You Can’t Outwork Your ADHD by Anonymous

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When in doubt, just work harder – until you no longer can. 

I always thought that work ethic is one thing nobody could take away from me. In graduate school, I admired people – especially women, particularly mothers – who could work reasonable hours and somehow finish their bench work, keep up with current literature, and submit grant applications on time. Meanwhile, I never stopped working, yet everything would be done at the very last minute. Yes, I was bad at time management, constantly making mistakes that forced me to second-guess experimental results. I could, nonetheless, work anyone under the table with my ability to keep going at all hours, all days, with no vacations, no weekends. Academia certainly encouraged it. Senior academics would praise my hard work, marvel at my multitasking skills, at my cheerful spirit. However, those very efficient women whom I admired would frequently ask, “How are you not burned out? How are you holding up?” I would deflect, laugh it off, make a self-deprecating joke. In my own mind, I knew that it was not a sustainable work style. However, the discovery of new data – that moment when you turn on the microscope at the end of a long experiment and see the confirmation of your hypothesis in glorious multicolor – got me through many periods of disinterest and boredom caused by the relentless tedium of everyday bench work.

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Jumping without a Parachute: Leaving a ‘Dream Job’ in the Search of Happiness by Dr Victoria Gray

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‘Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’. 

Generally I’m not a fan of a cliché, but somehow this became a goal from a young age. I was going to be an academic researcher, uncovering secrets of human genetics and I was going to be very happy doing it. Or at least that was the dream of idealistic, motivated and passionate 17-year-old, imagining how the degree she was applying for would lead to an incredible career.

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Rejection Sensitivity and the Search for Paid Work Experience by S.J. Williamson

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As a doctoral student finishing up my last year of coursework, I thought most of my concerns – comprehensive exams, the prospectus defense, my thesis – were a year away. I made an appointment with my new advisor in September, hoping she would approve my plan of study and I could focus on assembling my thesis committee. We went through the plan of study document together. She said everything was good to go except I needed to arrange an internship or work experience for my last semester of coursework. As a grad student with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression during Covid-19, I thought I had already faced the toughest parts of grad school. Little did I know how hard the job search would be on me. 

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The Illusion of Inclusion: My Journey as a Junior Disabled Researcher in Academia by Anonymous

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Inclusivity in academia not only includes valuing the inclusion of diverse communities but also providing them accommodations to feel included. However, inclusivity as a concept has been widely spoken about yet poorly executed in academia. My journey as a disabled junior researcher within this space has been challenging, but I have persevered and overcome many obstacles. I have faced numerous discriminatory experiences and felt isolated and anxious in navigating academia. 

Initially, I felt hopeful after accepting an offer from a lab for a full-time Research Assistant job that once I could only have dreamt of. I assumed a lab that worked on the themes of inclusivity, especially with the younger population, would also be inclusive to the members of the lab. Additionally, I thought I would finally find a supportive environment and mentors with whom my unique perspectives and experiences would be valued and respected. However, as I started to work more closely with the lab, I encountered underlying toxicity, exclusivity, and a subtle yet persistent practice of gaslighting that made me rethink continuing in academia as a whole. 

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The Abuse of Power in Academia: Consequences for Mental Health by Alex Mendelsohn

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“I’m thinking of leaving academia,” a friend tells me. “I’m pretty sick and tired of all the political games”. This should have been shocking news. He was the type of person that seemed perfectly suited to being an astrophysicist. I never foresaw him doing anything else.

I wasn’t surprised though. In my time as a PhD student, I heard countless episodes of political game-playing by postdocs and academics. For example, my housemate (a PhD student in the biological sciences), would frequently come to me with a new story about how his supervisor would attempt to use any leverage available to make him do work to advance the supervisor’s own career instead of my housemate’s PhD. “We are just pawns on a chess board to them.” he would often say. 

He meant this figuratively. He didn’t realise academics sometimes literally use students as pseudo chess pieces. When I needed to change offices due to a couple of toxic colleagues, I found that the process was a prolonged one. Most of the academics recognised that a desk, occupied or not, was a status symbol. The more desks each academic presided over, the higher their status. It was like some sort of weird conglomerate of empires. Giving up an empty desk space meant losing “territory”. My supervisor, despite thinking this was dumb, had to negotiate a PhD student “swap” with another research group. 

Before I started my PhD, I saw academics as mature, upstanding members of society. It was certainly a shock to the system to discover that, on occasion, some academics acted like toddlers in a sandpit squabbling over who has the better sandcastle. In these power struggles, PhD students are the spades – tools to be used by academics which can be disposed of at any moment, once they have served their purpose.

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Alone With My Anxiety: The Isolation of Doing a PhD Whilst Suffering With Anxiety by Isabelle Berrow 

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I believe that I have spent my whole life anxious. As long as I can remember, I have worried about things that other children did not. I was scared of getting hurt, getting muddy, trying new things out, of a fear of failure. I always felt different from the others. 

Whenever I voiced these concerns I was told ‘Don’t be silly’ or ‘You’re no fun to be around’. As a little girl, these comments were extremely damaging to how I viewed the anxiety within me. I was ashamed, appalled and determined to not let anyone know how I was truly feeling. 

So I spent my whole childhood, my teenage years and even into my 20s pretending I was somebody else. 

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My Academic Career with Psychosis and Depression by Anonymous

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I’m on the train to France, where I’m working as a postdoc in mathematics. We are in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and masks are mandatory, as well as filling out forms in French for every journey. My thoughts are racing. I have the feeling that I cannot finish my thoughts, similar to when one is trying to tell a story, but loses oneself in subordinate clauses and never finishes the original sentence or plot line.

As my thoughts speed up, I feel like I’m suffocating in my mask. 

Wait – people with severe COVID have that feeling too – maybe it’s that? Then I have to find a hospital here in France, and I only speak very little French – when I’m home I will immediately do a COVID test – but it’s also very likely that this is because of the upcoming psychosis – I haven’t been able to sleep normally for a week now.

Now I see there are police on the train. I panic. 

They are certainly here for me. I’ve probably made a mistake in the forms I filled out with help of Google Translate. They are going to arrest me and put me in jail – only to transfer me to a psychiatric hospital where they will force me to take Haldol (or just give me a jab with it), which will make my head hazy – doing math will be impossible for many months, my career will be over, my life will be over – and make me move like in an advanced stage of Parkinson’s. 

At this point I can only cry. They are walking by once again. I message a friend back home that I’m going to be arrested and my worst nightmare will come true.

When I arrive at my apartment in France, I immediately take a rapid test. Negative. That means the tightness in my chest is panic, not Covid. I take a Lorazepam tablet and slowly the tightness dissolves. I lie on my bed for 20 minutes, and I stop crying. Then I have to go to the meeting with my postdoc supervisor. I do my best to survive the meeting… my head is still racing yet numbed by the Lorazepam at the same time… I didn’t make any progress on my project (already for weeks now)… 

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Completing a PhD whilst Getting Diagnosed with a Serious Mental Illness by Jack Birch

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TW: Suicidal ideation

Completing a PhD is often a time of academic and personal discovery. In spending so much time thinking about your subject, it seems only natural that people think about who they are as a person and if this has changed over time. 

What did this look like for me? 

Well, there’s things like my accent changing, and feeling a loss of ‘who am I?’. This was a natural occurrence during my PhD due to living in a different region, but in my earlier university education, I’d deliberately softened my accent due to being made to feel like an outsider. There’s also new cultures, hobbies, foods, and music that I’ve had the privilege of exploring and enjoying. But the biggest thing I look back on is that, whilst completing my PhD, I was also going through the process of having been diagnosed with – and subsequently managing – a serious mental illness. 

I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder halfway through my PhD. It’s an illness that has a wide range of symptoms and presentations. For me, it presents as extremely intense emotions and frequent suicidal thoughts and ideation, which is quite a lot to deal with alongside doing a PhD! With the huge benefit of hindsight, in this blog I’ll reflect on how the stages of me being diagnosed with, and managing, a serious mental illness interacted with completing a PhD. 

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Addressing lone working for PhD students by Chrissie Thwaites 

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It is relatively well-known both within and beyond academia that doing a PhD can be an isolating and lonely experience. Mental health in academia is now an increasingly prominent area of discussion, and many are working hard to cultivate an environment in which wellbeing is prioritised. In this blog I will discuss one area that could benefit from receiving more attention, especially in relation to PhD student isolation, namely the reality of lone-working. 

PhD students: Going it alone

Given the central role of conducting independent research, it is unsurprising that much of PhD life is characterised by working in solitude. There may be opportunities for networking, such as reading groups, research seminars, writing groups, and the occasional conference – but ultimately the task of researching and writing a thesis can only be completed by the researcher themselves. This will usually be done from home, a library, perhaps sometimes a coffee shop, or (for those who are lucky) a designated desk or departmental study space. 

This means that for many students, accepting a PhD place also means committing to 3-4 years (if full-time) of predominantly lone working. Often, this is a commitment made unknowingly. As a postgraduate research degree, a PhD is the first long-term academic research project students will undertake. Although they will have (presumably) a background in academic study, and may have submitted a short thesis as part of a previous degree, the day-to-day realities of PhD working will be somewhat unfamiliar. Those pursuing the industry expectation for research with ‘impact’ could be especially isolated – stuck in the predicament of producing unique research (and maybe receiving funding for it) partly because no one else is really doing it. Such research could feel isolating at times. The researcher may be the only one at their university, in their region, or even their country working in that particular area.  

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Yoga – Off the mat, into the Lab by Dr Lorna Young

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I feel if you know someone who regularly practices yoga, you may have heard how yoga has changed their life. For years I had heard the same thing from other “Yogis” – I never thought I would become that person, but here I am! Yoga has – quite truly – changed my life. From an academic myself to (in all likelihood) an academic yourself reading this, in my opinion, it is one of the best and most useful investments you can make in yourself.  

I am so grateful to have yoga with me now and for the rest of my life. Yoga is often suggested at academic institutes to help with mental wellbeing of staff and students. I believe the use of yoga is under-utilised here; a yoga practice (and meditation) is an effective way of helping stress management and general well-being, an improvement in both of which can lead to increased focus and productivity.

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