364 times I almost quit, and 1 time I didn’t
Warning: long, rambley post
As hard as it may be for me to believe or understand, today marks exactly one year since I started this blog. Something that initially started as a desperate attempt to reconnect with my studies actually became an incredibly important part of my life. While I try to be transparent about my journey, there have definitely been times where I have undermined how bad I was feeling, partly because I don’t think it’s anyone’s problem but also because it went against this idea I had of forcing myself to be more positive about my work. However, when I was trying to think of what I could do to celebrate one whole year of sharing my successes and failures, of being a part of this community, I thought about all the posts I’ve seen on here. I thought about all the people I’ve seen beat themselves up because they did badly on one exam, or tear themselves apart because they were unproductive for a few weeks. So, I’ve decided to share my own story.
I’ll start by saying that my PhD begun with a massive burnout. Family problems, overworking myself, not eating enough, not sleeping enough, it was just rough. My ability to work heavily suffered because of this, and after just a few weeks I was already starting to wonder whether I’d been wrong to believe I could even do a PhD in the first place. After this, my mental and physical health spiralled very quickly, I isolated myself from my family and my friends, and leaned very heavily on my boyfriend. He handled it like a champ and I am incredibly grateful to have him, but I know that I put him through a lot during the first year of our relationship. Things got worse as my supervisor started being more and more strict on me. Not necessarily because of anything I’d done, but he knew at the time that I wasn’t very confident and it was easy for him to crush me whenever he needed to let out some anger. He would forbid me from doing experiments, tell me I didn’t understand anything about the project, ask me repeatedly if I was sure I could actually pull this off, generally just bring me down as much as he could. I couldn’t focus on anything. I couldn’t work for more than 5 minutes without getting distracted; it would take me days to get through a single research paper. I didn’t have the confidence to do anything in the lab. On top of this, my upgrade kept being delayed and I felt more and more that I was falling behind, especially when comparing myself to the other students in my group. It was a dark time, and despite ample support and weekly therapy sessions I truly spent almost 2 years at what I’ve now come to refer to as ‘the bottom of a well’, which is what it felt like. I could see the light peeking out at the top, so so far away from me, and I could hear all the people around me living a life that I couldn’t even imagine for myself.
Yet, despite coming home every night and telling my boyfriend “I’m going to quit my PhD”, I never followed through. I got up every morning, I made my bed, I got ready, I went to the lab, and I did the best I could. Granted, ‘the best I could’ wasn’t a lot, but it was better than nothing. Something I couldn’t quite place was keeping me from giving up on my dreams, and I think it’s that faint glimmer of hope in the abyss of my despair that made me start this blog. It was never intended to inspire anyone, I was purely using it as a way of regaining hope about my future, about where my career was headed. It worked far better than I could have ever imagined, and to this day I can’t comprehend how updates on my silly little life have amassed almost 400 followers. Unfortunately, I was still deteriorating quickly and after another massive mental breakdown at the end of last year, I finally went to my GP and was put on antidepressants. Since then, things have gotten much better. It hasn’t been some magic bullet that cured all my ills, but I feel better than I could have ever imagined a year ago. I am a person again. Life is still difficult and it is hard to build myself back up after spending so long an empty shell, but I am making progress every single day.
That, in short, is what I wanted this post to convey. Things didn’t start getting better for me until I started being kinder to myself, until I started giving my body and my mind breaks instead of working myself into the ground. I am still guilty of this a lot of the time, but I am better. A PhD is a giant amalgamation of your failures, of your doubts, of all the times you almost quit but didn’t, and to me that is, at its core, what academia truly is. Regardless of what stage of your life you’re at right now, regardless of the path you wish to go down, you are going to have to fight for yourself. For your voice, for the space you take up, for the things you care for, for your success. You will be tested, you will fail, you will struggle, and then you will succeed. Eat, sleep, stay hydrated, and most importantly, be as kind to yourself as you would be to a struggling friend.
Here’s to another year of failed experiments and other silly stuff!
