi Samuels, Foreign Language Technologist, Letters & Science Learning Support Services, University of Wisconsin at Madison      The Dissertation: A Bridge Worth Crossing      Neal Saye, Ph.D., Georgia Southern University      Ms. Strangelove, M.A.; OR, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ABD      Martine Stephens, Assistant Professor, Ohio Wesleyan University      The Middle of the Story      Mary Zajac, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago