#phd hell

[phrenic-a]

Just got reprimanded by my supervisor for not sending him my dissertation yet so im going to update this post every time i work on it until i send it.

[cicaklah]

As a former academic I have chosen a job where I never have to do academic style writing again...apart from on friday, where I had to rewrite a methods section to 'make an argument'.

I did this for years and every time it made my skin crawl. I detest it. It makes me want to be sick. It rips open all those years where nothing I wrote would ever be good enough, that even if it was literally just a statement of fact it had to be backed up in triplicate with other people's research. I don't know why this upsets me so violently. Well I do, it's unprocessable PhD trauma, and it's weird as someone who suffered for literally a decade with sexual violence based trauma that the bullshit of academia has put me in the same place, but to my shame it has. And ironically more people would probably be sympathetic to that than the trauma that defined my 20s.

Anyway my client has emailed good job team the methods section is perfect no notes and now I'm going to look for a new therapist.

Abolish the academy. Quit your PhD.

(the irony of googling PhD trauma and being offered an advertisement for...the PhD programme I was on. They couldn't make it up.)

[oranzhs]

the academic gods were merciful and i will be able to take one exam in mid-June and the other in early September.

NOW I NEED TO LOCK THE FUCK IN AND CRAM A 500 PAGE BOOK IN ~2 MONTHS

[ardellian]

I guess it's time I just accept that 90% of this stupid thesis is going to be written between 23PM and 5AM on nights between Sunday and Monday because apparently my brain refuses to work without being motivated by pure terror.

Sigh. I thought adulthood would somehow solve this but I'm 30 now and here I am, still.

0/10 would not recommend.

[cicaklah]

The last one of my PhD friends is doing her viva this week - slightly bittersweet because of the whole PhD hell I went through but never got any of the perks, but that doesn't mean we get to sit around. She's flying back home the next morning, so I can't buy her flowers. So.

I am planning on making 5 more before Friday, one per day. Wish me luck!

[oranzhs]

email sent now i can walk in circles until i get an answer that decides my fate

[cicaklah]

whenever I see a post about someone doing a phd on fanfiction I remember the amount of literally traumatising bullshit I had to read during mine, the amount I cried over the things I read and the bullying I endured, the amount I saw my friends suffer, the people I know who genuinely didn't survive it, how close we all came, and I didn't even finish it, and its like, no one should have to do that. why did anyone tell me I had to do that? I could have done it on fucking anything.

at the same time do not get me wrong if you ARE doing a phd on something that isn't literally designed to traumatise you: this is your at-least-annual reminder that academia is a pyramid scheme, you will never be a professor, there is happiness to be found outside the academy, I promise, I promise, I promise. the best time to quit your phd is at the start, the second best time is now.

[oranzhs]

ill have to lock in this year at uni since its my last academic year

last year was a bit of a bust in some ways mostly to my own mentals which im embarrassed about but sometimes you gotta take the L

kinda hate how i caused problems for myself but spiraling into anxiety only makes it worse

i mean i still have a year nothing is truly lost

i just always feel guilty and stupid because i don't have an 'excuse' for the things i didn't do aside from 'i was too depressed to work on it'