My confessions as a PhD student

Delena-Mae Caagbay (@delena_mae) is a Senior Physiotherapist and PhD Candidate. In this story, she confesses about how she sometimes uses her PhD as an excuse to get out of other tasks that she finds undesirable like household chores.

This story was published on November 3, 2015, on Delena’s blog, Daydream Delena (available here) and has been republished here with her permission.

As a kid and the baby of the family, I quickly perfected the art of getting out of undesirable tasks (in the most endearing way possible). I had this sneaky trick of pretending to sleep to get out of doing all kinds of challenging ordeals a kid faces on a daily basis. An afternoon nap could effortlessly replace such things as doing chores, practicing the piano or merely having to physically walk from the couch all the way to bed (how great is it being carried to bed!).

Now as a full-grown woman, pretending to sleep just feels so… juvenile. I’ve had to step up and actually do the dishes and make my bed. It’s tough being an adult and at times I wonder — if I pretended to be dead, would it get me out of cleaning the bathroom? Worth a try maybe.

Since starting my PhD, I have found my new ‘pretending to sleep’ trick — which has now become ‘working on my research.’

Want to know how Delena uses her research work to get out of undesirable tasks? Read the full story here.