Tag: PHD STUDENT

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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PhD Work-life Balance in Hindsight: Lessons from Parenting by Lauren Saunders

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I’m writing this blog post while my toddler watches a cartoon in the background, and I feel drained by the constant need to multitask. This morning, I peeled clementines for her while leading a Zoom meeting, trying to keep my hands out of frame and appease her without needing to mute my audio. I’m currently five years post-PhD graduation, and have worked remotely ever since: through my husband’s process of immigrating to the U.S., COVID-19, and parenthood. I think often about the lessons I’ve learned since finishing my doctorate about work-life balance. Because my life was so much less complicated during graduate school, I had the luxury of “winging it” when it came to work-life balance, and I didn’t achieve it very effectively. Now that I have to actively grapple for work-life balance as I change diapers while returning phone calls, I have a much different appreciation for what I could have done differently during graduate school.

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Uncovering ADHD During Perimenopause and the Insidious Impacts on Academic Work by Kaylene Ascough

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Undertaking a PhD is an arduous task for anyone and has unique challenges for different demographics. For a mature-aged woman going through perimenopause and menopause, though, a whole range of additional challenges can enter the mix. In my case, the associated hormonal changes exacerbated lifelong conditions that went undiagnosed in the past. 

Most people think and talk about the physical symptoms of perimenopause and menopause; hot flushes, difficulty sleeping, aching joints, etc.  What is less often discussed are the mental symptoms; and when they are, it’s usually quite vague and nonspecific such as ‘mood changes’ and ‘brain fog’.  There are many, many symptoms associated with menopause. In fact, I wrote to my friends once about how every symptom that was occurring in my life at the time was attributable to menopause.  What I was not prepared for was just how insidious perimenopause would be. I have since learned that the period where these changes start, and the length of time it can carry on for, is highly variable. Even when you have “officially” reached menopause (i.e., when you have stopped having a period for over 12 months), this does not always mean the end of symptoms.

This means that, particularly with the mental symptoms, you don’t always realise that what is happening to you is a part of the menopause and you can really start to doubt your sanity. Going through this change of life and not knowing, while trying to participate in academic pursuits like a PhD, can leave you feeling truly inadequate, irrelevant and incapable of contributing to your academic field. 

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Embracing the Unknown: Navigating Challenges as an International Student with Anxiety Disorder by Anonymous

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Stepping into a new country to pursue an onshore PhD as an international student with an anxiety disorder is an adventure filled with lows and highs. As I moved from India, to Brisbane, Australia, the stark differences in culture, academic structure, and climate were only a few of the many challenges I encountered in the first two months of my arrival. Alongside my eagerness to explore numerous academic opportunities, the fear of missing out and the pressure to quickly adapt triggered waves of anxiety within me.

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Grad School Journaling Prompts: Better Understanding Your Emotional Academic Journey by Jordan A. McCray

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Making the decision to leave grad school might have been the hardest thing I have ever done. Graduate students are frequently told that ruminations on leaving are normal, and that wanting to quit constantly is a rite of passage. However, the thought of leaving is framed as a common daydream that gets us through to the next break rather than a legitimate alternative to powering through constant suffering. Constant commiseration is an understandable coping mechanism in fostering understanding in academic communities. It also begs the question: How do you know if it’s really time to leave? How do you discern between “relatable” misery and the need to take action for your own health and wellbeing? 

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My Thesis Experience: From Crisis to Transformation by Nicci Attfield

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I am a South African writer with a background in psychology and critical diversity studies. In 2014 I began to assist James Reed with his practice-based research project Agents of Change (which was created with Shelley Sacks from the SSRU at Oxford Brooke’s University). Agents of Change helps to connect people to their thoughts and feelings about climate change. Participants spoke about the fashion industry as well as the losses of plants and animals and even the losses of ancestors due to colonialism. How to live a sustainable life appeared to be elusive to many participants. All expressed a deep grief at the devastating impacts of environmental destruction. Many also expressed shame at living lives which impacted on other people.

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Everyday Memoirs of a Graduate Student in Zimbabwe by Oswell Moyo 

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The deadline for my next manuscript is approaching and corrections have arrived needing urgent attention, and yet I am seated on top of an old single bed engulfed by darkness. Again. my laptop, which has earned names like “fridge” and “desktop” from friends and classmates, is useless when there is a power outage. My city is yet again experiencing a power cut, with it not being unusual for them to occur for a period of 10 to 16 hours a day. Alternative sources of power such as generators are heavily regulated and are only switched on for a few hours a day. And when they are switched on, using that time is dedicated to the necessities: cooking, eating and bathing. Study has to take the back seat, but then I’m reminded of impending deadlines, and that I have to get my work done. I am then filled with the anxiety of, “What can I do?” or “Where should I start?” knowing that my laptop will only fail me again tomorrow. 

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