When I was starting to think about what I wanted to say, I came across and incredibly sad blog post. The author begins by saying something along the lines of ” My PhD has literally been an emotional rollercoaster — sometimes, I feel like a manic-depressive.”  But, the real tragedy is the many comments which run from 2006 until October of this year from people stuck in a 5 year or 6 year black hole of revision, corrections, fallings out, rejections, bad advice and isolation. That’s 4 years of comments people. 4 YEARS OF COMMENTS from PhD students with pretty much nowhere else to go to articulate their very real woes. I can’t express how much reading it both touched and saddened me. It made me muster up all the loving kindness I can manage and send it out into the t’interweb of dreams.

Here’s a sample of what people  said

I have come to terms with realizing the most difficult part of a PhD is coming face forward with one’s own weaknesses (loneliness, procrastination, fear of rejection). I think we all go through it.

I am into severe depression phase. I am just wondering can I get out of it someday, I feel like its just increasing day by day.

I’ve just been agonizing over endless visions and revisions. I’ve poured so much of my life into preparing for an academic vocation that abandonning the degree is out of the question. I would rather die than not finish

This has been a nightmare that is hopefully coming to an end now that I am letting go of it, but god it is painful, still.

The worse thing for me in this whole process has been the isolation

PhD depression has hit hard and I’ve contemplated quitting

I’ve become severely disillusioned by the way things work in academia and i’m becoming more and more cynical by the day

I so desperately want to say something positive  and helpful now about the experience of doing revisions. At the beginning of the year a few people said to me “this will make you stronger and a better researcher” and ” you’ll realise that at the end of this process you’ll have a better thesis” . I’m sure these things are true, but to be honest I don’t feel them…yet.  My experience has been emotional and  lonely. Before gathering the strength to carry on I looked humiliation and doubt in the face. The treatment I received from one of the examiners, particularly  after the viva, was so deeply unkind that it caused weeks of misery and insomnia, followed by a total crisis of confidence. Their behavior led me to question my own beliefs about anger and compassion and that is to say nothing of the effects on my finances, research, career plans, relationships and even the roof over my head. But it is possible to acknowledge these negative emotions and not respond and thus give into them.  So let me really begin here by telling you a few things I’ve done to cope with the sadness and fustration in the hope they may help.

• Complain, but for the love of god, please complain sensibly. Separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of what is recommended will be useful, but don’t accept bad behavior on the part of the examiner. I registered my intension to appeal & went to the S.U and the vice chancellor and as dispassionately as I could manage – I made sure people knew how the examiner had behaved  after the viva and what they’d very publicly done and said. Although I did not receive explanation or apology from the examiner, they agreed to step down from examining my work. Then and this is really important file away any remaining anger and put your energy into getting on with your work. Even say to yourself I will finish the PhD first and then deal with seeking an emotional resolution.
• Listen to the soundtrack of the 1972  Jimmy Cliff film “The Harder they come”. I’m not joking. This is a serious remedy.

If you’ve had a nasty set-to  like me, listen to The Harder they Come track first: feel cross, imagine retribution etc etc and then come out the other side with an I’ll show you attitude, and by this I mean I’ll show you with the quality of my work not argy bargy. Draw your strength at Draw your breaks. Wallow in procrastination or marvel at the ineptitude of the university system during Sitting in Limbo. Purge yourself of desolation by listening to the achingly beautiful version of Many Rivers to Cross. Feel the stress and frustration at Pressure Drop – finally  the grande finale: You can get it if you really want. I defy anyone to listen to this track and not feel even a tiny murmur of motivation

• Tell people who you care about and who care about you – how you feel. They won’t understand. It doesn’t matter. Simply saying how you feel will help. Be 100% honest. If you feel like shit say so.
• Separate yourself from your work. You are not your corrections. You are not your writing. You are not your thesis. This is your mantra. Chant it.
• If you can  - get some exercise and meditate. Sit quietly for 5 minutes close your eyes and concentrate on your breath. Thoughts and anxieties will pop into your head, just acknowledge them and go back to how your breath feels. Monkey mind describes that horrible state when your brain is all over the place, thoughts are going off on tangents and it’s hard to concentrate. Just 5 minutes of mediation will really help to calm this and do wonders if you’re feeling depressed. It also helps with procrastination too.

Some more comprehensive and great tips on staying sane during a  PhD & depression to be found here too.

I hope this helps someone a little bit.  There is more to come I promise, especially on dealing with fear and procrastination, but meanwhile if there is anyone reading this who feels anything like some of the comments from the other blog post on depression I mentioned, remember you are not alone. I wish you the best.

This is not a description of the contents of neither the talks nor a depth analysis. Others were much more prompt in their reporting and can provide you with more detail. Unfortunately the webcast was unable to show the speakers slides, and this is something I’ll come back to in a moment.

As a humanities / social science bod, I struggled a bit on day one with some of the maths and scientific discourse, but day two was much more up my alley. I certainly was not the only person who had this experience and I loved the social scientists in the audience who were frequently tweeting “where’s the social science” and asking questions over the roaming mike  about power structures, agents and agency. That said, it was clear that at the same time there were plenty of audience members who did follow and enjoy these day one talks and who have engineering, physics and mathematics backgrounds.

It was a shame that Henrietta Moore the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge was unable to make it as she was due to present on  ‘Smart Users and Social Networks. What’s Happening in Africa and Asia?’. This is because one of the things that troubled me was the general lack of discussion about techno-capital, access and the digital divide. When some of the speakers mentioned social transformations and the benefiting of humanity, there was either an implicit feeling of neutrality or equality  in their analysis and little or no mention of social exclusion.

Moore’s abstract can be found here

In the last two decades we have witnessed the fastest technology adoption in human history.  This talk discusses the processes that are driving changes to the web in Africa and Asia.  The two continents show similarities and differences in processes of adoption and use, but in both cases recent developments challenge the idea that technological developments are necessarily bringing about unprecedented social transformations…(Moore, H 2010)

Anyhow, one of the most energetic and eloquent speakers was Luis von Ahn, who fyi also presented an excellent set of slides, which (ahem) can not be said of everybody. Luis Von Ahn developed the captcha  and he has since built on this in re-captcha and a brilliant project which harness the man power and time spent in filling out captchas in the process of digitizing books. Von Ahn’s presentation was both funny and engaging, which meant that he was able to communicate his ideas to a willing audience .

I have no problem with people not using slides and just talking, but if you do use slides, even if you have a brilliant mind and are a senior academic in your field, it is still important that they capture the bones of what you’re saying and are readable, otherwise they detract from what you’re saying. (I witnessed some dreadful crimes against presentation over the course of the 2 days, dodgey template backgrounds, clip art (!) mixed and crazy colored fonts, and over snazzy screen wipes. These are no-nos I teach undergrads ).

Highlights for me were the inclusion of a slide from Albert-Laszlo Barabasi in the 1st 20mins, which showed all the different disciplines he sees in the development of web science and how and where they overlap. Castells’ optimistic talk on individuation, sociability and autonomy, Noshir Contractor‘s very brief mention in his talk of computational social-science  (the study of social life on computer networks) and his raising the problem of  technology  producers and the curated experience of the user , and the power structures implicit in this.

All in all, an edifying, inspiring 2 days that has given me lots to think about.

What doing a PhD feels like sometimes.

So I promised an update on the state of the per her der back in October, and so far I’ve managed to avoid following that up, because I HAVEN’T FINISHED.

I have been working on my PhD since April 05 and am grimly aware that I’m approaching the end of 2008 and I HAVEN’T FINISHED. 

Yes, despite having 3 months at the beginning of the year where I holed myself and renounced pretty much every other aspect of my life to write, I HAVEN’T FINISHED.

But why haven’t I finished? I’m really not sure, because I worked all day last Sunday whilst all around me were Christmas shopping, watching football, drinking beer and having fun. I worked until 21:50 last night whilst others watched crap on Living and ate chocolates. At this rate I should’ve finished by now surely?

This is the point where if I were in a film of my life (staring Scarlet Johansson as me) there would be a big focus pull. Spooky voice-over would rasp accusingly  ”where has your life gone?”, as something truly tragic composed specially by Morricone sets the scene, the heroine is finally caught out  by the truth; that she sat around all day, eating chocolate, playing with kittens, reading Vogue and attending light lunches.

But hang on…

A really depressing fact, which I came across today is that 3/4 of PhD students in the UK take 7 years to complete. Man oh man. I started the PhD in April 05, so I’ve been at it a total of 3.5 years and during that time I changed my status from FT to PT. When you’re registered as PT you only received half the supervision hours and are only expected to work about 16 hr p/w on the thesis. So, a year consisting of 2 PT semesters only counts as 0.5 when the trajectory is calculated. Following that logic, if the PhD took me another year I’d still meet the national average, and I could actually take another 2 years to complete it. God forbid.

Mulling all this over, I started to think quite seriously though what have I been doing? So I had an audit of sorts. In 3.5 years of doing a Phd (nearly 4 years in terms of my life, time and commitment)  I’ve presented at 4 conferences (one international)  & attended another international symposium. I went to Cuba, Morroco, Thailand and Vietnam, Spain and Italy. I’ve ended a long-term relationship, started a new one, and moved house. I’ve written 2 papers and had one published, taught for 5 semesters, held a FT position as an analyst for 3 months, followed by another period as an analyst later in the year for 5 months, and this semester I’ve begun supervising  undergraduate dissertations. And yes, I have not missed reading one monthly addition of Vogue. 

Phewee. I feel so much better for this little audit; I’m now able to say I haven’t finished in lower case. So joy to the world, and peace on earth.

I think it is quite common to worry about the big bad deadline, and especially given that people are constantly asking me when I’m going to finish. It’s very hard to impress on people who are not doing a PhD- quite what it is that one does, when doing one, and all the to-ing and fro-ing with supervisors reading drafts, redrafting, progress reviews, transfer vivas, selecting externals.

But I’m rather cheered that I’ve discovered some fantastic PhD blogs recently. It provides a great deal of comfort to know that there are other people out there experiencing similar things.