The Mad Ravings of a Final Year PhD Student

So in my financial state of the union, I reflected on a bunch of a random money thoughts in my head these days.

Midlife is feeling pretty strange money-wise. Midlife after deciding to return to school even more-so, but I suppose I have always trusted what people say about regretting what they don't do more than what they've done at the end of their lives. So I will aim to continue leaning into that mentality. Today's reflections are more like the academic state of the union.

The YOLO is strong again as I approach what is maybe my final free(ish) summer. Technically, PhD students do not have summer off, but I've found that in July and August everyone disappears and it's just me and my research deadlines, which is far easier to manage than me, my research deadlines, my teaching and grading obligations, random requests from supervisors, commitments to my research centre, and random requests from our department staff to help organise things.

The goal for the end of this summer is to have a thesis ready to turn in this September. To achieve this, I need to finish redrafting my two case study and my workshop chapters, as well as my discussion chapter. And I have to write the conclusion chapter.

I have been struggling with the two case study chapters. The first draft I sort of just spit out all the data related to the key themes in a chronological retelling from each interview participant and also reported my observations and risk analysis of the performance at the beginning. This did not go over well with my supervisors and the chapters were way too long.

And my workshop chapter is just breaking my brain entirely. I'm trying to write up an experience of practice-as-research. Part of the point of practice-as-research is the doing. Usually you present the thing and do it as part of your thesis but there are too many outside factors that have to align for that to work out, so this is a discussion of what happened in the workshops more than the actual practice-as-research, though there is some reflection on that and there were some survey elements that provided useful data collection.

But these three messy drafts did let me draft a discussion post, that my one supervisor just absolutely skewered with comments this week, and in some of the chaos in writing that, it clarified to me how to redraft the case study chapters. So I did that over the last month, but they are still not right.

And so I'm in a panicked procrastination state at the moment. I think I need a little time away from the whole thing but I haven't really managed to make that happen yet. I am heading home to visit family and going camping over the weekend, so I'm hoping that provides a similar reset to the Venice trip I went on with my partner last year that sort of cleared my head and I magically realised how my introduction and literature review should come together on the plane ride back.

Relying on magic. This is a solid stage of the PhD.

I also just laughed in a really unhinged manner after writing that.

Things are going well.

Also this summer is this visit to family in the States, my BFF visiting for two weeks to wander England and then go for a long weekend to Dubrovnik and a trip to Egypt with my boyfriend, brother and sister-in-law. I also won a small prize in a school competition that must be spent on research funding and I have a pipe dream of getting them to fund a trip to see A Morte do Corvo in Lisbon, which is a stretch but if that happens summer would also include a quick pop over to Portugal at the end of June.

And I have to retake my driving test, which I failed two weeks ago. So that was cool.

In theory, I need to submit these two case study chapters and the workshop chapter to my third supervisor, who is like a scary strict miracle worker, by the end of the month. Then I've got to fix the discussion chapter and write the conclusion in June. Hopefully, they will all get back to me with their comments by mid-August and I will have about a month to fix this thing to stay on track for submission.

I also realised this week that with these new plans, I will almost certainly finish up too late to go to the graduation ceremony in January, so that will have to be in July now. Which is a little upsetting because if I go back to my normal working life, I might not be able to go. I can't imagine turning down a longer or well-paying job just to go to some silly ceremony. So that has been a bit of a bummer and not the best motivator.

So that's how things are going with school. Is anything in your life pushing you towards a nervous breakdown these days?