Negativity & the
PhD
I think we all know
that the PhD is not a walk in the park; no one expects it to be. There are
challenges, some quite big too, as part of the journey.
Our growth and
development is both professional and personal.
Professional in developing
our skills and credibility as a research. Developing research skills,
intuition, communication skills, and of course, learning along the way.
Personally, we grow in our confidence, in our interpersonal and collaborative
skills, and in our negotiation, compromise, and maybe even crisis management
skills.
To me, these are all
positives. Growth is positive, even if there’s a little pain in the way.
What concerns me
personally though is the excessive, almost overwhelming negativity out there
about the journey, especially on social media. So called ‘support groups’
over-emphasise negatives on the journey – poor supervisors, funding issues, R2,
the toxicity of academia – many as ‘horror stories’, memes and skewed jokes;
generally giving the impression that the research journey is both a negative
one, and a toxic one.
It is a tough one yes,
but I don’t believe it to be negative. Overall, many candidates’ experience is
fulfilling, and they make lifelong academic friends and connections which help
immensely in their career development. They grow skills along the way, and they
overcome the hurdles that they may face.
I’m not saying we
shouldn’t acknowledge the negatives. We need to identify and highlight areas
where issues arise and where improvements can be made (from all sides of the
equation – student, supervisor, and institution), and support each other to
find practical, realistic, and executional solutions that work.
But, we need to stop
glorifying the negative, and embedding such experiences as a norm in the journey.
They are not the norm for everyone, with many of negatives we see often
exaggerated.
We need to address
moving forward with mental health and experiential perception, and turning any
negative around so that we help candidates move forward and learn.
Moreover, we need to
showcase the many, many positive growth experiences from the PhD journey, and
encourage people to stroll, or jog down that path, rather than scaring
candidates off with roadblocks that really may not eventuate.
The toxic culture that
social media suggests both academia and research candidature is, needs to be
balanced and tempered with more expression of all the great things about the
PhD, and we need to too, as a community of scholars, do more to uplift each
other and share all the positive experiences too.
The PhD is a personal
challenge, and we need to be equipped with coping mechanisms for the speed bumps,
hurdles, and road blocks. But it is overall a good experience too, and this
reflection on the positive deserved more airtime and digital space.
Let’s put more effort
into sharing the positives and the growth experiences, and encourage new
candidates to work towards developing themselves! Let’s create a more positive
experiential space to balance out the equation.
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