I Regret Doing a PhD

today's video is sponsored by Squarespace so it's sad that I've spent the past decade uh planning for something that I messed up so spectacularly within a few years I made countless mistakes over the past couple of years and put myself in a position that almost irreparably destroyed my possibility of success both professionally and academically yay so I've always known that doing a PhD would be hard but doing a PhD whilst working basically full-time and being 100% financially responsible for myself and my fees whilst living alone with no cohort um is brutal to say the least and I found out the hard way that unfortunately those of us with a tendency to do everything alone and never ask for any help because we've lived our whole lives that way uh I mean we never got any help in the past so we got used to it and th had to do everything alone um suffer immensely doing a PhD so on the 2nd of January this year I cated a selection of second secondary resources necessary to start my research on Ovid and thought to myself I know nothing of what these writers are saying I don't understand what they written I'm so out of my depth I will never read all of these papers in time for the writing deadline in February and I regret ever starting this I regret how I started my PhD I regret how I managed my time and energy the P two years um and I also I've basically messed everything up there is no point continuing as I will never recover from this so I'm going to email my supervisor and tell her that I quit so that afternoon I cracked open my email and I did something I'd never done before I emailed my supervisor and in I asked her for help on finding more relevant secondary research papers necessary for me to better understand this selection of my research because I was struggling and I needed help yes for the first time in 2 and a half years of doing a PhD I actually emailed my supervisor and asked for help and I've never actually asked her for anything this entire time all because I had it in my head that a PhD is something you do alone and you if you can't find the resources you're not a good researcher and don't you dare show your supervisor that you're struggling and you're so inefficient and inept by asking them for help on such a simple task and from day one I taught myself that I have to prove to my supervisor I'm good enough and that the role of my supervisor in my head was one of divine external validation a mental that I'm supposed to make proud and bother as little as as possible and whilst I do want to make my supervisor proud because I really admire her and she's basically my role model relegating her to a purely superficial role as the guardian of my academic self-esteem was not only woefully diminishing of her Academic Press and intellect but is robbing me of the actual PhD experience you know I am paying for her guidance not her approval and when I was on the edge of quitting my PhD and admitting defeat I realized that what I needed to quit was my Approach not the PHD itself so before I go into depth about what I regret about my PhD and how I'm changing my life professionally and academically going forward I like to take a moment to thank today's sponsor which is Squarespace for making this possible so I built all my main business websites over the past few years on Squarespace I love blogging about reading and my PhD process and all that ja um and I love how intuitive Squarespace is making just website design and layout just so easy and you just transform everything night it's fantastic because I don't know anything about coding so website design platforms have really frustrated me and I hated them so much but with Squarespace I can just drag and drop my content where I want it and if you're a Creator who wants to expand your Revenue stream in the New Year well squ space has an allinone platform that makes easy for you to monetize your content and expertise in a way that fits your brand you can sell your merchandise on a shop or there's a members area where you can sell your online digital courses or classes to followers and Squarespace has an inbuilt email campaign so you can collect email email subscribers and have a newsletter and email them every week it's really cute you don't have to change websites it's all builtin and then you have a built-in analytics feature that gives you insight into who's visiting your website and the traffic sources and the time they spend there and the most read content and geography just everything you need in one platform so if you want to expand your business or just build a beautiful blogging website then go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com ladyofthe library to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain so nothing prepares you for a PhD you know my cousin told me that your Masters feels like you're being hit by a bullet train whereas your PhD feels like you're being run over by an extremely heavy long slow steam engine and it just keeps going it never stops running you over and everything I knew about Academia and how I worked as an academic during my undergraduate and my M's is completely inapplicable to how I work as a PhD student you see what is expected of you is different how you write is different how you read is different how you think is different how you function is different how you relate to others is different and even the impact Academia has on your mental health is different and as bizarre as it sounds nothing about the past two degrees prepared me for my PhD and to say it's a personal learning process is an understatement you see when you do an undergraduate and a master's you feel like your primary objective is to learn and relay your research but doing a PhD feels like you're building your own academic institution from the inside out from scratch you're not just reading and learning and writing anymore you're building a complex structure that transforms your entire lifestyle mentally and the processes that you have in life and your motivations and the rules you live by and your objectives and your own personal code of conduct and the pathways and networks in your brain and the structure and this is all entirely unique to you as an academic there isn't a blueprint about how it works and often often times others will share their blueprints with you and how they succeeded in their PHD and you look and you hear their Blueprints and you think they're speaking another language or that they're mad because it's so obscenely alien it it doesn't even seem like you're doing the same thing even if you're studying the same subject It seems impossible it's so unique so nothing I could have watched or read or experienced would have prepared me for the PHD and whilst I know I messed up my first year I have yet to meet a single other Soul who hasn't said the exact same thing I mean we all mess it up in some way because the process of falling into the PHD is unique so unique as it's like your genetic makeup you know your fingerprint and you won't even realize all the possible ways that you can get it wrong until you do so now one important thing that I've learned is that Independence does not mean isolation so phds in the UK at least I can't speak for elsewhere um but in the UK they are primarily solo research projects unless you're working in like science and there's a lab project and there's more people but in the humanities it's basically a solo research project you don't have classes you don't need to attend any or sit in the exams or have any other little mini papers you just need to read and write for the entirety of your PhD on one thing one paper and as such some of us make the mistake of believing that we aren't supposed to ask for help during that period of time because you're not seeing other people so you just think well it's just me isn't it and as someone who studies at a distance from the University I don't have a cohort or the ability to join Societies or meet fellow academics or attend the socials um the isolating factor of doing independent research is even more prevalent additionally I don't use social media anymore so I can't even find other academics in my field and make an online network and to make matters worse as a shy introvert who has major social anxiety I didn't actually see the downsides of this until two years into my research because I naturally don't have the the inclination or desire to socialize you know or talk to other people because if I'm being completely honest the idea of making any more friends than what I have brings me so much anxiety and Dread um and I fell very easily into the Trap of being completely isolated from the entire University other academics Academia itself really and any people in my field and unfortunately for people like me anyway Academia does require a degree of networking putting yourself out there sharing ideas and most importantly actually talking to your supervisor more than once every two months see I was hoping I could get away with completing my PhD without ever speaking or physically seeing another one another person you know but after attending my first ever in-person conference late last year I realized that I would probably be better off not going down the complete isolation route you see whilst my intense social anxiety makes going to in-person conferences horrific experience hearing other academics talk about their research and asking them questions is incredibly beneficial you know asking others about their work makes you think differently about your own work even if their work is not related to your research in the slightest and I actually enjoyed the act of supporting other academics and complimenting their research even though I'm super shy and then got scared and ran away so what I'm doing differently going forward well the first thing I'm going to do is document my journey now I've been too afraid to document my academic Journey out of Shame of doing something wrong or catching myself in all my mistakes and publicizing that to the world but by not documenting my journey I haven't made the experience real to myself or treasured any part of it so I'm currently in the process of discovering a fun and easy way for me to document my research Journey without going back to social media platforms like Instagram so this is a bit of a pain because structurally speaking uh Instagram has the perfect format to serve as a digital diary because it allows you to capture unlimited videos and texts and photographs but also I have no desire to return to Instagram so at this point I'm still hunting out Alternatives but I'm currently leaning towards going back to the very Basics which is just blogging on my website and vlogging my process for my patreon members on a more regular basis like doing almost like a weekly Vlog of my research process the next thing I'm doing is emailing my supervisor far more regularly and this is a huge one for me because I also think my supervisor will be very happy to hear that because over the past few years she's only ever heard from me out of you know once every two months on the compulsory basis because I was too afraid of doing it wrong and embarrassing myself and looking stupid in front of her or annoying her but her response to the email I sent her the other day was so encouraging and she offered to give me more meetings outside the monthly supervision so I think I'm going to keep regular contact with her and that will help me with my anxieties about being too stupid or falling behind the next thing I'm going to do is call myself an academic so I've never actually allowed myself or others to use the term academic seriously you know if anyone in real life called me a researcher or an academic I shut them down fast I would just say I'm just a student I'm not an academic I'm not a scholar it's even that in my description box I have a disclaimer and you know I I named one of my social media handles The Classical Academic because my friend recommended it and she thought it sounded fun but I was so ashamed that I renamed the channel to just chiny deir and I eventually deleted the social media accounts under that handle out of Shame and I might primarily refuted the term academic because I don't feel smart enough and I I know thousands of people online would say that I wasn't smart enough and they'll criticize me daily for that and it's always been easier and safer for me to unell myself and live quite small and quietly to avoid anyone competing with me or criticizing me than live up to my full potential and I avoided criticism and competition and judgment by just staying out of the Limelight but that came at the cost of of my own success and progress so by telling everyone I was just a student and not an academic I wasn't just convincing them to leave me alone and you know not conceive me as you know worth judging or acknowledging I convinced myself that um because I didn't believe I was worth anything I stopped trying you see I'm so scared of ever coming across as you know egotistical or arrogant or pompous or proud uh just to avoid any negativity or jealousy or unkind or small-minded people comments so I'll do anything I can to put myself down and criticize myself first and demean myself and make myself small and undermine anything I've ever accomplished but at the age of 32 it's time for me to stop dimming my light to protect myself from judgments and competitiveness and jealousy of insecure nasty unkind minded people and ungracious people at that you know their words towards me have always said more about their nature than mine and as someone who has never and as someone who has never thought thought that way against others and would never sink to that level in life by bringing other people down it's about time that I took pride in who I am as a person both in my nature of being and my accomplishments and not dim my potential just to avoid being noticed by insecure bullies in this world in all honesty so yes those are my biggest regrets from the first year of my PhD um this video was very stressful to film because my dog the buzzer kept buzzing and the dog kept biting me and attacking me and it was really pain she doesn't like the buzzer but I get the punishment and the person at the door gets all the licks and Cuddles don't they you attack me cuz the buzzer went off but it's so unfair it's so unfair yes but thank you for watching again uh I'm going to be documenting my PhD process here so if you have any requests for any kind of videos it'll be down below there little Google form you can send a request for anything PhD related though more vlogging day in my life and just actual updates of my process I'm going to put over on patreon and but I will blog about it over on my my actual website which is Squarespace so thank you for watching I hope you are happy and healthy thank you again to my patreons for making this possible and I'll see you soon for another video and remember books save lives so keep reading

Channel: Lady of the Library

Views: 180,522

Keywords: regret leaving academia, regret going to medical school, engineering degree regret, degree, should i get a degree, regret, avoid regret, quitting phd regret, np regret, will i regret leaving academia, regret phd, choosing degree, do you regret quitting phd, no regrets, regret leaving academia scientist, 10 - masters regret, writing a phd, phd degree, regret medical school, nurse practitioner regret

Id: 6wjnQS4uuWM

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 14 2024