Confronting the Culture of Overwork: Less is More by Brittany Uhlorn

September 4, 2020September 4, 2020 ADMIN1 Comment

We’ve created a culture of overwork in academia.

It’s expected that techs, professors and graduate students eat, sleep and breathe their work. Slept more than four hours last night? You could have been replying to emails. Took an hour lunch break? Chug down an energy drink while you analyze data and eat a bag of chips on the way to class instead. Only worked 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. today? Don’t expect to get tenure any time soon. This dangerous and pervasive narrative, fuelled by a combination of impostor syndrome and the “publish or perish” mentality, causes many academics to feel compelled to spend every waking hour reading the literature, refining lectures and perfecting their ideas so that they can keep their careers afloat.

Culture Shock by Tahira Anwar

August 28, 2020 ADMIN

On 16 December 2019, I defended my PhD thesis in a public examination at the University of Helsinki. At that point I had been studying for my PhD for ten long, torturous years. After successfully defending my doctoral thesis, I felt nothing. I was totally numb. The year leading to my defense was the hardest I had ever been through in my whole PhD. Due to the long journey and additional challenges, including harassment that I faced on campus that same year (which I will not go into detail on here), I was struggling with anxiety, PTSD and a depressive episode. I was taking medication while also dealing with poor physical health and insomnia. Just a few months before my defense, I was feeling so bad that I wanted to quit everything. Everything was indifferent and insignificant for me; this big accomplishment, being the first PhD holder in our family, meant absolutely nothing. I just wanted to leave that ugly place and the toxic people I had been surrounded by for so long.

Fighting Uncertainty: Lessons Learned from Lockdown by Maddy Bleasdale

August 21, 2020August 21, 2020 ADMIN

“You should leave Germany as soon as possible” – words I never imagined I’d hear in the final few weeks of my PhD. Yet, I soon found myself packing my life into boxes and boarding a flight to the UK.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused mass disruption. For me, it brought my PhD journey in Germany to an abrupt end – there was no obligatory thesis “hand-in photo” or celebratory drinks with my colleagues and friends. But while the coronavirus has introduced a high degree of uncertainty into all of our lives, for many academics uncertainty is the norm.

But what is behind this uncertainty?

Today is a Bad Day by Kelly Jowett

August 14, 2020August 21, 2020 ADMIN

Ostensibly it would not seem to be so: the sun is shining, I have a safe and lovely home, a supportive partner, and I love my work. Everything is fine—but I am not.

I am sitting in the garden, trying to compress the rising panic, breathing slow and deep to ebb away the tears building behind my eyes, and the tightening of my throat. Earlier today I got up, did my yoga, had a healthy breakfast, chatted to my partner, then got a tea and sat down to work. But as I scrolled through my emails, for no apparent reason my anxiety kicked in. Every small request or notification was somehow more pressure than I could bear.

So, I stopped. I shut down my laptop and walked away. I told my partner how I felt and came outside. And then I sat here in the garden thinking, I had to communicate this to you all: it’s okay to stop, it’s okay to put yourself first.

The Impact of Mental Illness on Friendship by Adriana Bankston

August 7, 2020August 21, 2020 ADMIN

Last year, I experienced mental illness for the first time due to a series of life events. At first, I didn’t know what was going on or how to label it. Individual psychotherapy helped me identify that I was likely experiencing depression and anxiety. I spoke with a psychiatrist to confirm the diagnosis and obtained the right medication. The diagnosis itself was at first terrifying to hear. But after living with untreated mental illness for several months, I was comforted by finally knowing what was wrong, because I could now properly address it. My subsequent Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) sessions focused specifically on tackling depression and anxiety, which have been extraordinarily helpful. In my case, identifying the problem at hand, followed by undergoing targeted therapy and taking medication to address it, has proven to be a successful overall approach to tackling it.

Finding Community During Isolating Times by Victor See

July 31, 2020July 31, 2020 ADMIN

Recently, a group of academics from around the world, none of whom I had ever met in person, sang happy birthday to me by video chat. The rendition was terrible. Video lag meant that they were out of time with each other and, as is the way with these things, more than one person was out of tune. But you know what? It absolutely made my day!

Finding My Confidence by Anthony J. Lucio

July 24, 2020July 31, 2020 ADMIN

In graduate school, I honestly always thought that once I defended my thesis and was awarded my PhD, that some light bulb of knowledge would switch on in my brain and I would feel as smart as everyone else around me. In hindsight, I suspect I was able to use that justification as a means to shield myself from facing the fact that I ultimately lacked confidence in myself. As a result of this lack of self-confidence I also lacked assertiveness personally and professionally. A lack of assertiveness is not often associated with men, but we do experience it. I still struggle with a lack of self-confidence but having finally acknowledged it I am now actively working to fix it.

PMDD and Me by Katie Love

July 17, 2020July 17, 2020 ADMIN

Please be aware that this blog mentions suicide ideation.

I am writing this blog to highlight my Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) journey – how I discovered it and got help, as it takes up a lot of my life, and it has certainly affected my employment and PhD.

The build-up to a diagnosis

I don’t know when it all started exactly, but I realised it when I was 26, living alone, working full-time in industry. Taking the leap to speak to my boyfriend at the time about how I was feeling is the reason I am writing this from a happy place. What sticks with me the most are the words he said to me: “It’s kinda monthly.“

When Panic Attacks by Karen Tang

July 10, 2020August 21, 2020 ADMIN

“I’m dying.” “Why can’t I breathe?” “What is happening to me?”

These are the thoughts that were running through my head as I gasped for oxygen. It happened so fast, it was a blur. One moment I had been actively listening to my client telling me about their issues and then when I had asked what brought them here, their answer, “Oh, I don’t want to be here.” sent my body into overdrive. It hit like a ton of bricks. My hands were shaking and clammy, my heart rate was racing, tears flowed uncontrollably, and my vision blurred. It was so, so hard to breathe, as if I had an elephant sitting on my chest. And it was almost twice as humiliating as we were in the middle of our role-playing clinical interviews class, where I was the therapist and one of my cohort was the patient, with our professor watching from the next room. I was playing the role of the therapist, that means I’m supposed to be in control, right? But I wasn’t. Not even close.

Suffering is not my Standard by Ioana Weber

July 3, 2020July 3, 2020 Admin

This blog has been adapted from an essay appearing in the March 2020 issue, with permission from the author, from the student magazine CNS Newsletter. Check it out here.

When I started my PhD, I treated my project as my ‘baby’ and enthusiastically embarked onto working long days and equally long nights. I distinctly remember cycling home from the lab at 3am on Unter den Linden, intoxicated by the sweet perfume of the linden trees and a rush I could not explain at that time. I had a feeling that I was finally doing the right thing in order to succeed—the thing which was presented to me as a necessity and hence expected of me. Now, results were bound to follow. This meant that nobody, not even my self-distrusting mind, could say I wasn’t putting enough effort in, should the results not roll in. I continued doing this for about half a year, across pilot experiments and until I fully delineated my research plan for my PhD project, and, after few months off for a break, where I felt inexplicably lacking in energy, I continued to do this for three more years.

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