So I started my own PhD back in 2003.. .which is almost 15 years ago which is a
little bit scary now... but anyway I
started my PhD in physics in 2003 and
initially my project was supposed to be
a collaboration between two different
departments. So someone from another
department (anther PhD student) was
providing samples and then I was
supposed to do various kinds of analysis
on these... and I started with very high
expectations both of myself and of the
PhD program in general... I think this
is true of most PhD students; nobody
starts with low expectations... so I
started working didn't really know what
I was doing and the first year it was
kind of a struggle and it ended up with
the PhD student I was collaborating with
from the other department leaving but
nobody had actually told me... so I was
left in this situation where I was
sending emails but getting no replies
and it looked like my PhD would be
pretty screwed... so at the end of my first
year, start of the second year, I was  shifted
on to a different project... entirely
different project - some of the same
skills but it basically meant learning
some really new stuff starting again
from scratch and again didn't really
know what I was doing but I kind of
maintained these high expectations of
myself I still wanted to do well and
things went on it was a very difficult
project because it was instrument
development and things kept breaking
down and it got to my third year so the
final year of funding and the pressure
had really really really started to
build I didn't have any publishable
results whereas all the other PhD
students in my research group were
publishing papers and it really looked
like they were going to finish on time
but I might not finish ever and so I had
this level of stress that was just
building and building and building and
building I was going into work every day
but not really engaging
so I was stressed I really wanted to do
well but I wasn't working in a very very
good way
I was undermining myself by
procrastinating by as I said showing up
late and not really engaging with the
problems that came up so got to maybe
halfway through my third year I was
working in the lab and doing these very
very very delicate sample preparation
techniques it took two or three days to
get things ready to actually run an
experiment and at the very final stage I
had these little things and I dropped
him so if I basically ever hadn't gone
into work that day I would have been
further ahead than but I actually was as
a result of the work that I had done
it wasn't the first time that this kind
of thing happened it happened several
times throughout the course of the PhD
but this time something inside me kind
of broke as so it wasn't just the
samples that broke it was something
inside me so all that tension that had
been building up suddenly had kind of
just snapped and my swore loudly stormed
out of the lab and didn't know if I was
going to come back so I walked across
the campus thinking I can't take this
anymore I can't take all this stress I
can't take this constant feeling that
I'm not living up to the standard that I
expect of myself or that anybody else
expected me and I thought well
maybe I should just quit maybe I should
find some some other job I didn't quite
know what I wanted to do but I figured
well you know I will find something and
whatever it is it can't be as bad as
they say can't be as stressful as this
so then I started thinking well okay if
I quit
then obviously I've got to tell my
supervisor he'll be disappointed I guess
but I think you'll understand I'll have
to tell my family my friends my
colleagues who me up some of him and
become very close friends but again if
they're disappointed I think they will
understand and so I sat on a bench on
the campus for a little while just
thinking about this and I thought well
okay quitting quitting is an option and
it's not a terrible option but I don't
quite want to leave yet so
few things I can try in a lab so today
I'll go back to lab and try these things
and if they don't work then I'll quit
but I want to make sure that if this is
going to determine whether I leave or
whether I stay I at least want to make
sure that I've given it my best shot and
for once I'm gonna put all of myself
into the work and so I sat there for a
little while longer
built up my resolve calm down a little
bit went back to the lab and just slowed
down
did things basically as carefully as I
could without really worrying about the
end result
so that pressure to perform that
pressure to get the results I wasn't
really worried about it anymore because
I could leave my self-esteem was no
longer tied up in how well I did and so
I took my time did things as carefully
and as meticulously as I could and then
the experiments worked so obviously then
I thought shit now I can't quit so
taught me was that the way I'd been
dealing with my stress the way I'd been
approaching the PhD I've been constantly
undermining myself because I put myself
under so much pressure I couldn't think
creatively I couldn't take care of the
work because so much of myself was was
somewhere to my self-esteem was invested
in it so by just relaxing but then doing
things as carefully as I could
doing things with a lot of effort but
without worrying about the end result
things started to come together then I
applied this to all of the rest of the
experiment for the rest of the time that
I had left and I applied it to the
writing of the thesis so anytime I had
an experiment I tried to put
all of my effort in in a relaxed way and
when I was writing my thesis I tried to
be as focused as I could on getting it
done but without worrying about what the
examiners thought and this simple change
in mindset I think made the difference
between me either failing or just
quitting and going on to get enough data
for a couple of publications having
enough data to be able to write my
thesis then writing the thesis pretty
quickly I did it in just three months
but to a standard that the examiners
thought was one of the best that they
had ever ever read and I passed
surprisingly amazingly with zero
corrections to my thesis and then went
on and did a couple of postdoc contracts
and then went on ultimately to start
coaching PhD students and doing the work
that I do now
all of that came from basically that
breakdown where I stopped worrying about
the end result I stopped worrying about
what it meant about me stop worrying
about what anyone else thought about me
and that was it everything stemmed from
that simple change so think about how
much you're investing in your PhD what
it means to you and whether that's
actually helping you or there it's
holding you back
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