Being a PhD student in your final year is not for the faint hearted. You go from peaceful and calm to frantic, irrational, crazy person in almost 10 seconds flat. On a Monday you look towards the coming week with great anticipation of being productive and making steady progress and when you reach Friday and look back over what you have done, you find a few diagrams illustrating your analysis framework and an analysis chapter only just looking like something half presentable. I'm being a bit unforgiving because this process isn't always just about being able to show in a tangible hard copy what resulted from your thinking work. I'm trying to illustrate that at the beginning of this week I was confident about achieving something and now have to be content with what I have achieve - which doesn't neatly line up with what those projected intentions. Your expectations always have to be tentative.
I had a insightful and honest critical conversation this morning - and as a result I think I'm gonna be fine. I realise I probably won't be fine all the time, but in little pockets here and there I will be and at the end of this long, protracted, soul-wrenching process I will be fine. But I'm only going to fine if I lean on the supports around me. Not only is a PhD not for the faint hearted, it's not something you want to do alone.
Aluta continua...
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