Hello!
Thanks for coming and taking the time to read this mad little piece of writing. This is my first blog post so we will see how it goes! I'm still learning how to even write a blog but in science, you can't learn unless you do - so here we are!
Today I'm taking the time to write about something that I've been mulling over for the last few months. I'm currently in my second year of my doctorate, and after being in the lab, talking with other PhD students, experiencing some of the ups and downs, I've had an epiphany (one of many I'm sure I will have); PhD life is just WEIRD.
Now this might seem to be quite an obvious thing for some of those reading this. Maybe you've got a PhD or you are an academic, or you are someone who is completely horrified/ amazed by the thought of voluntarily committing to another four years (minimum) of university (No judgement here! I'm horrified by my life choices on an almost daily basis). Maybe some of you are reading this and going 'Well Duh!' or 'Well yeah!'. But hear me out!
When you first start contemplating doing a PhD, you probably type a few things into Google. Something along the lines of 'How do I apply for a PhD?' or 'How do I get a PhD?'. You will probably end up on FindAPhD at some point and then maybe you will find some posts on a blog or website- probably a university website, that has some paragraphs or thoughts by some current PhD students. Ultimately, you will get the impression that a PhD is hard (it is), it may be difficult to get on one (true), you will probably find yourself dealing with imposter syndrome (there's no probably about it- you WILL find yourself feeling that you don't belong there), BUT that it is also incredibly rewarding (in my cases, when my experiments work), you will learn so much (I've learnt a lot in lab and outside lab), and it will ultimately help you with your career (I'll let you know). But no one ever tells you just how weird being a PhD student actually is.
The first weird thing for me was realising that PhD students don't really fit in with your typical organisation of a university lab. As a PhD 'student', you are floating around in this sort of in-between of positioning and status; you are not a staff member but you are also not typical student. You are not an totally unexperienced undergraduate, or even a master's student. You are contributing to research, potentially ground-breaking research at that. You can talk to your supervisors in a way that you could not as an undergraduate. You have more independence than you had before. You attend journal club meetings and lab meetings, and are more or less treated like a paid member of staff. You probably put in more hours than some paid members of staff. Your thoughts are asked, your opinions are sometimes considered. But you are still inexperienced, you still have so much to learn, you are having progress meetings with your supervisors, you are still being guided in what you should be doing. And you still get to enjoy student discounts!
Credit to PhDLaughsMatter
In some cases, you are given privileges of staff, but in other cases, you are subject to student limitations. For example, the other day, I was trying to sort out an IT error with my university owned laptop, called up the student helpline and explained I was PhD. The very helpful man on the other end said 'Oh you need to call the staff number- here it is". Before that, I found I couldn't download some software onto my university laptop - because only staff can have it. Now, I certainly don't want this blog post to be full of complaints. Maybe I find some aspects of the life unfair, but that's a different blog post. What I'm trying to get at is that I find it weirdly amusing that when I'm ordering something or sorting out some bill, and I'm given the option of 'staff' or 'student', I have to think about which one I actually am.
Another weird thing in PhD life is realising that no matter how weird you think you are, there is someone weirder than you around. Here I am using 'Weird' as a compliment. That is probably just as weird. But anyway, using myself as an example, I always thought of myself as the weirdest person around. Then I started a PhD. I now find myself on an almost daily basis thinking 'This person is so wonderfully weird! We are going to be great friends!' It's like the opposite of Catch 22, where crazy people don't know they are crazy, so if you know you are crazy, you're not crazy. Doesn't apply for PhD Students. We are weird and we know it. Question is, were we always this weird or did the PhD life make us weirder?
Your data will probably be weird too. Your experiments not working is part of PhD life (accept it now) and also in scientific life as well. But the way your experiments fail and the data you get when your experiment decides to work will go though all stages of bad to good and everything in-between- including impossible and just plain strange. An experiment I did the other day involving a microscope and flourescent antibodies resulted in these red rings appearing when I was supposed to have nice blue nuclei and hopefully green stains. It looked like someone had pressed their finger against the microscope, and none of my supervisors know what it was. One word for it - weird! Actually, this happens when your experiment works as well. One friend ran an experiment and realised at the end that she hadn't done an essential step that if you don't do it, the experiment won't work. Weirdly though, the experiment did work! (For those scientists interested, she didn't remove the green strip on her gel when doing an SDS page).
Maybe it's also weird that we have all just accepted that we will have imposter syndrome. Instead of trying to work on that feeling of being inadequate and working together to combat it, we just sympathetically smile and say something along the lines 'Yeah, totally normal. Welcome to PhD Life!' Is it weird that we consider Imposter Syndrome as normal? Is it weird that all PhD students get imposter syndrome in the first place? What I do find a little weird is that we as a bunch consider it strange when a PhD student doesn't experience imposter syndrome. A possibly weird thought I had about imposter syndrome I had the other day was this; 'It is so nice that we are all depressed together!'.
Credit to Kayleigh May (Pinterest).
This blog post has run a lot longer than I had planned so to wrap it up, I'll give some examples of the weirdest things I have done or said during my PhD and some of the weirdest things I have heard or seen in and around the lab.
1.Being very happy that my cancer cells grew overnight. And then having to explain that I was talking about the flasks of cancer I had in the incubator.
2.A 'friendly' argument between a medical student and a doctoral student about the title of 'doctor'.
3. 'Sorry I can't come tonight- I can't leave my cancer cells'.
4 .'I'm sorry I'm late- the cells wouldn't grow'.
5.Falling down the stairs because I couldn't decide whether to go back to lab or go to the canteen (I ended up going to neither and went to A+E instead).
6.'Yeah I know he's a dick but that's just normal academic behaviour'.
7. 'No I can't leave earlier- the cells aren't ready'.
8. Calling the cells in the incubator every name under the sun because they just aren't behaving.
9. Considering the growth of cells as good or bad behaviour, as if they are actual children.
10. The mantra of most PhD students at some point in their PhD: 'Well, it could always be shittier'.
11. Being trusted with ground-breaking novel research... but also managing to burn your breakfast and spill the coffee.
12.Sometimes you are perfectly rational human, other days you are an overachieving person, some days you think that you have offended the Gods of PhD and now you are cursed and your cells are laughing at you.
Ultimately, PhD life is at the best of times chaotic. At the worst of times, it is a complete and utter clusterfuck. You are on a boat that is sinking into kraken - infested waters (I'm not typing shark infested- I feel bad for them), and as your foot touches the water, you realise that you didn't feed the cells. But at least there are other people on the boat with you - and maybe one has found a kraken- resistant lifeboat somewhere.
Goodnight!
Jess x
