Reflections of a part-time PhD student
This term marked the beginning of my third year as a PhD student, and for me it also marks the beginning of the real work!
To this point I’ve covered in full-time terms, about 18 months, and in those terms I am definitely on track to be done on time, having completed my upgrade before the summer.
Completing my upgrade means that data collection and analysis can begin! Okay yes I have loads more reading and writing to do but over the summer up to now I have thrown myself into collecting my data (questionnaires and interviews) and am spending every spare minute checking transcriptions, which is as tedious as it sounds, but it has allowed me to start making initial notes on common themes, so it’s worth it!
But that’s not what this blog post is about, I have another one planned talking about some of the research itself, but here I thought I’d talk a little about being a part time PhD student while juggling a busy full time job and trying to have a life!
Structure
I have been lucky enough to have a very supportive manager and the first thing I did when I started the PhD was negotiate a condensed week. So while I still work full time hours, I work them squished into Mondays-Thursdays so that I can have Fridays off to get a little brain space. As I manage a team and a service I still check in, though my team and I are the only ones that know that. The rest of the world only knows I don’t work Fridays, but my team know I usually open my email a few times during the day and can step in to things if they need it. They usually don’t, they are pretty brilliant, but I like being there in ‘lurk mode’ as they call it in case of emergencies. To my mind it’s unfair on them for them to be unsupported one day every week. Holidays are one thing, but 1/5 of their working time without a manager to support them feels unfair to me. But that’s me. I can’t leave well enough alone!
But anyway, the PhD.
This condensed week has allowed me to create a structure to life which as far as I’m concerned is the secret to sanity! I work Monday-Thursday, study Fridays and only one day over the weekend, giving myself a day off. With this day I can sleep in, spend time with my husband (he does most of the housework, isn’t he the best!), and just generally give my brain a break. It’s not the ‘treat it like a job’ approach that many ‘how to PhD’ courses advocate, but when you have a full time job it’s the closest I can get and I would advocate for finding a structure that works for you as the key to maintaining sanity and momentum in doing something like a PhD.
Anyone that knows me personally and knows my chaotic ND brain will laugh at me advocating for structure but even if it is in my nature to find it hard to stick to, its value is easily apparent; not only will it give you a break, it also allows you to give yourself a break. Now hear me out. This will make sense. When you are studying alongside a full time job, guilt is a constant companion. You finish a long day at work and flomp on the sofa after dinner, you feel guilty for not reading; you attend a PhD seminar during a work day, you feel guilty and overdo making it up; you wake up late on a study day and feel guilty for not taking it seriously… it’s a thing, believe me. Having a set structure allows you to have that time off with less guilt because you can look forward to it, push yourself to get there, make plans. Reward! It’s bribery, it’s totally self bribery, but it works!
Doctoral school and Inkpath points
One of the things that you have to do alongside the study itself is learn how to be a researcher, and you do this by going to classes provided by the doctoral school, library or IT department and earning points, or developing research skills in other ways. The variety of courses provided by UCL is amazing but I have a slightly unique-to-me problem - not only do I manage a number of people that teach relevant courses (which means I have stepped in and taught a bunch of them in the past) and I have experience of teaching study skills and searching skills myself in previous roles, which limits my options! I’m not saying that I wouldn’t learn anything if I did go but I always feel uncomfortable taking up a seat from someone that would gain more from the session. I also am very conscious that it would be quite distracting for the trainer having a colleague in the room, though I did consider offering to go with the goal of providing feedback, but I didn’t follow through on that plan. For the courses that I convene or help to teach, I could still technically get credit, I am there in the room after all, but that feels like cheating! I did discover that there are ways to get points without taking courses and while they are slower to collect it is still doable. For example I can get credits for teaching, going to external events and conferences, and also for other forms of communication so I have been able to claim some points for the blog posts I write for my day job, as well as a conference presentation.
Cocktails with my husband are a favourite way to decompress.
Realisations
Thinking more broadly over the last couple of years, one thing that I didn’t realise is that even though my PhD is very closely related to my day job, it is actually a completely different beast! While I may be reading the same things for work and study, the way you read is different, the way you write and communicate is different, and that is a steep learning curve, even for someone that writes and communicates information for a living. Not that I didn’t think I had things to learn, I mean, why do a PhD if you don’t see it as the opportunity to learn, but I at least thought I had two things going for me; the ability to search and read (okay that one I wasn’t disillusioned in, which is comforting as I used to teach that to students), and the ability to write. It turns out that writing academically is a skill all its own, and my supervisor now just says ‘you’re doing it again’ when I slip into what he calls ‘Blog post’ which apparently is my natural state. Not entirely surprising after 10 years of writing friendly and accessible comms. Oh well, I’m learning and that’s the point!
Other than learning a new way to express myself, I have found it especially hard to context switch from one world to the other, which, despite my structured approach happens more than you might think. It is sometimes necessary to attend meetings or supervisions in the middle of a work day (three busy people to coordinate, you put supervisions in whenever you can!) and being a part-timer you have to make the best you can of doctoral school classes and seminars. For my entire first year, I had a 2 hour department-led research skills class every Tuesday morning. It was great to have, I know not all departments do it and I learned so much about what on earth I was supposed to be doing, but doing that and then going back to my team, in my office, and having to switch back to my day job and spend the afternoon doing one to ones with the team and doing my day job was so exhausting! Even now, when I am doing data collection and accommodating senior members of library staff from all over the country whenever they are free, the effort it takes to switch into student mode and then back again is significant.
Support
Centralised support from my perspective as a part-time student has always felt a little strange and sometimes a bit disjointed or like an afterthought. In my day job I advocate from my position as both a PT and mature student a lot, to the extent that I’m sure some of the Doctoral School team know what I am going to say before I open my mouth sometimes! But this year I have realised something that helped me better understand why support and training feels weird… it’s because being a part-time student is pretty weird, and accommodating that is hard! Not sure why it took me that long to actively recognise something so obvious, but no two part timers are the same. I have a full time job crammed into 4 days and the idea of taking a class in the evening, something offered to accommodate working students, sounds completely awful, but some people can only come to campus in the afternoon or evening because their work is less flexible, or they have caring or other responsibilities to work around. This doesn’t stop part-timers like me feeling a little forgotten and left behind when 90% of communications are aimed at full-timers, but I can now recognise better the efforts to mix up classes and accommodate different schedules.
Musings on the peculiarities of centralised support for the esoteric bunch of part-timers aside, I have definitely gotten lucky in the supervisor stakes. My supervisory team is just the right balance for me, encouragement and critique, one that pushes me to be better and another that reminds me that I can do the thing, and while neither has direct expertise in my specific area, their expertise has brought me to new ideas and approaches. So it’s been really good to build this relationship from day one. The approach encouraged by the department uses a checklist to inform one of the early supervisory meetings, allowing a structured discussion around expectations and needs on both sides, something which I have found very valuable in understanding this brand new scenario, having done my Masters via Distance learning and never having had any sort of academic supervisory relationship before. Not that it stopped there. In the lead up to my upgrade I submitted large quantities of writing for feedback and in the process I got very overwhelmed by the process and rather than telling me that its part of the process, they just wanted to know how they could approach it better or differently, for which I have been so grateful. I have a tendency to push myself very hard, to want to keep up and never give myself any slack and their encouragement and structured care has been an essential step towards giving myself a break when I need one. Not that I’m not still awful at it, but they help me be less hard on myself while encouraging me to keep going.
I can’t end a section about support without saying something about the support I have at home, without which I couldn’t have done any of this. My husband is the one that supported the batty idea of me self-funding a PhD out of my train-ticket savings post-covid (and yes, that is true and doesn’t that make you wince at the implied cost of train travel in my area!) and has always stood behind me when I have doubts, listens to me waffle on about my studies and helps me maintain the structured approach. He also supplies incentives of snacks and wine, and tells me that if I do X amount more I can stop and play a game etc. He also does the lions share of the housework, which definitely above and beyond! Couldn’t do it without him!
And on that note, I’m going to stop waffling and go have dinner!