PhD: Should I walk away or should I stay?
Dr. Sherran Clarence (@PhDgirlSA) is an Honorary Research Associate at Rhodes University; and Managing Editor of Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning, and Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory. In this story, she talks about the difficult decision she had to make of quitting her PhD, when it wasn’t aligning with the other things going on in her life at the time.
This story was published on June 24, 2014, on Dr. Clarence’s blog, ‘How to write a PhD in a hundred steps (or more)’ (available here), and has been republished here with her permission.
I have been thinking recently about my PhD journey because I am trying to write a paper about the challenges of writing a PhD thesis. I’ve been re-reading my research journal and old emails between my supervisor and myself in an effort to piece the journey together more clearly. It’s easier when you are finished with your PhD to look back and see things as not having been as difficult as they were. It may seem to readers of this blog that my own journey was a bright and shiny thing, especially given the ‘I am finished!’ posts I have been able to write in recent months. This is not completely so, and in writing this post I hope I can perhaps help those of you who are in a tough spot now and asking yourself, ‘Do I really want/need a PhD? Wouldn’t my life be easier if I just quit and tried again later when my life is less busy?’ — or some version of that.
This is what I asked myself at the end of 2010. I had a tough year in 2010, workwise and personally. I was in a new job that required a lot of my time, effort, and headspace. My kids were very young, 3 and 7, and needed a lot of me. I started my PhD in February of that year and had no idea what I was doing, and all the months I spent reading and thinking drained rather than energised me. I ended 2010 feeling less clever than I had ever felt, and more tired than I remembered feeling before. I had no clear direction for my PhD, I had not done enough to write anything coherent or sustained, and I felt lost and wrung out. I just didn’t want to do it. I resented the push from my university to get a PhD — the strong sense I had that I would not be taken seriously if I did not do so. I felt guilty taking family time to work on my PhD, and I resented missing out on trips to the beach or the park because I needed to be chained to my desk, reading and writing for a PhD I increasingly did not want to be doing. I was pretty miserable and I blamed the PhD. It was not a productive or happy place in which to be.
Want to know more about Dr. Clarence’s PhD journey? Read her full story here.
