So I stayed on to study a PhD at the same campus I studied my undergraduate course and I will be the first to admit that watching all my friends talk about travelling and their new jobs was the worst self-inflicted torture. The countless uploads of photos from said travels could easily send me into a spiral of darkness and jealousy as I realised I am now in my 18th year of education and have at least 3 more to go!
Classic questions such as, “What is your thesis on again?” resulting in me (for at least the 489th time) trying to explain the basics of wheat genetics followed by, “So what job do you plan to do once your finished?” is enough for me to want to bang my head against a wall!
Just to clarify, a PhD is a real job! We don’t get massive holidays at Christmas or Easter (bonus point, we also don’t have exams! YIPPEE!), we also tend to miss out on weekends when experiments start piling up, but we are responsible for our own progress and success.
Getting “The Guilts” is a phrase my fellow PhDers have recently started using. Any time not spent thinking about what next step the research could take or how to improve that last experiment results in a serious self-mental telling-off, followed by hours of feeling like you don’t deserve to be on the programme or that you’re a scientist imposter who looks the part but has no real idea what’s going on!
We’re really quite hard on ourselves, and yet we’ve thrown ourselves into a world with experts in their respective fields and very little introductory literature on topics that are ultra-specific. Our workloads exponentially increase and demonstrating in labs for undergraduates who still smell of last nights drinking excursions is enough to make you die a little inside.
And yet, for all my moaning, there is something fulfilling about doing a PhD. The opportunity to become an expert in a field you have chosen and to actually carry out experiments you have planned from start to finish is brilliant. Suddenly those hours spent planning and fretting melt away and are replaced with research and data that you have done yourself!
Getting a stipend to research something that could impact agriculture and help alleviate the food problem currently facing the global population is satisfying to me (even though that money seems to fly out my hands every pay day).
Also, having access to some of the latest research papers and slowly understanding all of that jargon scientists love to use means brain points for me!
The reality is a PhD is my first real job in the scientific research sector. It is terrifying, a lot of hard work and extremely rewarding all at the same time. The fact that my cohort of friends has moved on to something new seems to be terrifying them equally as much, regardless of what job sector they’re in. To top if off, in four years time I get to wear the goofiest graduation outfit, become a Dr and potentially continue to impact my chosen area of expertise. It’s been an interesting few months with plenty of ups and downs already, but I’m glad I chose to stay in education and can honestly say that I enjoy what I do for a living. Roll on the next 4 years and once again, Merry Christmas!
WheatAreYouOnAbout 