Still at it

“I am just finishing up my PhD” is a term I used frequently these days. It happens mostly when people ask what I have been up to or, in the situations when I am meeting people for the first time as a means of telling them what I do. For those I am meeting for the first time it does the trick— but for friends and family who ask it is always fraught with a bit of “Oh! You’re still doing THAT?!”

Yep. Still at it. And I will sometimes go on to explain revisions and resubmissions and sometimes just leave it at that. Still at it.

Dani Shapiro writes in her book; Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life “When writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier.” And I would argue that it is the same in a PhD journey. While I acknowledge that I have grown in so many ways, gained heaps of knowledge and will almost, kinda, sorta now claim to be an almost expert in my field… it most certainly has not gotten easier and in fact, I believe it has gotten harder in that ‘the more you know the more you know you don’t know’

As a split location International student (this means my school is on one continent and I  live on another) I am not around people who are also PhD students much.
It is lonely. And even to the few other PhD candidates or recent grads I come across here, explaining what I do can be complicated as the UK and North American systems differ widely. Add the fact that I am doing a practice-based PhD something which can be a thing of mystery to even other students in the UK system, and it gets even more complicated trying to explain myself.

We can all agree, however, that it is hard. And, I am sure we can all agree that it will feel SO good when it is OVER.

But in the meantime… Yep. Still at it.