Interesting Links for 31-01-2013
Jan. 31st, 2013 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Democracy takes time - how the Arab Spring isn't likely to run any more smoothly than Europe's flowering of democracy did.
- Teenage Girl Blossoming Into Beautiful Object (The Onion is spot on, as usual)
- The 23-year-long game of tag.
- Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.
- Anyone suggest decent deodorants?
Brilliant student.
Date: 2013-01-31 02:08 pm (UTC)Brilliant student: I went into my PhD with every advantage you could think of, financial and emotional support from my parents, about as mentally stable as anyone I know, very high self-confidence, healthy and able-bodied, strong support network, the works. And yes, I'm female but I have been socialized in ways that feminists regard as male: I pretty much expect to be taken seriously in all situations and I've always been encouraged in my ambitions and had plenty of role-models and have never had to use up my energy fighting sexist microaggressions, much less overt sexism or sexual harassment. And with all those advantages, my PhD was a soul-killing ordeal;
I am not trying to put down your experience, because I've seen it often enough to know there is truth here, but having seen my brilliant ex-boyfriend struggle, and several other brilliant friends not make it, I wonder if that was half the problem. A PhD is a very late stage to discover that you are just one among many.
I am not brilliant. I graduated with a 2i. I have never been top of the class at any time in my life. I was warned ahead of time that a Phd could be deeply boring at times, and it was. I was a feminist, but I was also working class and spent most of my time at uni feeling inadequate. I was also very sick (I weighed 6.5 stone the week of my viva, having been diagnosed with celiac--finally--seven days before). I also did not get a grant and worked as a visiting lecturer for the first two years of my PhD and had a full time job after that. I mention these things only because you frame this piece in the way you do. I am no superwoman. Very far from it.
At no point was I ever in a position of the kind of expectations you outline (my family regarded a PhD as some kind of failure).
I loved my PhD. I loved my supervisor (who I will name, Professor Edward Royle, at York), I loved my research, I loved writing up. I loved the articles I wrote, the people I worked with and the mentors I found (tho I would like to note that most of the feminist women in my area were very hostile, and seemed to be committed to "only room for one at the top", and I benefited from the mentorship of older men in the end. I know that's a kind of privilege).
The thing that always kept me going, and it is what I say to applicants now, is that I never thought of the PhD as anything other than the PhD. It wasn't a route, it wasn't a stepping stone, it was the thing I desperately wanted. And the other thing that kept me going was a hell of a lot of experience of failure, so that when things went wrong, that was just par for the course, and while my brilliant colleagues fell by the way side, I did the solid tortoise trudge.
This is the advice I give to my PhD students.
1. Only do a PhD if you want to do a PhD. There is no other good reason for doing it.
2. Have a project on the side: when you get bored, work on the project (ie never stop altogether).
3. Build up networks, and feel free to talk to people other than me.
4.Be a tortoise: all that matters is that you get there in the end.