Here is a ‘diary entry’, from maybe 2011, scribbled on a
loose page from a notebook. (I used to do that sometimes; when I had something
to get off my chest, rip a page out of a notebook and write on it. I can never
throw away any old notebooks; who knows what secrets – memories of hot dates,
etc – there might be in there.)
Anyway, I found this one a few weeks ago, and I am writing
it here, because it is a perfect example of how it feels to REALLY hate your
PhD:
Friday, 18th
October
Met up with my friend
A. today. I was waiting for her outside the restaurant; suddenly, there she
was, this beautiful woman coming towards me, in red lipstick and red scarf. She
liked my furry coat (new), she asked if she could try it on. She was so happy
to see me. I told her that I’m really happy that she might be coming to the
conference; that the earrings I was wearing were borrowed from my little
sister; and that I’m glad to hear all about her encounters with messieurs X and
Y… [some more on the encounters here, which I shan’t paraphrase.]
A. looked amazing: so
beautiful, you could not be more so. I stared and stared at her. I thought:
here, in front of me, is someone who could be a character in a novel. Not me,
not this miserable, sad little person sitting opposite her, who already cried
about three times today, who is trying to get her teeth into this PhD somehow
and cannot; not this loser, but precisely this girl called A., so beautiful, so
‘together’; that’s an interesting person, not me.
I’m going to go work
for 25 minutes now. <3
Ps (later: ) I’m sick
of bursting into tears every time the smallest little thing pisses me off (lost
keys, librarian telling me I have too many books on order, and so on…) I’m sick
of my eyes being eternally tired from crying. I’m sick of worrying and
panicking, and telling myself that I’m ‘too thick to be doing a PhD’. I’m sick
of being friends with E. and A, while I’m doing a PhD at the same time; I want
to be the sort of Friend who is good at something she does, and who is happy
with her little ‘something’, and not this ‘saddest in the group’, the
stupidest, always the most backward. I’m sick of thinking that I don’t know
anything and I can’t do anything right (because I DO know stuff, and I can do
many things, just none of them remotely helpful to this PhD.) I’m sick of going
to meetings for the sole purpose of discussing how rubbish my ideas are. I’m
sick of worrying that I’m stuck doing this PhD, because if I quit it, I’m
hardly likely, in this current ‘economic situation’, to find myself anything
much nicer to do.
I’m sick of all this
stuff, but that’s precisely why I’m still here…
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