Statement of Commitment on Climate Change (The Third Degree)

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.