Saying Goodbye

As you'll know from last time, I'm counting down the days until we leave the first home we had together, which we've lived in for just shy of seven years, before we move to the west coast of Scotland.  I've been so excited about the move - and still am.  The opportunity to write up in such a beautiful place has been my light at the end of the tunnel for months.  But, as with all things, the start of something new means the end of something else.

This week is my last week in the department.  My last ever Monday sitting at this desk, looking out the window across the city, thinking about coffee time at 11am.  This is the last 'first day of the week' in what has been my home from home for the last three years.  I never thought I'd be sad about getting over a Monday, but today is teaching me the meaning of 'bittersweet'.

At many points in my PhD, I've imagined what it would feel like to finish.  In truth, I've still got a way to go before I get to that point, but this could definitely be considered the beginning of the end.  I'm aware that sounds awfully dramatic.  It's hard not to be, though.  When you get to this point in your doctorate, you have invested so many hours, so much hard work, so many tears and tantrums and highs and lows that it feels like a much bigger component of your life than almost anything else.  I've left things before - school, jobs, my undergraduate degree - but nothing has felt like this.  The combination of excitement and happiness with a little bit a sadness and a sense of loss.

Although there will be times where I'll be back in the department for the odd meeting, or most notably my viva, it won't be the same.  Someone else will be living in my office, cursing statistics and complicated journal articles that make no sense.  The friends that I have 'grown up with' through my PhD will most likely be gone, or job hunting, or moved away.  There will be new faces that I don't know, and have never met.  I will have missed important events, birthdays, nights out and impromptu lunches with drinks.

Of course, I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing.  Life moves on and I am truly excited about my next adventure.  The Boy and I are entering a new era as 'grown ups' (or at least pretend grown ups).  There are certainly many aspects I won't miss.  But then, even with those most awful, heart-wrenching days in mind, I would still do it all again.  I don't know where I'll end up, or what I'll be doing.  Academia is a tricky job market and at the moment I don't know if I have the persistence to chase a career in it.  But I'll be doing something.  And no one can take away from me the experiences I've had here.

I am going to miss this place.  This place where I have laughed and cried and cursed the sky, where I have eaten cake and drunk wine and shared both the good times and the bad.  This place that has shaped me, molded me, tested me.  This place that still has a few tests in store for me yet.  I will miss these people who I have been on this ride with.  I will miss this time in my life where for a short while, everything seems possible and the opportunities before us seem exponential.  And I will always be thankful for this place.  For this time.  For these people.  They will stay with me always.

The final countdown....

It seems like my last post should be much longer ago than January.  Life is just so busy as a third year PhD student.  But, now I have an afternoon to breathe, I wanted to write some more.  Today, I'm writing to you from the position of having 162 days until I hand in my thesis, and 27 days until I leave this city forever.  Take a minute to let that sink in.

Now, just because it's fun, I'm going to put in more of my favourite imgur things.  Here's one to get you started.  Have a giggle.

At this point, I'm starting to feel like a puppet master pulling together strings.  Analysis will be finished with a week or two.  My paper should be submitted by the end of the month.  The two post doc proposals I'm working on might take a bit longer, but then something's got to give - I've got a PhD to finish after all!  This month feels particularly strange though.  It marks the event of a lot of things that have been coming for a while - we're packing up our flat before we move, we've booked the registrar for our wedding, we're selling everything we're not taking with us and arranging leaving drinks.  All of these things are nice (though packing is a bit of a pain), but they do have a habit of really, really sneaking up on you.  It's such a cliché, but I really don't know where the last twelve weeks of my life have gone.

I do know, though, that the last few weeks have involved quite a lot of sitting down and really thinking about the future.  Priorities.  It's not a discussion we'd ever had to have before - we just went where we needed to go for school.  Now though, we have a number of things to weigh up.  Do we value job security or salary more?  What's more important - career progression or location?  Is it better to take a year out and publish lots, or to push head first into what's available?  Who is going to be the main bread-winner?  Where do we want to live?  Does it matter?  What do we want to do?

At some point, everyone faces these questions, and we all have different answers.  I'll tell you some of mine, with the caveat that my choices are not necessarily the best for my career, or me personally, but they are the best for my fiancé and I together, which is my top priority.  Don't worry if your priorities are different.  

For one, we decided we want to stay in Scotland.  I can almost hear those of you who are destined for careers in academia gasping!  Yes, it does severely limit my employment options if I wanted to get my career up and off the ground.  But we made that decision based on (a) we like it here the bestest, (b) we want to bring our kids up here - when we have them, (c) I will have a PhD, which means I can do quite a lot of things, and (d) did I mention we're staying here for the summer?  Why would I ever want to leave?  But it's not just that.  Sure, I love research and I've loved my PhD, but I'm beginning to realise there's more to life.  I want other things too, and so for me, academia has moved lower down the priority list.  

Seriously, why would I want to go?

It's a very strange thing, when finishing becomes countable in days.  When the future isn't far away any more, it's just a few weeks more in the calendar.  Part of me is feeling sentimental.  There is a lot I'll miss about my PhD days.  Even leaving the city I've lived in for seven years, although I don't particularly like it, is giving me a moment of "Oh!"  But the other part is ready for the adventure.  I'm ready to find out what the future holds.  Particularly if that is a lovely house somewhere on Mull with a wood fire and lots of time for crafting and writing stories (my pipe dream of choice at the moment).  

My PhD has prepared me spectacularly for life as a 'grown up'.  (I use the ' ' because I'm only going to be pretending).  Things like critical thinking, looking for novel solutions, working under pressure and multi-tasking are valuable anywhere.  Hell, I'm going to be writing the biggest book I'll ever write - that's a skill too!  But the best thing is that I now have the confidence in myself to believe that things will work out somehow.  I might not get the dream job, or we might not have the most money, but we'll get by.  We'll work through it, keep on going, and come out the other side. 

It's time to go for an adventure.

The Third Year of Your PhD

First of all, happy new year!  I hope you had a particularly enjoyable winter break, and if you're back to work today - like I am - you're not struggling too much with it.  I have been thinking about blogging often, but it's perhaps somewhat telling that when my last post was the 23 of September, I'm going to tell you that third year will be busy!  It is.  But it's more than that too.  I wanted to take some (long overdue) time today to write about my experiences of third year so far and pepper it with some of my favourite pictures from imgur, because why not?

I talk a lot about how your PhD can teach you as much about yourself as it does about the subject you're studying, and in my opinion third year has been the biggest lesson for me.  Although you anticipate it coming all through the summer of your second year, once you matriculate for the final time a panic sets in that says "I have one year to finish my PhD oh my god!!!"  At first, there were lots of recriminations of why-didn't-I-do-this-earlier and argh-so-much-to-do and other catch phrases.  You tear your hair out for a little while.  But then, because you have to, you just get on with it.

This is probably not earth-shattering to most of you.  But taking a little time to view how I was coping in an objective way showed me that I've grown a lot.  I had a couple of days of stress paralysis, and then I just buckled down and got on with things.  In fact, I've worked harder since September than I have at anything ever.  That's not an exaggeration.  In one semester I completed testing, rewrote my literature review, re-did some analysis and started new analysis, wrote a paper and started work on a funding application for a postdoc.  While planning a wedding and actually, you know, living and stuff.  (Ugh the living bit is such hard work!)  

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I'm not telling you this to boast about my freakishly busy semester, though I am proud of how much I've achieved.  I think it's more an attempt to help you learn from my mistakes, which be - don't leave things til your final year.  I've had a series of mishaps and whatever that have delayed my progress, but there's been a fair bit of procrastination too.  It's really easy in the early years to say "Ach I'll do it tomorrow", but my best advice would be not to do that.  Start out thinking you've not much time, and you'll work harder.

What has been really nice about my third year though is that I'm finally starting to feel like I get it.  It's the little things that help the most - being able to recommend papers to someone and remembering the authors' names without having to check, or being able to suggest an improvement to a methodology because you actually understand it.  As someone who suffered from impostor syndrome throughout my first year, part of me wondered if I'd ever get to this point.  By no means do I think I'm all the way there - I can see the differences between my line of thinking and my supervisor's, but the point is I can see the difference.  I can see there's a linear progression in experience and knowledge that will get me from where I am, to one day closer to where my supervisor is, and that I'm on the right path.  I realise that seems quite abstract, but it was a revelation for me.  Understanding that actually, I can do this and I do sometimes get things right was a big deal.  The unfortunate side effect of reaching your final year is facing the challenge of accepting your time is almost over.  

I won't lie, there are times where I could have happily packed my bags and left my PhD without looking back, but I believe that once you make it out the other side of second year, you're in it for the long haul and you want to make things work.  Starting to imagine my life post-PhD is becoming much more of tangible speeding train than some abstract concept of 'some time in the future'.  With a deadline of the 11th of September (eeeeeeek!) planning work is now down to the last few months, weeks and days of my PhD studentship.  I remember starting out and thinking I had an endless amount of time here, but now it's coming closer to finishing, I'm realising how much I'm going to miss it.

For me one of the weirdest things is not having a plan.  My fiancé and I are both applying for graduate schemes and we're moving to Mull on the west coast of Scotland for four months from May for him to work an estate, which might produce some job opportunities, and for me to write my thesis.  I'm working on funding proposals for postdocs too. And yet, with all our efforts, not much is certain about what will happen post-degree.  

Learning to live with that has been a lesson in and of itself.  I like certainty.  I like black-and-white observable fact.  There's none of that right now and that can be stressful.  It's hard not to worry about a potential stretch of time after finishing your degree when suddenly you've no income and no job and nothing to do with your days.  I'm learning you've just got to do what you can, apply for jobs, and see what happens. 

Accepting my inability to control the future has taught me some good lessons about science too.  I'm no where near finishing my analysis yet, and there's still a good bit to go.  It's quite possible I won't find any further significant results and while that can be disappointing, I fully understand now that non-significant results don't lessen the quality of the work I've done and they don't mean I've not discovered something new.  (It just means I've discovered something doesn't work).  It takes a lot of pressure off.

Everyone's experience of their final year will be different.  Everyone will have their own stresses and their own worries and things that go wrong.  Unfortunately, there's no getting around it - it's going to happen!  What we can do is every once in a while, take a little step back and look at what we've achieved.  And despite the blood, sweat and many tears, remember you've achieved something wonderful.  You've worked so hard.  Applaud yourself for it.