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.

Second Year of the PhD: It's going to suck

First off, I want to both apologise to you and thank you profusely.  I haven't written in months (for reasons that will soon become clear!) for which I owe you an apology.  However, I wanted to thank you for sticking in there, and for some of the wonderful comments I've had on various posts recently.  I really love to hear from you, so thank you, and I'm glad if these posts have been helpful for you in my absence.

Perhaps you're entering your second year of your PhD.  Maybe you've just finished it, like I have.  Either way, you've found yourself reading this post, and you're guessing from the title I'm going to be a tiny bit not-quite-optimistic about my second year review.  But, I'm going to be as objective as possible.  You can make your own mind up.

I've said before that at some point, at least one person will tell you that you will hate hate hate your PhD.  In my first year I smiled and acknowledged these comments with the naive belief that it couldn't happen to me because I loved my PhD.  At the start of second year, I thought I'd hit that point.  Lots of things (some beyond my control) went wrong and I found myself regretting even thinking a PhD was a viable option.

But it turns out, not even that was my lowest point.  Perhaps it's time for a review of the highs and lows of my second year.

Things just don't stop going wrong because you want them to.

I perhaps have had more than my share of bad luck with equipment failures, programming errors and counterbalancing issues.  Some of these things were my fault, and I had to own up to that and learn from it.  Some were completely beyond my control and I could not have done anything differently.  When things go wrong, you find yourself begging and pleading with whatever nameless PhD-god-entity exists in the cosmos beyond PhD-Land to just please, this one time, let this be the last thing that goes wrong.

Except, it turns out that things will continue to go wrong, even when you don't want them too.  Who knew, huh?  Sometimes this can feel completely soul crushing.  "I don't have the emotional resources for another crisis!" you cry.  But guess what, you do.  It's an over-used platitude, but remember - this too shall pass.  Time is going to go on with or without you, and you will keep going because some nameless force makes you get out of bed just to spite the damn thing.  And then suddenly, you'll have found a solution, or at least moved forward enough for it to no longer be as painful.

Then another crisis happens, and you'll manage that too.  It'll feel just as difficult, but perhaps the next time at the back of your mind there will be a voice reminding you that you've gotten through this before, and you can do it again.  Your resilience will have been tested like it never will again, but that's a good thing.  If you make it out the other side, you are stronger for it.

You'll learn who your friends are.

Maybe you cope fantastically with stress.  You remain a well-balanced human being and display no outer signs of the tension you might feel.  If that's you, you're lucky.  I turn into some half-crazed rabid-wolf type person when I'm really suffering from stress.  My family might see glimpses of this, because they have to love me unconditionally, as does my fiancé because, well, he knows me well enough to know it's temporary, but friends...  I don't want to expose them to that.  So I tend to get quiet, rather than inflict myself upon them until I regain a portion of my sanity.

Very quickly, a divide forms.  You'll have the people who, when you don't text or email them, you never hear from.  Not a peep.  And the others who, even though you don't always reply, still check in on you now and then with offers for a coffee or a night in or an ear if you want to talk.

Cherish these people.  They are rare.  They are few and far between.  But these are the people who you will never lose touch with.  Be honest with them, tell them how shit things are, tell them you're not suitable for human contact but when you feel a little more sane you'd love a coffee.  Same goes for your family and significant other/cat/dog/hamster.  If they can tolerate you like this, they are a keeper.  Try not to take that for granted.  

You'll discover previously unknown ambitions.

Suddenly, you want to do anything.... well, almost anything, that isn't your PhD and/or academia.  You'll start nurturing either long-forgotten or previously undiscovered ambitions.  I spent quite a large proportion of my summer looking at what other jobs I could apply for when I graduate that would get me out of this hell-hole.  

Actually, it's something I'd advise doing.  It gets you thinking about what exactly you want from your career.  Do you value income or time off more?  Pensions and maternity leave or promotion opportunities?  By spending lots of time on career planners like the one at the Prospects website, you start to discover all these potential opportunities you'd never before considered.

I really don't think it does any harm to broaden your horizons.  Having an alternative might be just what you need to glimpse a light at the end of the tunnel.  I considered a number of potential job routes, swearing off academia for life.  I considered joining the police, applying for graduate schemes with the civil service or NHS, writing books, or becoming a stay-at-home mum, living on a remote island on the west of Scotland, looking after the dog, cats and chickens, growing vegetables, making stuff on a sewing machine and making babies.  Needless to say, my fiancé thinks the latter is perhaps not quite financially viable, but the pipe dream makes life worth living.

At the end of the day, I've come full circle.  I'm considering academia again, but my search for alternatives has helped me develop a more philosophical attitude.  I'll give things a try.  If they don't work out, I'll try something else.  It doesn't really matter.

You won't know how to deal with the lull.

This isn't true for everyone, but I found that the lull I experienced during my second year was the biggest source of frustration for me.  I knew what I wanted/needed to do, but couldn't either because of lack of participants (undergrads aren't here to test), I needed to prepare for the upcoming conference, and because I just ran out of get-up-and-go.  

It can lead to a cycle of perpetual frustration - you're not as productive as you wanted to be, so you feel stressed and guilty.  These are tiring emotions that make you feel exhausted.  You're overtired and struggling to get dressed in the morning.  Then you're not as productive, because you're tired.  And so on.

For this, I don't have any stellar advice other than just try to get through it.  I will add that now I'm in my third year and I'm ridiculously busy (and third year comes with its own stresses believe me), this source of frustration is completely gone.  I made it to the other side.  You can too.

It's make or break.

I'm really not a fan of absolutes, but having successfully matriculated for my third year, I am sorry to say I believe this is true.  All the pressures of second year make it a very difficult time and you will struggle more with your self doubt, confusion, feelings of inadequacy and sense of purpose than you ever have.  There were at least five times in the last two months where I had written a letter of resignation to my supervisor, withdrawing from my PhD.  Each time, I saved it as a draft and made myself sleep on it, promising myself I'd send it first thing in the morning.  Except when morning came, I didn't.  

I truly believe that if you make it through your second year, you're going to make it to the end.  As I said above, you end up too busy to even think about quitting, the end feels like it's finally in sight and the whole burden is easier to bear.  I'd like to leave this point with a more positive sentiment, but this is how it goes I'm afraid.  

My experiences of second year are by no means typical, and if you're reading this and thinking 'None of this has happened to me!' that's a good thing!  But I wonder if there are a lot of people going through this now, or just recovering from it, who are feeling isolated or deflated because of it, so I really wanted to write this post to let you know it does get better!  There's still a huge amount of work to be done, but you can do it.  And if any of you reading want to chat about this sort of stuff, please feel free to contact me via the Not Just Another PhD Facebook page (please leave a comment asking me to PM you), or email me at katy.ma.inglis (at) gmail.com

The Story of the Thesis

In today's long-overdue post, I want to talk a little bit about 'The Story of the Thesis'.

Creating the story of the thesis is an exercise my supervisor has me do on a semi-regular basis, and it's something I find incredibly useful, so I thought I would share so that you might be able to give it a try too.  The story, simply, is an overview of the progression of my thesis.  It looks at the overall question my thesis is trying to answer and how each chapter contributes to answering it.

Why is it so useful then?  I think it's really easy to get distracted when you're doing a PhD from what your thesis is about.  While this may be different across disciplines, in the social sciences your PhD should have one central topic, and each experimental chapter chips away at this topic, adding something new each time.  But this is quite a broad perspective to take.  When you're working the day to day, at the experiment level, the process of creating materials, deciding exactly what to do in your methodology can create new ideas for further experiments.

There have been several times I've found myself with pages of study ideas, which are all very interesting, but that don't really tie in to what my thesis is about.  Or, I have these study ideas, want to do them all, and forget what my thesis is about.  

Creating a story for your thesis (the picture above is one incarnation of mine) helps you to take that step back and examine how the studies you have planned fit in to what you actually want to say.  For me, one of the biggest reasons I did this again recently was because I wasn't sure what I wanted my central theme to be - I had a lot of ideas but they diverged and wouldn't have made a cohesive thesis structure.  By taking the time to make a story, I was able to figure out which were most important to me and pinpoint a central question for my whole body of research.

One of the best things with this as well is that you can see exactly where you're going.  After all, you are essentially creating a road map for yourself.  I now have a really great set of experiments that tie in nicely to what I want to do and I feel I can actually see how all the experiments I'm going to run tie in to each other.  I've also cut down on a lot of extra work I would have been doing for other experiments that don't actually fit in to this question after all.

Sometimes the process can be difficult.  It's hard to let your research evolve, especially if it means you have to put aside previous studies you've either completed or collected data for.  I had to do that this time, and it can be frustrating and feel like you've wasted time.  But, my research is much better for it.  I like the direction it's taking very much, I feel like I can actually do it.  What's more, I feel like it makes sense and that it would be a valuable contribution to my field.  For me as a PhD student, that feels like a really big achievement.  I'm actually really excited to see it start to take shape!

So why don't you give it a try?  Make a story of your thesis.  Even if you don't have experiments in mind, you can write down questions you'd like to answer.  Make a draft then think about whether it's too long or short, if there are gaps, if it makes sense in relation to your question and whether it tells a nice story.  It's a really nice way to get to know your thesis.  And an excellent excuse to break out the Crayola. 

Have fun!

Before I go, I want to say a huge thank you to all the readers of Not Just Another PhD.  We've just broken 10,000 hits!  For a blog that was started as a hobby during my postgraduate studies, it's amazing it's come this far.  

Thank you!

It's good to talk

So I may be borrowing a known slogan, but today, I want to discuss how good talking can be for you as a PhD student.

Much of this post is based on my experiences over the last few months.  As you'll know, it's not been the best time PhD wise.  We all go through these stages.  I can promise you, that when you start a PhD, at least  one person will tell you "Oh you're going to hate second year" or some other portion of time of your PhD that you can in no way avoid.  I'm not going to reiterate that message, I just want to throw out some ideas of what you might be able to do if you do find yourself hating your PhD.

And, if the title wasn't enough of a clue, most of my suggestions revolve around talking.

Don't be scared.

The first group I'd suggest you chat with are your peers.  There can be a lot of healthy competition (sometimes a little contention) between your peer group during a PhD.  One person gets a publication or a conference talk, another finished collecting their data while you're still finishing your first experiment.  That's always going to be going on.  But hopefully, there's at least one other PhD student within your department who you can talk to about how you're feeling.

Because guess what?  It's okay to hate your PhD sometimes.  (Not all the time.  If it's all the time, I would really suggest looking into other options...)

Your peers are some of the best people to talk to because they will have experienced what you're feeling too.  The apathy, the general frustration.  Even if they haven't got there yet, they can understand the basis of your complaints as someone with a similar experience frame.  If you don't have anyone in your department, try reaching out to friends doing PhDs in different universities or departments.  Have a chat over a coffee, a pint or an ice cream (or all three, why not?) and just get it out.  Then, when they're feeling frustrated, you can return the favour.

I wouldn't recommend just talking to your peers though.  I would suggest you speak to your supervisor too.  Now, before you get all "Oh hell no!" on me, hear me out.

Obviously, it depends on your relationship with your supervisor, but my recent experience taught me this is something you should really do.  How did I learn this?  Because I didn't do it and now realise that was really dumb.

Instead of taking my frustrations to my supervisor, my loss of confidence, my lack of a sense of direction or conviction, my general hatred of all things research, I took a holiday and disappeared for a while.  Now, while that was okay, it left some really big gaps.

My supervisor was concerned about me, having noticed these things (because guess what, your supervisor is quite clever), but didn't want to push me if I wasn't ready to talk about it.  I knew that he knew, because I'm not an idiot either.  

What stopped me then?  Fear, mostly.  Fear it would be a girly thing to do, to go whine about a PhD.  Fear of showing weakness.  Fear it would make me look incompetent, unintelligent or unable to cope with the pressures of a PhD studentship.  Fear it would result in my supervisor losing respect for me.

When I met with my supervisor yesterday and we actually started having a discussion about all this, it all came out anyway.  And we were able to sort some things out and just have a really good communication.  And I wished I had done it sooner.

It can be difficult to talk to people, for all these reasons.  But if you're stressed out, I'd really advise it.  How else are you going to tackle it?  From a brief stint working in psychological therapies, I can promise you bottling it up is the wrong way to go.  And don't worry about those people who seem to have it all together without a care in the world.  They're stressing out too.  We all do.  

It's okay to worry, and it's good to talk about it.  

That's my two cents ;)

Computer says "Not Significant"

As someone who hasn't done a Masters between my undergraduate degree and my PhD, the last time I was remotely responsible for conceiving an experiment was during my fourth year dissertation project.  Even then, it was guided by supervisor's interests and expertise.  Given the technological dramas I've had until this point in my PhD, the experiment I've been working on this semester is really my first 'baby'.

This was a project based entirely on my own interests.  I'd constructed the design from the questions I wanted to ask and the literature in the area.  I painstakingly created the materials.  (Twice).  I collected the data (twice).  The whole process took nearly two semesters.  A learning process, granted, so I'll be faster next time, but either way - a long part of this year has been spent on this one study.

So when we ran our first analysis and the computer was throwing out non-significant after non-significant result, I was gutted.  Truly, awfully gutted.  I'd invested so much time and effort and stress and work into this experiment.  How could it not have worked?

Before that experience, I'd never truly appreciated how devastating it can be when a study you've worked so hard on doesn't really come to fruition.  I thought it made a good topic for a post though, because if you've been through it too I thought you might like to commiserate.  Everyone deals with this sort of thing differently, and remember that this is just a reflection on how I felt about these things.  My perspective is quite probably different from yours.  That's okay too.  But if you've felt this way at all, sometimes it's nice to know you're not the only one ;)

So here's how it was for me.....

First of all, no one outside your academic circle will really understand.

This statement comes with a caveat, but it's an important one to remember.  Your family, partner, friends, dog, hamster will all understand that you are upset or stressed but they won't really get why.  Those lucky people who aren't doing (or haven't done) a PhD, don't really understand how pervasive the PhD becomes in your life.  The frustration and disappointment can become all-consuming.  You'll think about it lying awake at night.  In your office.  In your car.  At the cinema.  It'll keep popping into your head.  I mean, I'm doing a PhD and I don't understand how it happens.  I have a life outside my PhD, but there it is, all the time, in the back of my head.

And for that reason, however hard it is, try to be patient.

When you've explained for the fiftieth time how things went wrong, that you do/don't know what caused it, and the implications for your work, you will probably be ready to punch someone in the face.  (Though that might just be me...)  Try to remember these people are asking because they care, not because they're trying to remind you of your perceived failure.  (And that perceived is the key word there, more on that in a minute).

If it's getting really tough, stick to a strong, unequivocal statement: "I really don't want to talk about my research just now.  We need to talk about something else.  How is you [work/love life/dog/sibling/mother....]?"

You will (if you're like me) feel a crushing sense of self-doubt.

A PhD is a high-stress, high-pressure route to take.  When things go wrong, even if they're not your fault, the sense of guilt or failure can be strong.  If you've identified the problem and you really did make a mistake, do your best to address it.  If it can be fixed with some more testing, a rejigging of the analysis, do it.  Working on fixing the problem will make help you keep going.

But whether the mistake lies at your feet or if it has some unidentified source, you need to remember:

This is not the end of the world.

It might feel like it.  Thoughts have the tendency to run away with themselves.  An example from my own head: "If these results aren't significant that means I can't present them at the conference or submit a paper.  That blows a chance of a publication.  If I don't have enough publications I'm not going to be able to compete on the job market.  If I can't compete, I can't get a job.  That would mean this has all been a waste of time!!"

See what I mean?  I feel stressed just reading that.

But it took a gentle reminder from one of the lecturers here that, in science, 98% of experiments won't get significant results and that is okay. You've got to remember that a PhD is an apprenticeship - a chance to learn how to research.  

A good friend and fellow PhD student also reminded me that a PhD is often a series of firsts.  Your first time running a particular paradigm, analysis, using an experiment builder, eye tracker, whatever.  You don't always know what went wrong because you're still just a little science grasshopper.  It's not really until you defend that you have sufficient knowledge and understanding in your area that would allow you to go back and modify the experiment to (hopefully) get the results you'd wanted.

Ultimately, when things like this happen, the hard truth is that you've just got to keep going.  I'm not denying there were a couple of days I called up my aforementioned good friend asking her to talk me off the quitting ledge.  But you keep going.  You keep trying to figure things out.

Eventually, with enough poking and prodding we identified the problem.  The program I used to run the experiment had been showing different stimuli than I though, so once I recoded for that we were able to rerun the analysis and hey presto, we found something.  But that's not really the moral of this story.  The moral is to keep going.  You are always learning something, whether your results are significant or not. 

Keep going, you can do it!


EDIT: So I maybe didn't make this clear enough, but this post was meant to be reflective of my experiences when I didn't get the expected results for my study.  I thought it might be useful if anyone else had felt this way too.  If you haven't, that's great and don't worry about it!  And, to reiterate, I don't think that if your results are non-significant (i.e. not below the arbitrary alpha of .05) your work is meaningless.  I was only saying I felt that way at the time.  With a little perspective and some friendly reminders from friends and colleagues, I realised this was just another way to learn something new about the area I'm interested in.  Hope that clears things up!

Katy

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