Blog – A PhD’s Christmas Carol

Once upon a time, in the days approaching Christmas, a young researcher sat at her desk in a dreary research unit. The mournfulness of the cold outside, mirrored in her forlorn face as she struggled to do, well, much of anything really. The computer clocks chimed the hour of one and she sighed at the thought of ploughing through another four hours of goodness knows what. The code wasn’t running, the results weren’t interesting, and it seemed like her whole PhD was one big mess. And so she ventured forth into the unit, in search of a cup of tea.

Everyone else seemed in high spirits, having lunch and discussing their latest findings: Bah. She walked sternly down the long corridor to the kitchen when she was suddenly startled by the appearance of a face in the doorway to her left! A dreadful apparition? No, just her supervisor who smiled and beckoned her in. She explained the current humbug that ailed her – as the year and her PhD began drawing to a close, she struggled to remember the big picture of why she was doing this research at all. It seemed that nothing was working and surely no sane researcher would award a doctorate for the meagre work that she’d completed over the past years. She would never finish the thesis on time and even if she did surely the quality would be of a decidedly questionable nature. He listened and replied supportively that she had shown amazing commitment to her work and that progress is rarely linear – that she was learning an incredible amount and that, although frustrating, her time spent here would not be wasted. She did not believe him. He chuckled slightly and warned her that he would visit again at the hour of three to check in, and so she nodded dejectedly and looked to see him no more, venturing back to her office.

A noise shook her awake as she looked to her clock and saw the hour of three was upon her, and yet there was no supervisor. Perhaps he’d gotten bogged down in grant applications. Suddenly she was blinded by a light from her computer screen and looked up to see… a lot of folders. Folders filled with data and analyses, reviews and presentations, ethics applications and community work. Folders filled with software: RStudio, Zotero, MATLAB, Python, X2Go, and so many more. Software she had never used before her PhD and which she was now able to implement with some proficiency. Folders filled with training logs detailing hours spent in the pursuit of open science, review writing, and best practises for computational modelling. Could she really have done all that? Perhaps she had done more over the years than she had previously remembered. Her eye was drawn to a picture on the desk from her undergraduate degree ceremony – she had learned such an incredible amount since then. She had grown in knowledge yes, but also in skills and confidence. Her younger self couldn’t have fathomed some of the techniques she now used regularly. She rolled her eyes slightly as she internally admitted that perhaps her supervisor was right about some things: she had shown a lot of commitment to her work, and she had learned a lot. There were a lot of worries from the early days of her PhD that no longer haunted her.

But her eye was once more drawn to the clock in the corner of the screen. She decided not to wait for her supervisor anymore, but instead go to him. She left her office once more and ventured out into the unit, but this time saw things a little differently. As she peered into the office across the way she saw a group of master’s students, laughing and talking about their latest lecture. The struggles and joy of being totally and utterly lost when engaging with something new. She smiled and moved on to the next office, where a fellow PhD student worked in darkness desperately trying to get code running before the day’s end. She marked their restless misery but then immediately thought of all the times she had seen them thriving. Heard their amazing presentations and wished that her work could be of such a high calibre. It seems that PhDs do indeed have their ups and downs for all of us, even the candidates whom we may envy and think have never had the same difficulties as we. She knocked on the door and stayed with them a while to chat and eat biscuits until she saw their spirits had lifted slightly. As she walked along a wry smile came to her face as she internally conceded a few more points to her supervisor. Perhaps it was true that progress was rarely linear and that we all get frustrated as part of the process. The fear of being stuck at this stage of her studies began to abate slightly, as the haunted feeling of being perpetually behind ebbed.

It was then that she heard the distant sound of cheering in the common room and walked down to see what was happening. She was met with a room of smiling faces and handed a glass of prosecco as she realised one her friends had just passed her PhD viva. She hugged the newly minted doctor who was still a little numb with shock. One of the examiners turned to leave and as they did shook the new doctor by the hand and told them how wonderful it was to read their work and that they’d love to talk further. There was a grand cheers as the young researcher grinned. She glimpsed the waiting room of the unit outside the door and saw a patient and his wife waiting to go home after a day of research participation. She nodded to herself as the supervisor’s final point made its way into her head: perhaps this wasn’t all a waste of time after all. Perhaps it really would make a difference to her own future, and to others.

She stayed a while to celebrate before heading back to her office, this time with a spring in her step, and she soon stumbled across her supervisor once more. He gave her a smile and a wink as he passed her on the corridor, a final observation echoing as he rounded the corner: “Though they may be different, there are many trends that are the same. And the thing to remember in the bleak midwinter is that PhD’s matter, every single one.”

Rebecca Williams

Author

Rebecca Williams is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. Though originally from ‘up North’ in a small town called Leigh, she did her undergraduate and masters at the University of Oxford before defecting to Cambridge for her doctorate researching Frontotemporal dementia and Apathy. She now spends her days collecting data from wonderful volunteers, and coding. Outside work, she plays board games, and is very crafty.

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