PhD Journal: A View from The Difficult Middle
This month marks the official midway point of my PhD. Technically, I've been doing a PhD since October 2020, but the funded time has been elongated by a year of maternity leave and a switch from full-time to part-time. Recently I did the maths and realised I have the equivalent of 1.5 years of full-time funding remaining. PhDs provide surprisingly few official milestones to mark the passage of time with (and essentially none between the confirmation process at the end of the first year and… submitting your thesis) so I thought it was worth acknowledging this one.
I've been trying to work out how I feel about hitting the halfway mark. Is this the hardest part of the PhD for me? Only time will tell. Three years (double this for part-time PhDs!) is a long time to maintain motivation on one project. You think you have a sense of this going into the PhD, but (for me at least) you really don’t. Before starting the doctorate, projects I worked on could absolutely span a year or longer, but these were never my only project. You may have side projects alongside the PhD - writing papers, organising conferences, undertaking modules to enhance your knowledge or skills - but the PhD project dominates your time long no other. Spending so much time and energy focused on one thing has pros and cons; on the one hand, it's a pleasure to spend most of your time reading, thinking, and writing about a topic that genuinely interests you. On the other hand, the Dunning-Kruger effect is real and can make you feel perpetually on the back foot.
Owing to this, I think the middle of the PhD is a prime candidate for finding yourself in what Professor Inger Mewburn (AKA the Thesis Whisperer) has termed 'The Valley of Shit'.
"The Valley of Shit is that period of your PhD, however brief, when you lose perspective and therefore confidence and belief in yourself. There are a few signs you are entering into the Valley of Shit. You can start to think your whole project is misconceived or that you do not have the ability to do it justice. Or you might seriously question if what you have done is good enough and start feeling like everything you have discovered is obvious, boring and unimportant. As you walk deeper into the Valley of Shit it becomes more and more difficult to work and you start seriously entertaining thoughts of quitting."
While I haven't taken an extended holiday to the Valley of Shit yet, I probably visit for a quick cuppa at least once a week. It's never crossed my mind to quit, but this is probably due to a strong case of sunk-cost fallacy rather than any kind of mental fortitude. I do subscribe wholeheartedly to Inger's advice on what to do if you find yourself in the Valley of Shit - just keep walking (or perhaps, just keep swimming). Keep doing things to move your project forward, even if at this moment you think it is rubbish and there's no point to any of it. As Inger wisely reminds us, "Remember that you are probably not the right person to judge the value of your project or your competence right now."
One thing I wasn't prepared for was how much my research project would continue to change and evolve as the PhD went on, and how unsettling that would feel at times. My current project shares a family resemblance with my original proposal, but fundamental aspects of the research design are different as are the kinds of research questions I'm asking. My methodology has developed from a mixed-methods approach to a wholly qualitative one, drawing on a narrative interview style that was new to me. Prior to beginning the PhD, I'd had no exposure to narrative research, yet the concept of narrative has become a pivotal aspect of the study. It's informed my approach to conducting the interviews, interpreting the data, and how I understand meaning and reality.
A confession: I'm not sure if I'd come across the words epistemology or ontology before starting the master's of research that directly preceded my PhD. If I had, I certainly couldn't use them in a sentence. Being exposed to social theory and research philosophy for the first time through the MRes and PhD has profoundly shaped my research project. It has brought me to the concepts of narrative, 'Big D' discourse, socially mediated subjectivities over internally arising identities, Foucault, and eventually feminist poststructuralism. None of these featured in my original proposal, yet they have ended up being critical to my thinking about the kinds of knowledge this project can produce.
From this vantage point of the halfway mark, my number one piece of advice to anyone considering doing a PhD would be to make sure you choose a research problem that genuinely interests you. I think it also greatly helps - if you're in the social sciences at least - if you are interested in 'research' itself. By this, I mean: I don't think that having a passion for the topic of your research is enough on its own. As well as spending day-in-day-out doing research, you will have to spend a lot of time reading/thinking/talking/writing about your methodology. I don't know if I would be in a good place with my PhD if I didn't get real enjoyment out of learning about and pondering what it means to do research well.
Eighteen months in, and my project is starting to fill out. I have a sense of where my study could sit within existing bodies of research. I'm over halfway through my fieldwork and have a good idea of how I will approach analysing the data. I write regularly. But I've learned that comparison is the thief of joy in a PhD, just as it is in other areas of life. It's difficult, but I try not to worry too much when I read that someone else had written x amount of their thesis by the stage. I tell myself to just keep showing up, doing the work, trusting - and trying to savour - the process.
Image credit: Bruno Nascimento