I've left writing this until well after I finished and my degree was conferred to get a bit of perspective on the whole experience. Hopefully this disjointed collection of thoughts helps someone in some way – if you're thinking of starting a PhD or are currently doing one, you may find something to empathise with here, or maybe it will just make you run screaming in the other direction. Either way, I feel I've provided a public service of sorts.
I'm going to go through my experience chronologically, because that's as good a structure as any. Much of this will read like a masterclass in how to not do a PhD, but that's kind of the point – learn from my screw-ups and bad habits so that you don't have to do it yourself (and if you already have, I hope it was at least good for a laugh).
I'm going to go through my experience chronologically, because that's as good a structure as any. Much of this will read like a masterclass in how to not do a PhD, but that's kind of the point – learn from my screw-ups and bad habits so that you don't have to do it yourself (and if you already have, I hope it was at least good for a laugh).
Part 1 - “Well, I don't know what else to do”
My story starts as a recently graduated Honours student feeling pretty damn brainy (hahaha) after successfully completing a large research project in 8 months and even winning a university award for it (and not a single one since - I think I peaked too soon).
I'd enjoyed the research experience I had: I had an interesting project, excellent workplace, ample resources and above all, the best supervisor someone could ask for (Hi, if you're reading this!). Combine that with a complete inability to plan for the future, a bachelors degree that made me about as employable as a scientist as this guy (see Figure 1), and my other future supervisor throwing free scholarship money at me and it became not so much a matter of “Do I do a PhD?” as one of “can I sign the form fast enough?” (fun fact – this isn't a joke, we got it in late in the afternoon of the census day).
I'd enjoyed the research experience I had: I had an interesting project, excellent workplace, ample resources and above all, the best supervisor someone could ask for (Hi, if you're reading this!). Combine that with a complete inability to plan for the future, a bachelors degree that made me about as employable as a scientist as this guy (see Figure 1), and my other future supervisor throwing free scholarship money at me and it became not so much a matter of “Do I do a PhD?” as one of “can I sign the form fast enough?” (fun fact – this isn't a joke, we got it in late in the afternoon of the census day).
Things got off to a great start when I realised I could not defer the start of the scholarship payments and so I spent the first 5 weeks of my PhD enjoying a holiday in Europe – not my most productive period (though... come to think of it, probably not my least productive either).
The next few months before my first ('one year') review were spent madly trying to expand upon and publish my Honours work and writing up a research proposal that followed on from its results. Instead of the ~8 months most other students had to prepare for this all-important review, I had inadvertently given myself about 3. Needless to say: do not do this. You need this time to acquaint yourself with the literature, identify the right gaps and assess possible projects and the time/ resources you'll need to carry them out.
This leads nicely to my first bit of advice, or at least a thought of "hmm, that could have gone better...". I was given a lot of latitude (no pun intended) in choosing my research topic; to paraphrase:
Me: So what are the constraints I'm working with? What kind of topic should I be researching?
Supervisor: Well, it has to be about the climate -
Me: So far so good
Supervisor: in the last 2000 years
Me: And....?
Supervisor: That's it. You should narrow it down a bit of course.
Me: ...
As any of my esteemed colleagues will be happy to explain to you, that narrows it down to oceanography (chemical, biological, physical), atmospheric physics, paleo-climatology and relevant proxies, modes of variability, modelling, statistical reconstructions and ... well you get the idea. This was a broad, bewilderingly large scope of study and you'll be happy to know that, like a skinny guy at an all-you-can-eat buffet, I made the rookie play by deciding "I'll have one of everything, please".
The way I see it, I made a few key mistakes in the first year: I was forced to rush my project proposal and critically, did not spend enough time researching clear cut research possibilities in the paleo literature.
Secondly, failing to be pro-active in reading old paleo literature similar to the work I was trying to do and learning relevant methods. Spotting mistakes earlier in that doomed paper we wrote could have saved more time than I'd like to admit.
Finally, thinking that my supervisor would recognize when the project was going sideways, when in reality we were both relatively inexperienced with both this particular topic and certain techniques used in the project. Which segues nicely into...
This leads nicely to my first bit of advice, or at least a thought of "hmm, that could have gone better...". I was given a lot of latitude (no pun intended) in choosing my research topic; to paraphrase:
Me: So what are the constraints I'm working with? What kind of topic should I be researching?
Supervisor: Well, it has to be about the climate -
Me: So far so good
Supervisor: in the last 2000 years
Me: And....?
Supervisor: That's it. You should narrow it down a bit of course.
Me: ...
As any of my esteemed colleagues will be happy to explain to you, that narrows it down to oceanography (chemical, biological, physical), atmospheric physics, paleo-climatology and relevant proxies, modes of variability, modelling, statistical reconstructions and ... well you get the idea. This was a broad, bewilderingly large scope of study and you'll be happy to know that, like a skinny guy at an all-you-can-eat buffet, I made the rookie play by deciding "I'll have one of everything, please".
The way I see it, I made a few key mistakes in the first year: I was forced to rush my project proposal and critically, did not spend enough time researching clear cut research possibilities in the paleo literature.
Secondly, failing to be pro-active in reading old paleo literature similar to the work I was trying to do and learning relevant methods. Spotting mistakes earlier in that doomed paper we wrote could have saved more time than I'd like to admit.
Finally, thinking that my supervisor would recognize when the project was going sideways, when in reality we were both relatively inexperienced with both this particular topic and certain techniques used in the project. Which segues nicely into...
Interlude - Learning to work with your supervisor (and controlling the occasional urge to kill each other)
I had an advantage coming into a PhD with two supervisors. I had worked with one during Honours so we knew quite well what the other person knew, what their expectations were and how to work effectively and productively together. I had forgotten that this actually has to be developed.
There were a few too many occasions where meetings with my second supervisor would pause and one of us would say "Oh... I thought you knew that?". Oops. Assumptions are dangerous and it took a few screw-ups on my part to begin working these out. The best piece of advice I can give is: don't assume anything when building a new working relationship - find out exactly what they know about the topic, what you know and where you are both in the dark. It sounds obvious but it's in your best interest to make this arrangement as friction-less as possible right from the start, because when things get tough later on (and they will), you don't want one of you thinking the other has dropped the ball unnecessarily.
There will also be moments when they just make you mad (whether its their fault or not). I guess all I can say here is, remember that they are human and we are all entitled to a few cock-ups now and then. My writing was once described as "appalling" - it was my umpteenth attempt at that draft and at that point I just lost all motivation. While it was definitely my fault - at the time I felt that using such language was a sure way to get me to give up altogether rather than double down and keep trying. With a little perspective, I have to imagine it's frustrating to read the same piece of work over and over and not see much improvement. I guess a little empathy goes a long way.
This builds to what is maybe the most important piece of advice you can give: pick a supervisor who you get along with (make sure they know their stuff as well, obviously)! My 5 years of research (Honours + PhD) life at the CCRC were not always smooth sailing - projects sometimes just don't work out, or perhaps something out of your control goes horribly wrong. Or maybe you just make a big mistake (and it WILL happen). You need someone supervising you who will encourage you while making you aware of your shortcomings without denigrating you. It's critical that you are both aware of what you both expect from one another in this quite unique working relationship and that this is clear from the start.
I had plenty of hiccups in my work during these 5 years and plenty of unpleasant times in my personal life, too. They included the death of a family member and the ending of two serious relationships - things that are hard to cope with at the best of times. I'm happy to say that both my supervisors were incredibly supportive when these personal problems popped up. I've seen some students consistently hide personal issues or professional concerns (they feel overworked or unappreciated) from supervisors due to an impression that the supervisor does not want to engage on that level. Unfortunately this is generally unsustainable and has led to more than one mid-meeting breakdown. Many people will argue that these people are not there to hold your hand or be a shoulder to cry on, which is completely fair, however the process of getting a PhD is a uniquely stressful one and it's certainly not a negative to find a supervisor who will support you when external forces begin to impact your productivity at work.
I don't want to engage in hypotheticals, but I'm almost certain that if I had been supervised by a particularly apathetic person, there's no guarantee I'd have finished my degree. This experience is however, still just my own, and plenty of other people have had tougher times and written smart things about them.
There were a few too many occasions where meetings with my second supervisor would pause and one of us would say "Oh... I thought you knew that?". Oops. Assumptions are dangerous and it took a few screw-ups on my part to begin working these out. The best piece of advice I can give is: don't assume anything when building a new working relationship - find out exactly what they know about the topic, what you know and where you are both in the dark. It sounds obvious but it's in your best interest to make this arrangement as friction-less as possible right from the start, because when things get tough later on (and they will), you don't want one of you thinking the other has dropped the ball unnecessarily.
There will also be moments when they just make you mad (whether its their fault or not). I guess all I can say here is, remember that they are human and we are all entitled to a few cock-ups now and then. My writing was once described as "appalling" - it was my umpteenth attempt at that draft and at that point I just lost all motivation. While it was definitely my fault - at the time I felt that using such language was a sure way to get me to give up altogether rather than double down and keep trying. With a little perspective, I have to imagine it's frustrating to read the same piece of work over and over and not see much improvement. I guess a little empathy goes a long way.
This builds to what is maybe the most important piece of advice you can give: pick a supervisor who you get along with (make sure they know their stuff as well, obviously)! My 5 years of research (Honours + PhD) life at the CCRC were not always smooth sailing - projects sometimes just don't work out, or perhaps something out of your control goes horribly wrong. Or maybe you just make a big mistake (and it WILL happen). You need someone supervising you who will encourage you while making you aware of your shortcomings without denigrating you. It's critical that you are both aware of what you both expect from one another in this quite unique working relationship and that this is clear from the start.
I had plenty of hiccups in my work during these 5 years and plenty of unpleasant times in my personal life, too. They included the death of a family member and the ending of two serious relationships - things that are hard to cope with at the best of times. I'm happy to say that both my supervisors were incredibly supportive when these personal problems popped up. I've seen some students consistently hide personal issues or professional concerns (they feel overworked or unappreciated) from supervisors due to an impression that the supervisor does not want to engage on that level. Unfortunately this is generally unsustainable and has led to more than one mid-meeting breakdown. Many people will argue that these people are not there to hold your hand or be a shoulder to cry on, which is completely fair, however the process of getting a PhD is a uniquely stressful one and it's certainly not a negative to find a supervisor who will support you when external forces begin to impact your productivity at work.
I don't want to engage in hypotheticals, but I'm almost certain that if I had been supervised by a particularly apathetic person, there's no guarantee I'd have finished my degree. This experience is however, still just my own, and plenty of other people have had tougher times and written smart things about them.
Year 1 cont.
Anyway, the year rounded out with a successful(ish) confirmation in which the primary problem that would loom over my candidature like the prospect of a Trump presidency (hey, look, a dated joke! I've been writing this for a while..) first emerged. My writing. My confirmation report was a bloated, rambling mess (insert Trump joke #2 here) and I was forced to re-write and re-submit at the 1.5 year mark. Aside from that, I had experiments running, one paper published from my honours work, Fortran no longer looked like an ancient alien language to me and I could finally look forward to doing some science.
Oh yeah, and I pulled this off at the Xmas party.
Oh yeah, and I pulled this off at the Xmas party.
Year 2 - Academic purgatory
So the first year and the rush towards the confirmation was over. The excitement of working on my own project had slowly been replaced with the day to day drudgery of fixing bugs in my model code and waiting for the super computer to come back online. For someone like me doing a modelling project, this part of your PhD can often mark the start of a period of nothing. You can work hard every day, produce GBs of data, thousands of plots and still find yourself in the same place a month later doing exactly the same thing - searching endlessly for meaning in your mountain of data.
This is, of course, exactly what happened. My 'quick' 6 month project was rapidly becoming a confusing mess. In the end, it required triple the original number of simulations, an extra co-author and two new tracers to be implemented into the model. It was published mid-way through my 4th year. This may actually be the essence of a PhD: persevering through crippling boredom and monotony induced by the tedium of vague results, making mistakes and the possibility that the question you're asking doesn't necessarily have an answer worthy of 2.5 years of work. This was my second year slump. Watching seemingly everyone else produce paper after paper (Note: you should never compare yourself to others by number of papers published: this is dumb) while you struggle with the same problems week in and out makes you feel stupid, frustrated and unproductive (which then makes you more unproductive). It's a stark contrast of success vs. stagnation (see Figure below).
Well, at least we got to go to the Sub-Antarctics!
This is, of course, exactly what happened. My 'quick' 6 month project was rapidly becoming a confusing mess. In the end, it required triple the original number of simulations, an extra co-author and two new tracers to be implemented into the model. It was published mid-way through my 4th year. This may actually be the essence of a PhD: persevering through crippling boredom and monotony induced by the tedium of vague results, making mistakes and the possibility that the question you're asking doesn't necessarily have an answer worthy of 2.5 years of work. This was my second year slump. Watching seemingly everyone else produce paper after paper (Note: you should never compare yourself to others by number of papers published: this is dumb) while you struggle with the same problems week in and out makes you feel stupid, frustrated and unproductive (which then makes you more unproductive). It's a stark contrast of success vs. stagnation (see Figure below).
Well, at least we got to go to the Sub-Antarctics!
Interlude - The "joy" of technical difficulties
There are probably going to be several (or several dozen, if you're like me) moments in your studies where something goes wrong. Sometimes, your computer just doesn't co-operate - memory leak here (I'm looking at you, Inkscape), Libreoffice crashing there (again), but usually it's your own stupid fault. It's the reason why you often just want to do this (see below) and why I've heard profanities in at least 4 different languages fly around my office at one time or another (don't laugh too hard - they won't see the funny side until later..).
Some of the problems arose from using Linux (see Figure below) - an operating system I mostly love but that occasionally drove me mad due to compatibility or optimization issues. No-one designs their software for linux as the primary platform; for example, you don't use word or illustrator, you use Libreoffice and Inkscape, each of which seemed to come with a host of bugs and the occasional horrendous memory leak...
Mostly, though, you'll find that most of the major problems you run into were entirely avoidable, making them doubly as frustrating. Take away message? Google almost always has the answer, stackexchange is particularly awesome and if all else fails, spam everyone else with an email.
Also, use version control on your code, test it regularly as you go to make sure it's working properly (print statements are crude but effective) and for the love of all that is holy, write down metadata about your scripts and data (which scripts made which figures?, What is this random constant in this line and how was it calculated?, why is this flag on for only the 7th iteration of this loop?). There is nothing worse than coming back to work you did a year or two ago and trying to decipher how you produced or processed your data.
Finally, back everything up. Constantly. Like, at least twice. I worked entirely out of Dropbox for my entire PhD so that I automatically had copies of all my important files/ papers/ drafts on my work PC, my laptop and my home computers as well as in the cloud. Data was also backed up often onto an external HDD and on the uni servers. Things go wrong. Don't lose years of your life because you were too lazy to put these fail-safes in place!
Also, use version control on your code, test it regularly as you go to make sure it's working properly (print statements are crude but effective) and for the love of all that is holy, write down metadata about your scripts and data (which scripts made which figures?, What is this random constant in this line and how was it calculated?, why is this flag on for only the 7th iteration of this loop?). There is nothing worse than coming back to work you did a year or two ago and trying to decipher how you produced or processed your data.
Finally, back everything up. Constantly. Like, at least twice. I worked entirely out of Dropbox for my entire PhD so that I automatically had copies of all my important files/ papers/ drafts on my work PC, my laptop and my home computers as well as in the cloud. Data was also backed up often onto an external HDD and on the uni servers. Things go wrong. Don't lose years of your life because you were too lazy to put these fail-safes in place!
On productivity, wasting time and the long, dark coffee break of the soul
It's probably pretty demonstrative that I first started writing this blog about ... 7 months ago. I was the absolute worst when it comes to losing focus, procrastinating and just generally faffing about. If you're like me, you will at various points try just about anything to get you to focus on the job. Website blockers, self-imposed deadlines that your supervisors know of, regular meetings... here's the bad news: there's no silver bullet (for me anyway). Nothing worked perfectly, and more often than not during my slump periods a productive 15 minutes of work was almost always followed up with an unproductive 20 minutes on Facebook (though you can leverage this into something useful, more on that later).
It's not that bad if you're on a roll coding or analysing data and making figures, but if you're in a rut and stuck on a problem that just won't go away, or you should be reading papers or - heaven forbid - writing the damn things, days can quickly disappear without much getting done. One thing I would recommend and that was always useful, is a 'to do' list on a pad of paper - there's something very satisfying about crossing out completed items, plus it keeps you aware of exactly what you have completed and what still needs doing. Other than that? Take breaks, exercise, whinge to your friends over coffee. Maybe they can think of a solution to your problem (or at the very least, pressure you into finishing that damn paper draft). In short - work as hard as you reasonably can, but if you notice you're wasting time, don't force it. Accept it and leverage that time positively so that when you do get back to work, you're not even less motivated than when you left.
Oh, and to those of you who have no problem working consistently without losing motivation, know that I hate you and envy you in equal measures, you beautiful monsters.
It's not that bad if you're on a roll coding or analysing data and making figures, but if you're in a rut and stuck on a problem that just won't go away, or you should be reading papers or - heaven forbid - writing the damn things, days can quickly disappear without much getting done. One thing I would recommend and that was always useful, is a 'to do' list on a pad of paper - there's something very satisfying about crossing out completed items, plus it keeps you aware of exactly what you have completed and what still needs doing. Other than that? Take breaks, exercise, whinge to your friends over coffee. Maybe they can think of a solution to your problem (or at the very least, pressure you into finishing that damn paper draft). In short - work as hard as you reasonably can, but if you notice you're wasting time, don't force it. Accept it and leverage that time positively so that when you do get back to work, you're not even less motivated than when you left.
Oh, and to those of you who have no problem working consistently without losing motivation, know that I hate you and envy you in equal measures, you beautiful monsters.
Year 3 - Where it very nearly all went wrong
2014 was the low point in my PhD. My modelling paper was dead in the water (no pun intended). After attending Ocean Sciences in February, it was clear that the variables in my model were not sufficient to answer the questions I was asking - it was decided that we'd need to re-run every single simulation (which take months to complete), but not before incorporating a series of new biogeochemical tracers into the model from a previous version. Add to that half a dozen runs where I had to implement a second wind field that only the ice model could see. I've never bragged (and likely never will) about my coding ability, and for good reason. I found the months I spent giving myself a crash course in biogeochemistry and implementing the new code to be some of the toughest in the 4 years of my PhD. Drafts of this new revised paper would only start being written in September.
It was also around this time that my long term relationship started falling apart, culminating in a breakup in October. By the end of the year, my paleo paper we'd been preparing on and off for over a year was scrapped entirely when the results proved to be worthless (hey, that's science). I'd completed three years and all I had was most of one chapter and some paleo data we could hopefully use in some other way. Although I probably hid it well, I was a radiating ball of stress and, looking back, probably a touch of depression. Luckily I had the support of one person in particular (you know who you are) that got me through these awful six months or so where my PhD looked like a total disaster.
It was also around this time that my long term relationship started falling apart, culminating in a breakup in October. By the end of the year, my paleo paper we'd been preparing on and off for over a year was scrapped entirely when the results proved to be worthless (hey, that's science). I'd completed three years and all I had was most of one chapter and some paleo data we could hopefully use in some other way. Although I probably hid it well, I was a radiating ball of stress and, looking back, probably a touch of depression. Luckily I had the support of one person in particular (you know who you are) that got me through these awful six months or so where my PhD looked like a total disaster.
Additionally, I lucked into an amazing new project. If ever you need a good reason to go to seminars as often as you can, I have one. One of the honours students in our centre did a fascinating project on theoretical reconstruction skill of paleo proxies to create an ENSO index. It wasn't at all related to the modelling work I was doing in the Southern Ocean, but months later I was reminded of the talk he gave and spoke to his supervisor. I ended up adapting his experiment to the SAM to provide context to the paleo data I was working with. From start to finish, I got a full thesis chapter in the equivalent of about six months of work.
Year 4 - "So, how' the thesis going?"
By the start of the fourth year, if you're not feeling the stress already, it really starts to manifest. My then girlfriend told me I would get angry and swear profusely in my sleep - something that mysteriously stopped post-submission. Hmm...
I was cautiously optimistic. By the end of Feb, my modelling paper was complete and had been submitted, the analysis for the SAM chapter was well underway and looking promising but I still needed at least one more solid chapter for my thesis and about a year to get it all done. The rest of the year consisted of a conference that hugely buoyed my confidence, writing most of the SAM chapter in a week in July because my collaborator was leaving our Uni, another breakup (I'm starting to think I'm not very good at this...) and with about 5 months until submission, I had two complete chapters and one extra one that my panel had decided should be included as half of it was analysis done during my PhD (the paper I mentioned from back in year 1).
That left the paleo chapter. Despite not being the most amazing piece of work scientifically, I'm perhaps most proud of this chapter as I conceived it from scratch along with all the analysis and it's links to the previous SAM chapter. All in all, I don't consider my last few weeks to have been very stressful (though that may be a matter of perspective in my case). The content was there and just required polishing. In the end I didn't have to work any weekends in the month leading up to submission, leaving time to work on something much more important - my submission photo.
That left the paleo chapter. Despite not being the most amazing piece of work scientifically, I'm perhaps most proud of this chapter as I conceived it from scratch along with all the analysis and it's links to the previous SAM chapter. All in all, I don't consider my last few weeks to have been very stressful (though that may be a matter of perspective in my case). The content was there and just required polishing. In the end I didn't have to work any weekends in the month leading up to submission, leaving time to work on something much more important - my submission photo.
Thoughts on writing
As someone who enjoyed creative writing in high school, I had to un-learn almost everything and start from scratch. Scientific writing took a while to get my head around for no real reason that I can explain other than saying that for the first two and a half years it was like beating my head against the wall and eventually something just clicked. As someone who required something ridiculous like twelve drafts for his confirmation report, being able to produce a polished thesis introduction chapter in three drafts was immensely satisfying.
As for advice? Weirdly, my writing improved when I stopped giving a shit. Hear me out. When you just sit there and throw the bare minimum on a page with no references, it focuses the mind. You're creating a framework you can add bits and pieces to that is not overly verbose and most importantly, that starts with the narrative of whatever you're writing first. After that, fill in bits and pieces of missing info and add references where appropriate. You could summarise this by saying: don't try and write the third draft on the first try.
As for advice? Weirdly, my writing improved when I stopped giving a shit. Hear me out. When you just sit there and throw the bare minimum on a page with no references, it focuses the mind. You're creating a framework you can add bits and pieces to that is not overly verbose and most importantly, that starts with the narrative of whatever you're writing first. After that, fill in bits and pieces of missing info and add references where appropriate. You could summarise this by saying: don't try and write the third draft on the first try.
Work-life balance (or lack thereof)
Where to start, I think I made nearly every mistake when it came to maintaining a healthy body/ mind in the first 2-3 years of my PhD. If I hadn't changed my lifestyle by year 4, I'm not I'd have come out the other side in one piece.
It's almost surreal to see new students exhibit the same behaviors I did and realise, from this external perspective, how unhealthy it is while they themselves are seemingly either don't notice or don't feel the need to change this behavior (or maybe can't?). For those of you who have read this far, perhaps using a perfectly serviceable afternoon only to find nothing but lame jokes and stale memes, maybe at least here I can offer something resembling comfort to anyone who is experiencing something similar. So as follows, the problems I encountered and what I did to try to fix them.
1) Martyr syndrome. Something quite a lot of new students get - a PhD is serious business and often you think you need to be seen as being serious about it by your colleagues. In my first 18 months this translated into long days, working weekends, not taking holidays and more critically - the *appearance* of being productive (heaven forbid someone should see you at your desk taking a break on Facebook or laughing at a funny video on youtube). This one was overcome relatively easily, in that I burned out. After having a cold for 6 weeks straight, I went to the uni doctor who diagnosed me with 'PhD student syndrome' - was given a note for my supervisors to take the week off work (one of which insisted I add eating lots of ice cream and hitting the beach to the doctors orders) and forbidden from entering the office until then. After this I wound back my hours, took regular holidays every 6 months (book plane tickets in advance, you can't put it off that way) and learned to stop caring what everyone at the office might think about you. I may not be the most productive person in the world, but I got my PhD and it had four solid results chapters. Results are what matters, all the rest is you keeping yourself sane.
It's almost surreal to see new students exhibit the same behaviors I did and realise, from this external perspective, how unhealthy it is while they themselves are seemingly either don't notice or don't feel the need to change this behavior (or maybe can't?). For those of you who have read this far, perhaps using a perfectly serviceable afternoon only to find nothing but lame jokes and stale memes, maybe at least here I can offer something resembling comfort to anyone who is experiencing something similar. So as follows, the problems I encountered and what I did to try to fix them.
1) Martyr syndrome. Something quite a lot of new students get - a PhD is serious business and often you think you need to be seen as being serious about it by your colleagues. In my first 18 months this translated into long days, working weekends, not taking holidays and more critically - the *appearance* of being productive (heaven forbid someone should see you at your desk taking a break on Facebook or laughing at a funny video on youtube). This one was overcome relatively easily, in that I burned out. After having a cold for 6 weeks straight, I went to the uni doctor who diagnosed me with 'PhD student syndrome' - was given a note for my supervisors to take the week off work (one of which insisted I add eating lots of ice cream and hitting the beach to the doctors orders) and forbidden from entering the office until then. After this I wound back my hours, took regular holidays every 6 months (book plane tickets in advance, you can't put it off that way) and learned to stop caring what everyone at the office might think about you. I may not be the most productive person in the world, but I got my PhD and it had four solid results chapters. Results are what matters, all the rest is you keeping yourself sane.
2) Imposter syndrome. Bad news, this one doesn't so much go away as slowly diminish over time, before making a resurgence the moment you feel out of your depth again. Again, do not feel like you're alone here - I've seen some of the smartest people I've ever met question their ability/ intelligence after hitting a particularly hard problem. The only thing they're guilty of is not having 10 years of experience like their colleagues. This is a persistent problem working in academia - every day you are surrounded by unusually intelligent people and it's only natural that you will compare your own knowledge and abilities to theirs. Just remember that the PhD and, in fact, your entire academic life will be a learning process. Hell, by the end of your PhD you'll be teaching your supervisor things.
3) Stay healthy. Regular sleep, exercise, eating properly - it seems silly to even mention because we are adults now, right? Hah ... Well, I had eating and sleeping down but I was incredibly bad at regular exercise. Luckily during my last year I had someone who would go swimming with me several mornings a week down at the beach and my advice would be if you can't motivate yourself, find someone else to exercise with and make it a routine. It makes a world of difference.
4) Socialise! Yes, I know you're busy, yes I know there are deadlines but there will always be work to do. You are not so busy that you can't take a couple of hours out of your day to attend a student movie night or social event. Mutual griping about work is very therapeutic, as is not talking or thinking about work at all. Don't isolate yourself from the rest of your lab/ office. These people are going through the same problems/ stresses you are and when things get tough they're often the best people to help. I can comfortably say that the friends I made during my PhD are among the best I've ever had.
3) Stay healthy. Regular sleep, exercise, eating properly - it seems silly to even mention because we are adults now, right? Hah ... Well, I had eating and sleeping down but I was incredibly bad at regular exercise. Luckily during my last year I had someone who would go swimming with me several mornings a week down at the beach and my advice would be if you can't motivate yourself, find someone else to exercise with and make it a routine. It makes a world of difference.
4) Socialise! Yes, I know you're busy, yes I know there are deadlines but there will always be work to do. You are not so busy that you can't take a couple of hours out of your day to attend a student movie night or social event. Mutual griping about work is very therapeutic, as is not talking or thinking about work at all. Don't isolate yourself from the rest of your lab/ office. These people are going through the same problems/ stresses you are and when things get tough they're often the best people to help. I can comfortably say that the friends I made during my PhD are among the best I've ever had.
Extra-curricular responsibilities and fun stuff!
Remember what I said about leveraging dead time into something productive? This is when you take up extra responsibilities like tutoring for courses, marking exam papers, doing outreach or just basically being productive in ways that benefits you but not your research.
I personally got a lot of fulfillment out of doing small-time media engagement, helping out at open days and information nights, finding excuses to point my camera at something, or even just doing my civic duty and arguing against conspiracy theorists on Facebook (this is a joke - does not count as actual outreach).
I personally got a lot of fulfillment out of doing small-time media engagement, helping out at open days and information nights, finding excuses to point my camera at something, or even just doing my civic duty and arguing against conspiracy theorists on Facebook (this is a joke - does not count as actual outreach).
Speaking of Facebook, I helped establish and run our centre's page for two years (link here, go like it, share etc. etc .. sorry old habits) which has turned into a great way for our researchers to share their work and for us to just generally be a force for science literacy online.
Final thoughts
I'm not sure if this will be useful or interesting to anyone other than friends and family trying to understand my sometimes bizarre behavior over the last 4 years. My supervisors tell me my experience was unique in terms of how much went wrong, but at the same time, I'm sure it's not that unusual either. All I can really say is that it was worth it, and while my imposter syndrome remains an ever present stress (nobody wants to be a bad postdoc), the process of doing science and working in a centre like the CCRC is a dream job.
Questions? Comments? Job offers? Leave them below.
Questions? Comments? Job offers? Leave them below.