Today I had lunch with an old friend who's also a scientist, also a woman, and who also did her postgraduate work at Melbourne Uni. When she heard that I am feeling more than a little lost, she said that everyone feels this way at the beginning of a PhD program, particularly one without coursework. She thinks she did about 10% of her PhD in her first year (and about 80% in the final six months), which sounds about the same as my master's. At the beginning, there's so little guidance, so little structure. I suppose the main goal of this first year can be succinctly summarized: know more. So I'm reading and taking notes on what I'm reading and looking for more things to read and then reading them and taking notes and reading more. This process involves little action, little doing. And the more I read and learn, the more I realize how little I actually know. At the end of the day, it's all quite unsatisfying.
Which brings me to today's metaphor. This first part of a PhD feels a lot like trying to get a truck out of sand: lots of going nowhere interspersed with brief moments of movement that, ultimately, don't really get you anywhere either. And the whole time, your heart's beating fast enough to blow a rib because you're so afraid of being stuck in this place permanently. And you're trying all sorts of different approaches (reversing, rocking, sticks under the wheels, rocks under the wheels) but with a certain overtone of panic that makes it hard to give any one approach the time and attention it requires, all the while cycling between fear (How long before someone comes along?) and intense jubilation (The truck moved - it's going to wo--). After what feels like an eternity, you wear yourself out enough to calm down and commit to one approach. You dig several layers of rocks in under the tires and, miracle of all miracles, you manage to pop out of the hole you're in and you're rolling - you're rolling! - and you can't stop or turn around or do anything but drive steadily forwards until you're back on solid ground.
Not that I've ever been in this sort of situation.
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3 comments:
are you trying to tell us to drive hummers? that's weird for an environmentalist phd candidate.
the solution to this problem inevitably involves sleeping with kangaroos.
i find it much easier to just not get yourself stuck in the sand in the first place.
maybe you're just looking at it from the wrong angle ... or perhaps it's late at night and it's dark out.
i do recall a time when we got stuck in the sand and i was all like "i don't think that's a road," and you're like, "no, i think this is it," and i'm like "no, it's not" and you're like "yeah it is" and then what happened?
that's right ... you signed up for a PhD.
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