Member-only story
Making The Most Of Your PhD
Top tip: It’s not all about the research!
I had never thought about doing a PhD until about 6 months before I started really thinking about it with intention. I perhaps didn’t have the time to form particular assumptions about what doing a PhD should look like therefore. My PhD was part-time exploring psychological factors in irritable bowel syndrome, whilst I worked part-time on a large randomised control trial on this subject as a research assistant. The project would supply the data and subject matter for my PhD. I therefore perhaps didn’t have the typical PhD set up: Sole ownership over a project that you orchestrate almost entirely on your own with limited feedback. However, I knew plenty of PhD researchers who I shared the office with who’s experiences were more in line with that.
Nonetheless in the first half a year of my PhD (designed to be completed in 4 years), I felt myself well and truly adrift, shrouded in self-doubt, uncertainty, acute imposter syndrome and a floundering of purpose. I have it on good authority that this is actually a necessary part of the process of becoming acclimatised to academia. So lesson number one, if you feel like this do not give yourself a hard time, or interpret this to mean you’ve made a dreadful mistake. Here’s what I’d suggest instead:
