Ph.D.

Postcards to Humanity: My Ph.D. Life

This week I attended Green Templeton College, University of Oxford student presentations and one of them posted a cartoon illustrating how her Ph.D. process felt. It resonated with me as I’m sure many others in the room.

Her description also inspired me to depict my own Ph.D. experience and the challenges I encountered. It reminded me of the Banksy incident, where he intended to present and revise his own work in real time, and even for him, it didn’t go quite as anticipated.

During the Ph.D. process, you often begin with something meaningful to you. It may be somewhat fragmented or ambitious, but it’s something you’ve worked hard to shape in the form of a question, a problem, or an opportunity. Then it enters the world of feedback, scrutiny, agendas, edits, restructuring, and more edits. At times, it can feel as though the original work is being taken apart piece by piece, as if Picasso has gotten his hands on it, and through a multitude of different and opposing lenses your work evolves into something that’s more reflective of a community as opposed to an individual.

Yes, research is about producing knowledge and attempting to answer the unanswered. However, it’s also about developing resilience, humility, patience, and the ability to stay connected to the purpose of the work and the objective at hand, even when the process feels uncomfortable and, at times, absolutely miserable. That is precisely when the debts and doubts creep in. But I will never forget the advice I received from my mentor when I was in the thick of it: Jacqueline, a good thesis is a done thesis!

So, for anyone in the middle of revisions, a dissertation, a thesis, a manuscript, or any project that is being closely reviewed: keep going.

Push through. Stay with it. Protect the heart of the work.
And to Banksy, the balloon is still there :).

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