Mothers and PhD Students

I am working a little bit on The Thesis, soon to become The Book. Have reread the examiners’ reports (which say nice things and which also suggest many improvements); have opened the thesis and started to reread it, and have been struck by its beauty, clarity, and general amazingness, qualities which I never expected to find in there. (You remember those months on end when I worked and worked, getting more and more tired and frustrated, and no end seemed in sight?... This is what I was doing in those months, it transpires now: polishing, prettifying, making concise, making coherent. Rendering beautiful. It really is not bad, this thesis. To everyone who is struggling hopelessly with their thesis: it may not feel like it right now, but all this hard work IS making it better…)

In other news: this summer I read an article (which I have been trying, and failing, to hunt out again, so I could put it on here) about a group of mothers who were being interviewed because they had written and produced a play about motherhood. These women were speaking about the isolation and depression they had experienced as first-time, full-time mums; their play was their attempt to externalize some of the problems they’d faced, and to counter the the taboo nature of what they were feeling: depressed, lonely, isolated, struggling with a daunting, difficult task. It struck a chord; reading phrases such as ‘I felt alone’, ‘I felt isolated’, ‘It was too hard’, ‘I felt like I was failing’, I wondered if the new mother isn’t essentially facing some of the same issues as the struggling PhD student: a huge and daunting task, for which she feels ill-prepared; the feeling that there is not enough support from others; the feeling that the task in hand (looking after a baby/ writing a PhD project) is so monumentally important that the possibility of failing is not even to be contemplated; the guilt at not being ‘better’, the comparisons with more successful mothers/ colleagues, the feeling that you should be ‘good’ at this and should not be saying ‘this is too hard; I can’t do this.’

Having recently spent some time in the company of friends who have just become mums, and having admired how they cope with caring for their newborn offspring, I think my general observation would be: it IS kind of the same. It’s the same demons we’re all fighting.

It made me wonder: we feel very alone sometimes… and I wonder how many other people there are in this world, feeling just as alone, and falling prey to exactly the same demons, just dressed up in a different disguise. It made me feel a little bit more empathy towards the people I thought I know well, and the new people I meet.

For an earlier blog post on the link between babies and PhD theses, click here.

I heart PhD students

A friend of mine, who is a journalist, has recently written a not-terribly-controversial article, in which she takes issue with some young female beauty vlogger’s attempt to reinvent herself as a ‘feminist’. The issue being that, if one minute you are claiming that ‘teenage girls should love their bodies and faces and should, like, go out without makeup sometimes!’, and the next you are making money by encouraging them to spend their own cash on your preferred tube of mascara, then there is perhaps something amiss there.

Anyway, she published this article, and spent the next day reeling from an unbelievably savage barrage of assault on Twitter. The tweets mostly ranged from unbelievably mean (and unjustified) comments on her personal appearance, to suggestions that she should be sued/ shot/ killed.

Attempting to make light of the situation, she tweeted a joke, saying that ‘next time she’ll publish an article called ‘Why I hate One Direction’. This resulted in her getting tweets like ‘THINK TWICE BITCH’ and ‘I FUCKING DARE YOU’.

I personally sometimes am tempted to write something slightly more racy than my usual repertoire, and publish an article containing my thoughts on feminism/ body image/ global politics/ capitalism/ whatever. The thought of saying something which might be deemed controversial, however, and then having to read stupid and horrible comments about myself all day long, is something which has previously entered my mind, and has more than once stopped my hand from hitting ‘Publish’. Now I remember why.

It made me think, also, that I really DO know how to pick my audiences, don’t I?... I have chosen to write a blog which is more likely than not to be ready by only PhD students. Who, in my experience, are basically the nicest, most logical, rational, sensible people there are. PhD students do not, by definition, read something and immediately react with ‘What utter crap. DIE, BITCH!’… No; the very nature of their training and profession means that they consider evidence carefully; they read critically, but with an open mind; they say things like ‘While one might be tempted to respond by saying ‘DIE, BITCH’, IS there really enough EVIDENCE to suggest…?’ and so on. Things are not just black and white to a PhD student, and anything we do not immediately understand or agree with does not automatically get consigned to the dustbin.

It made me appreciate the fact that I work with, and deal with, and write for, academics and PhD students. It made me remember how, when I was on the verge of PhD despair, a Graduate School Guru who was speaking at a seminar on motivation made me feel better by pointing out that there are many things in this profession to be grateful for, one of them being the company of clever, wonderful colleagues and friends.

You are all pretty wonderful. Keep at it. That would be all.

Anniversary

Tis the anniversary of The End. I am now one year on from the finishing of the thesis. I am cheering for everyone who is submitting their PhD, or who has done so in the last few days.

Today I am working from home. I have a scented candle lit in front of me (recommended by a useful motivational blogger as a pretty thing to have on your desk, to make your work space/ office 'more appealing', and therefore more likely to inspire you to work). I have a cup of tea. I have projects and plans, and ideas and books to read.

I'm still the same as I always was, mind you, I still procrastinate, waste time, wonder sometimes where the day has gone. I still haven't made my six-figure salary (damn) and I still contemplate going off to sing in the street to make some extra money. But I'm much happier. Finishing the PhD has served to make me start taking care of myself, to start treating myself a lot more nicely. I no longer do any of that beating-myself-up stuff that I used to do ('I'm not good enough/ I can't do it/ It doesn't matter what I do, I'll never get there/ This is too hard/ Why do I always do everything wrong?'/ etc etc etc). I don't do that anymore.

It's interesting, too, how I've been reacting differently every time there's a spanner in the works, or a brick wall in front of me. Instead of throwing my arms up in the air and going 'Oh well, too hard', or 'Waaaah! Why can't I have what I want? Why is life so unfair?...', instead I've surprised myself by thinking 'OK, so I can't have it my way. So this means, if I want it, I'm going to have to do it another way. So first I have to do XYZ... And I'm perfectly capable of doing XYZ. Let's do it.'

'I get the feeling that for you, this wasn't so much about getting a PhD', a friend said this summer,'as it was about sorting your head out and working on YOURSELF. YOU were the thing that you had to work on so hard!' And we drank to my success in working on me.

The thing is, I don't mean to brag, but I've noticed some changes. You read enough self-help books, I guess that stuff eventually gets to you. There hasn't been that much of a change noticeable to the outside world as yet. But occasionally, just occasionally, I say I'll do something and then I actually do it. Instead of procrastinating on it for months, and then forgetting it was ever meant to happen, and then wondering why my life is not going anywhere, I've started to make things happen for myself. I've started to notice that the people who get things done in this world are not necessarily the best people at doing those things. They're just the ones who decided to get into action - and they stayed in action. The other day, the Lover noticed this new propensity for actually doing what I say I want to do. He says he finds the new me a bit 'scary'.

'You know, it's actually frightening to think how far you could go, if you really decided to go for what you want to do', he said the other day.

Quotes of the day (from my favourite self-help books, of course) :


'What would you do with your life if you found that you have only six months to live?'

and

'What would you do if you were very bold, and you knew that you couldn't possibly fail at anything you try?'...

Goodness from the Internet - Boost your Productivity

So I was about to start on a tomato (otherwise known as a 25-minute bit of work), but instead I am going to share with you something which someone has recently shared with me, and which I think is going to make this tomato the best and the most effective ever.

Here is an amazing article based on the blog of Cal Newport about boosting your productivity (we've seen his blog mentioned on here before) :

http://theweek.com/article/index/266737/how-to-be-the-most-productive-person-in-your-office-mdash-and-still-get-home-by-530-pm

And here's one specifically for PhD students - this is what I am using today to motivate me to get started:

http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/09/13/deep-habits-jumpstart-your-concentration-with-a-depth-ritual/

Good luck, everybody!

Cloud Nine Hath Graduateth

I went down to the student print shop, where I’d sent my thesis to be bound. One final hard-bound copy, to be delivered to the University library.

I was only stopping by to pay for the thesis. The place binds it and then takes care of the delivery, so you don’t have to worry about it. 

Still, I did just have to ask…

‘Could I just, like, hold it?...’

Four years of work, and forty-odd pounds to produce the library copy, I would kind of like to at least run my hands over the shiny hardback covers.

It was first thing in the morning and the person I had been emailed the thesis to was not there. The guy scratched his head, looked around, checked some shelves, picked up a few theses, in their crisp, fresh binding; looked at them, put them down.

‘No, sorry,’ he said. ‘Can’t find it.’

‘That’s OK’, I said. And I left without ever seeing the finished thesis. I felt a little cheated.

But it’s OK, because the following day I Graduated. I pranced around in a colourful, medievalesque gown. I smiled all day and posed for many photos. By the evening I had lost my voice; probably something to do with screaming with delight throughout the day. Had to resort to mime throughout dinner to express my feelings (which wasn’t hard, given that the main answer to everything was ‘yes, I don’t care, I’m deliriously happy’.)

Graduation was fabulous. I urge you all to have one. Don’t even think about skipping it. Fork out the money, rent the plumage and celebrate with your nearest and dearest. Because you're worth it.

(Because I'm worth it... Cloud Nine does a twirl in her PhD robes)

‘That source of popular wisdom known as “The Hairdresser’s”’

A few weeks ago I went to Toni and Guy’s, for a student haircut, as is my custom.

(By which I mean: a hairdressing student cuts my hair; a fully-fledged grown-up supervises. You pay the student ten quid and you leave looking like a million dollars. This and other money-saving tips are brought to you by ‘I Hate My PhD’!...)

So the student is cutting my hair, the grown-up is chatting away in the corner, and I am doing some important catching-up with the latest copy of ‘Red’ Magazine… when suddenly I start to tune in to the conversation of the grown-up hairdresser lady behind me.

She was telling her trainees: ‘There’s this exercise that they make you do in training sessions sometimes. Imagine a brick wall. Go on, imagine that you are walking along and you come up against a brick wall. What do you do?...’

A wall rose up before me in my mind’s eye. (Go on. Do this exercise. What do you see?...) Brick wall. I stared at my imaginary wall. What do I do?... well, there didn’t seem much I could do. There is an insurmountable brick wall before me. As far as I can see, there’s only one thing to be done: turn around, walk away.

Prompted by her trainees, she went on: ‘What do I do?... I just step over it.’ […] ‘You get some right funny answers when you ask this question in training sessions. Some people just say things like “I would jump over it”, but some people are like “Me, I would smash right through it, with my fists, like this: RAAAAAA!”’

I just step over it. When I envisaged my brick wall, I saw an impermeable, impenetrable structure, obstructing everything, impossible to get past. I turn around and leave – honestly, this felt like my only option. It didn’t even occur to me that a ‘brick wall’ can be small enough to walk around it, climb it, step over it. It made me think, we all have our (imaginary or real) brick walls, and we deal with them so differently; because the way we perceive them is different. How we approach a problem depends so much on our experiences and environment, and our perception of ourselves. There’s no way I can get past this brick wall/ I’ll just step over it. And just to do this exercise, to realise what your perception of the ‘brick walls’ of life might be, is revealing; in itself, that’s perhaps one brick wall gone already…

This and other mysteries of this world I was able to ponder at the hairdresser’s. Life is a wonderful thing sometimes.

Today’s quote (found on the internet many months ago, and now remembered) :

‘The brick walls are there for a reason – they’re there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. The other people. […] Brick walls let us show our dedication.’

And

‘Don’t bail; the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap.’

Cloud Nine has a New Favourite Book

Yes. Yes I do.

It is called

‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying’

And it is by

Marie Kondo.

And I found it completely by accident. I was shopping for books to give to a friend as a birthday present, when this book, with its minimalist, almost-pure-white cover (with just a sliver of red, black and gold) drew me to it, called out to me from across the shop floor: come and see me, come and look at me, you know you want to.

(It reminds me how many of the truly best things you find in life – or, to use the PhD example, some of the best ideas you come up with for your PhD – come to you completely by accident. A big tome gets knocked off the desk and falls on the floor; you bend down to pick it up with a sigh of annoyance, and suddenly you spot it: the page on which the book fell open contains exactly what you need. The chance conversation with a friend over coffee, which suddenly and inexplicably provides you with an answer as to what you should really say in Chapter 3. There is a kind of magic which happens when you just let yourself go with the flow and open your ears up to the universe. By contrast, you can sit diligently for hours on end, straining to come up with ideas, and find nothing. If you clutch at it, it won’t come…)

So anyway. I took my new book home and began to read it almost immediately. It was a Tuesday night. Just twenty-four hours later, I was due to be packed and ready and have a purse full of euros in preparation for a foreign holiday. But the book made me so excited that I resolved that, before I went on holiday, I would start doing what it says. This mammoth task which had been looming before me for many months now – to tidy up, to get rid of some of my things, things accumulated over years of hoarding, of PhD, of never quite having the time to tidy – this crazy task I would attempt that Wednesday, and I would complete a chunk of it before I set off on holiday.

And I did it. Twenty-four-hours after I started to read the book, I had:

-       sorted through all my clothes and earmarked roughly 10 bags of clothes to give away; cycled down with every single one of those bags to the local charity shop

-       found time to go and get the euros, as well as do everything else I needed to do in town

-       tidied up all the clothes that were left, folding them carefully and organizing them

-       managed to pack, eat, have several naps, and leave a (reasonably) clean house.

And it wasn’t hard. And I couldn’t believe how happy I was. I was finally tackling the huge task of tidying up my messy life.

I won’t tell you every single thing the book says, because I think you should buy it and read it (especially if you are a messy PhD student with too much stuff). But one thing which was helpful, and which was the whole reason I was able to get started, was this: the book tells you to tidy not by room, but by category. It says: start with clothes, then move on to books, then papers; miscellaneous things; then, finally, sentimental things like photos. Put absolutely everything you own in each category in one place, like on the floor. The pile might be knee-deep, but no matter. Hold each thing in your hands and ask yourself only one question: does it spark joy?... If the answer is no, throw it out.

As you might know from a previous post, I have always been a massive hoarder, but I really, really don’t want to be one. Every time I have to move house, I sigh and look around the newly empty room I am leaving, and I think’ This place looks so much nicer without all my stuff in it. Why couldn’t I just keep it like this when I lived here?... Why did I fill it with so much unnecessary clutter?...’ Underneath all the piles of paper, all the books, and all the clothes, all the baggage I carry about, I can sense a tidy person, a person with a love of clean blank spaces, just crying to get out. Not an ex-PhD student who sits on the floor in a pair of sweat pants surrounded by piles of mess, but a woman who wants to light scented candles (impossible because papers are fire hazard), drink green tea (where did I put that cup?...), and do yoga (no room on the floor…).

I came back from my holiday and started excitedly on the books.

Now it is late afternoon and the books have been sorted through, even though I found myself stalling slightly over them. And I found an interesting, though not really surprising, thing. In asking myself ‘does this spark joy?’ as I held up, one by one, those academic tomes which I had purchased for my PhD – the ones that cost a bomb and which I wanted to have at home because I was scared that I had not completely understood them, that I would need to quote from them again, that I just had to have them – the answer was pretty much almost always ‘no’. With the exception of a few pretty books, or one or two that are actually interesting on some other level, I found that I would basically be happy to get rid of pretty much all the books I purchased to help me finish my PhD. The saddest thing of all was holding up one particular hardback tome. I asked myself the question ‘Does it spark joy?’ and with a shudder put the book down. Yet it is a book which I shouldn’t be wanting to throw away. It is the academic book in which I published my first academic article. My name is in there, and my words are in there, and I do not want it. I’d rather it wasn’t here.

So I have all these books – they do not spark joy, I know I don’t want to be reading them again – but I don’t feel I can give them away, because … because I feel like I’m not finished with them. About a hundred years ago, just before I finished my thesis, I agreed to someone’s request to write an article about all this PhD stuff. And I’m also supposed to be teaching a few classes again, at the uni which has been my home this year, and which helped me get my grant for this year.

I ask myself, what would the writer of this book say if you told her, ‘I have all these things here that don’t spark any joy whatsoever. I don’t like them and I don’t want them in my house anymore. But I need to keep them because I might need them for my job…’

I have a feeling that she might say ‘You’re in the wrong job.’

***

(As I write this, I have a solution in the back of my mind. Take books down to university library, make generous donation to the relevant library section; pop down there and use the books as and when needed – if they ever are needed – but no need to have them in the house again. Phase out former profession, and thus phase out the need to look at them again. Maybe… Perhaps…)