Ph. Done!
Finally my PhD is completed. Finally my PhD is done… or Ph. Done if you will! On October 28th, at 6 pm, after a slugging 4 hour viva voce (usually just called your viva, but means with the living voice, which is typically your PhD exam), I passed my PhD with minor corrections. Having done that I printed and bound my thesis and submitted. I was finished.
So after a 5 month hiatus, I am back with a blog, to tell a short story of how I got there, and share some of the struggles I faced on the way. It was far from a streamline process, but we did it, and when I say we, I really mean we! This was the effort of lots of people in my life, without whom I absolutely would not have made it this far (you can read about them in the acknowledgments of the thesis in the McClay Library at QUB)
So the story begins, at 16 years old, before sitting my GCSE exams, I had to choose my A-levels. How on earth was I supposed to pick what subjects I wanted to study that would ultimately define the rest of my life? I selected the subjects that my friends picked and the subjects that my teachers told me I should do because, that’s how you get a job right?! I was overwhelmed to say the least, so I picked all STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects. That was a mistake, because I loved creative writing and literature also.
The following academic year I began studying (at a stretch) for my A-levels, I was overwhelmed, stressed and anxious. I failed most of my exams, I obtained the lowest grade possible in chemistry, and I spend the entire year of A2 repeating exams. I failed some of those too. I didn’t get into university, I didn’t know what else to do other than go to university, because that’s what everyone else was doing. I went back to school and repeated the exams, taking an extra year to get into Uni, and I did so by the skin of my teeth. As much as I loved science the year I repeated I couldn’t bare the thought of doing my biology A-level again and so I did an A-level in politics instead. It made that year the best year I had at school, the people in the class, the teachers and the subject were so different to what I was used to. It was amazing. It taught me to think for myself and how to be more creative and expressive.
I made it eventually to Uni, a year behind all my friends, the course was tough and after grinding out A-levels it was a gruelling few years of undergrad. Thankfully I made good friends there too. People who dragged me by the heels through the course with helping me cram for exams keeping me on top on my assignments. I found Uni life very tough. I came from a working class background and had to work two part time jobs during my undergraduate, and even at that I managed to secure myself a whooping debt of over £30k.
I obtained a PhD scholarship, fully funded, in 2016, and so began the next 4 years of grinding and grafting towards my PhD. A series of late nights and long experiments later I was finally ready to write up. After 200 pages and 42,000 words, I submitted my thesis, sat my viva, and competed my PhD. Over the years it was a story of trying and trying again. When I was in a rut I would remind myself of the definitions — a rut is a defined as an unproductive behaviour that is hard to change, but it is also defined as a long deep track made by repeated passage of a wheel. I didn’t let my rut become unproductive, I pushed myself to the point where my rut became my repeated pathway (not my unproductive habit), the wheel marks of trying and trying again, the wheel marks of repeated passage, the wheel marks that became the passageway to success.
Folks, if you’re reading this and in a rut, take inspiration from this, I didn’t get anywhere because I was the smartest and I didn’t achieve anything on my own. The success of this PhD came down to hard work and trying and trying again, but it also was achieved by surrounding myself with good people, people who supported me endlessly. So herein lies my advice, keep trying, keep working hard and keep yourself surrounded by good people who mirror those ideals.
You have brains in your head,
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself,
any direction you choose.
Dr Seuss
Peace.
Dr. MB
