Any PhD Students Fancy A Mutual Support Thread?

[GentlyGentlyOhDear]

Is anyone else currently doing a PhD? I've just had my first baby and am trying to get back into the swing of things academically. Is there anyone else out there in a similar situation?

I'm currently on mat leave from my PhD until the new year, but I've been doing two days a week since baby was 4 months old as I desperately need to get finished! My registration ends in June next year, then I have 2 years to write-up (part-time), but I'm aiming to get finished within a year and a half.

Really should be working now...

I know what you mean about constantly finding little errors and things to fiddle with. I'm just in the first year of my phd but I am finding it hard reading back any pieces of work that I have done, my eye is always drawn to even the tiniest mistake.

I am not looking forward to all the nitpicking and formatting at the end of this whole process at all!

What happens next for you dotty? Do you get to have a breather for a bit or have you got a massive to do list?

dotty congratulations!

OK. SO I have been back since the 1st January. Both children at in nursery 3 days a week and I get 10-12 hours if I am extremely lucky over a weekend. I have a horrible horrible feeling I simply cannot do this. I have 5 months of funding left. I have to do once more piece of research. I have a thesis outline. I have been accepted at several conferences this spring for which I need to write abstracts and presentations.

I am desperately worried about a job at the end of it, DH is losing his job after Easter and although it will mean he is home more if he gets the job he has applied for he will be away M-F so I'll be solo parenting. The baby doesn't sleep.

My biggest issue is however the damn writing. My PhD follows on from two others and when I have read them I find myself wondering how the hell I will effectively write my spin on their work as well as they wrote in the first place (we have similar contexts), I have also lost faith in the research I've done and its value - and now see how I could have made the study so much better. And all around me people are being offered postdocs despite being partway through writing their PhDs, when I ask I get offered small amounts of work (possibly) but nothing concrete. I think I need to build bridges with other research areas and consider uprooting the family when I complete.

Eugh. Sorry. I've been sat here five hours and haven't managed any productive writing just a lot of messing about with basic statistics.

I do have a massive to do list, made up both of small domestic stuff that I've been neglecting (like mopping the kitchen floor and fishing too small clothes out of the DDs' drawers) and then big scary stuff like trying to get my career back on track. Preliminary plan is continuing with freelance consultancy and seeing if I can expand this sufficiently to make a viable career, without the phd to fill the majority of my time, but I can't quite think about it properly just yet. I don't think I want a proper academic job, but would quite like some part-time teaching as part of the mix.

Oh dear, bigwellylittlewelly that all sounds tough. It's very hard to think about uprooting the family, and academic jobs are likely to demand it. And very little is harder than not getting sleep - especially if you have to think creatively the next day.

On the writing front, FWIW, I also built directly on two or three other PhDs, and about 6 months ago, I was in a total panic about one of them - her writing seemed so mature and authoritative, and it made my study feel very flimsy. I don't think that now - I think her aims were slightly different to mine and we have different strengths. I also think - genuinely - that building on a strong, related study can make yours seem more weighty/necessary - that you're contributing in a field that other people care about as well as you. And in the end I didn't say all that much about them. Obviously it depends on the field, but in mine, it's enough to add a footnote or two ('for an account of x, see Smith's 2010 study...) and a sentence or two like 'Smith has convincingly argued that...' Would that work for you?

Just popping on this thread for a bit of inspiration and I think I've found it with you Dotty - hurray for submitting! Have you got a viva date yet?

I've had a real struggle lately in the last 6 months or so. My funding ran out at the end of last academic year, but I had some funds to keep me going til my part-time job started last month. However, rather than the winter months being "now is the time to finish" the time was consumed with anxiety, doubt and lots of family health worries going on. I was in a right pickle in January I have to say. So I suspended my phd retrospectively to buy myself more time....
Now I've got the juggle of working 28 hours a week and getting written up. I still find it hard to believe I will ever get there :/ Unfortunately the work isn't a permanent contract so like you BigWellie I've also got the job/money worries looming as I'm the breadwinner in our house.

Hello everyone - just popping in to boast/update - my viva was this week and although it was a slightly odd and unsatisfactory experience, I am done! A few typos to correct, and one missing reference, which I should be able to do in a morning, and I am DrDotty. Thanks everyone for all the support and encouragement. No one finds PhDs easy, and combining them with work and parenting is obviously a particular challenge, but I'm pleased I did it.

(And hope things are a little better for you miffy?)

Congratulations Dotty2! Well done.

Wow! well done Dr Dotty! You have done it!!!!

Do tell us more about the viva if you have time. So what next?

Things same-same for me. The external worries aren't SO bad but the time pressures still there and trying to remind myself that I will get to the end eventually... but finding it hard to believe!

Thanks both. Well, the viva was just odd because it was so short - around 45-50 minutes. I guess that was because they didn't have any major worries, but I still felt that they could have asked a few more challenging questions - for quite a lot of the time they were just making suggestions for things I could also consider if I wanted to turn the study into a book, but all the time saying 'but we understand that Phds are finite in scope'. So I was just nodding, saying 'that's a valid point' and writing the idea down - so it was hardly a defence. I'm probably being very silly and self-indulgent, but it just left me feeling a bit flat - it would have felt like more of an achievement if I felt I'd been through the mill. I suppose I'd been giving myself a much more challenging viva in my head before hand - but of course it's good, really, and I should be celebrating the ease of it all.

What next? Well, I am finishing my corrections right now (just typos, really) and then am going to put it to one side for a few weeks, and then start working out what and where to publish - I'm thinking of a series of papers. There's basically one prominent journal in my field which both practitioners and academics read, and I want to get the right paper in that. There's the possibility of an Honorary Fellowship in my old department, which I would like - don't want a full time academic job, I think I want to keep freelancing, but it would be nice to have a toehold in the academic world, and the odd bit of lecturing etc if anything comes up.

And of course you will get to the end, in the end - and will probably miss it when it's done (hard though that is to believe right now!).

Hee hee! I suppose you do feel like you should be grilled and challenged, and mentally prepare for that.
Sounds like you've done a very good piece of work Dotty

Yes I suppose I may well miss some of this PhD life.... tis hard to believe now!

I guess I'm just being glass half empty about it. And I think the thing about finishing is that it's a slightly piecemeal process, with lots of mini milestones. And it's also not collective - not like all your friends doing finals at the same time. But I've done my corrections now, so just need to pay to bind the thing, and I'm properly done. Time to think about the publications!

I'm sorry - I'm posting this without knowing anyone or introducing myself. I feel really at sea and I guess I feel that other PhDs might be able to understand.

We had DS nearly 2 years ago. I was in the middle of a phd, took a year out for mat leave (paid thankfully) and I'm now coming to the end.

I always knew I wanted a career in academia- it may or may not come off, depending on whether my phd works out the way I want it to and whether I'm lucky.

We'd talked about having another a while back and in my head it's always been: 1. Finish phd 2. Get job with mat leave 3, get pregnant when I'm settled!

But I'm 36 this year. There might well be a year or two between completing and getting a full time contract - that's being optimistic - delusional really. And I've just realised that we could well be looking at TTc when I'm 39 or after.

I'm healthy, fit - didn't take me any time at all to fall pregnant when I was 34 - and I don't worry about the idea of being on the slightly older side of motherhood. I'm just worried that we will miss the boat for a career I don't even know I will achieve. Having said that I don't want to jeopardise my career prospects by going back to babydom and not giving myself a good shot. There are also financial considerations. We need another income to live a life we want.

I don't know what I want. I'm feel like I'm flailing around, my phd doesn't feel like it's coming together. I've got 7 months left and I haven't got one complete chapter - I have got 40000-50000 words, but it's a mess and way over the word limit on what should be 2 chapters and a bit of an intro.

I feel really down about not having the family I want and never getting the career I want. I feel like a useless waste of space.
I guess I just want to know -
Anyone felt this and come out the other end?

I don't have much direct experience (I had both DC before I started my PhD) but didn't want you to go unanswered.

My DH is a professor and I have heard from him how difficult it is for women to get back on track in his subject after maternity leave. They are often left with a higher teaching/admin load and less research time, because they are out of the loop on research projects and not up to date on new developments. He is in a competitive science though, so don't know how representative that would be.

What about having another before you finish your PhD? Might focus your mind on getting large parts of it done before maternity leave etc.

With your academic career will you be able to move about a bit for postdoctoral positions, I know that's now expected? It's easier with little ones as you don't have to worry about school places and friendship groups etc.

Hopefully someone with more experience will come along and give a bit more helpful advice.