Starting my PhD was the best part of doing a PhD. It's a sad thing to admit publicly, but it's the only truth. So in this post, I will explore why that is, hoping to help those who have just started, or those who want to do a PhD in the near future avoid the mistakes I made.
When I first began my research, way before officially starting my PhD, I was coming from a place of despair. I do admit now that I should have taken some time off, a gap year perhaps, figured out my life, myself, my soul. I was probably too ambitious at the time to acknowledge how I was feeling, and looking back at who I was then, there's no better choice for me than to have done a PhD.
Four years into the future, today, I'm burnt out.
What started as a project I was fully immersed in, has now become a burden. I am a different person today than I was four years ago, and that can neither be good or bad. It's just a fact. I no longer romanticize long nights at my desk. I don't want to grasp at every opportunity that comes my way. I don't dream of doing the same research forever.
When I first started my PhD, I quickly realized I had to give up on things that took space in my day that weren't related to research or teaching. The same happened to my fellow PhD friends. By the second year of our PhDs, we dropped every extracurricular activity we were involved in, to give our full and undivided attention to the academy. It's no wonder why our mental health spiraled downward and out of control very fast, leaving us with panic attacks right after the pandemic hit (2nd year of PhD). At the beginning I thought I was the only one having them, but after speaking up about it, I realized that wasn't the case.
During the first lockdown, I came up with a plan to take advantage of all the time I would be spending at home, and account for all the time deprived from my side projects (like my first novel). My calendar blocking was impossible. Looking at it now, it suffocates me how much work I forced myself to do. It's not work I didn't enjoy; it was forced, though. And to balance out my deteriorating mental health, I forced myself into heavy daily exercise, without enough calorie intake which lead to rapid weight loss, which then lead to several health issues I will not talk about today.
So I entered my 3rd year mentally and physically drained. And to top it all off, I was broke. Financial issues undoubtedly downgraded my mental state to the point were I entered my 4th year with a huge fog in my mind, not knowing what to do, or who I was. I was so far gone into my PhD however, that I felt trapped, as if there was no way out. Lacking clarity, the last couple of years are a big haze in my memory. Only recently I managed to get my life together and recover from the burnout.
This brings me to my next point: what I would have done differently. Looking back and analyzing my situation-everything written above, and everything that's been left unspoken-I have come up with two major things I would change if I could.
The first is assertiveness. Only recently did I start expressing myself in a more assertive way, saying no to projects that don't interest me (especially if they don't pay). And that's something I wish I knew how to do much sooner in my life. In an attempt to avoid conflict at all means possible, I would rarely express my dissatisfaction, which led to an internal conflict instead. Learning to step my ground, inside and outside of academia, is the best thing that I made happen, and is the first thing I would advice new PhD students to do as soon as they get started.
The second thing is doing more of what I love. Taking things off my calendar, like my hobbies, also removed the daily joy I got from them. Although I know it sounds counterintuitive when just starting a PhD, making time for the things that make you happy, and spending time with family and friends on the weekend, is a great way to balance the workload. Working more hours does not mean that we work more efficiently. And it definitely doesn't mean that we produce more than we do working 8 hours or less per se.
Be assertive. Do more of what you love.
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