The Mad Ravings of a Final Year PhD Student | brokeGIRLrich
In my current financial climate, I’ve been reflecting on various random money thoughts that have crossed my mind lately.
Entering midlife is feeling quite unusual financially, especially after choosing to return to school. I’ve always believed in the wisdom of those who say we tend to regret what we didn’t do far more than the things we’ve done. With that in mind, I plan to keep fostering that mindset. My reflections today feel a bit like an academic state of the union.
The spirit of YOLO is strong as I get closer to what may be my final relatively free summer. While PhD students technically don’t get a summer break, I’ve noticed that in July and August, most people vanish, leaving me with just my research deadlines, which is much more manageable than balancing my research with teaching, grading, and various requests from supervisors and department staff.
By the end of this summer, my goal is to have my thesis ready for submission in September. To reach that goal, I need to complete revisions of my two case study chapters and my workshop chapter, plus write the conclusion.
I’ve been struggling with the two case study chapters. In my initial draft, I just dumped all the data related to the key themes through a chronological retelling of each interview participant’s experiences, which didn’t sit well with my supervisors as it resulted in overly lengthy chapters.
As for my workshop chapter, it’s proving to be a real challenge. I’m attempting to document a practice-as-research experience. The main idea behind practice-as-research is the actual doing. Typically, you’d present the work as part of your thesis, but due to various external factors, I ended up discussing what occurred in the workshops rather than the practice itself, though I did incorporate some reflections and survey data that provided useful insights.
These three messy drafts led me to create a discussion post that my supervisor critiqued heavily this week. Amid the chaos of that writing process, I realized how to revise the case study chapters, and I spent the last month working on them, even though they’re still not quite right.
Currently, I’m in a state of panicked procrastination. I feel like I need to step away for a bit, but I haven’t managed to do that yet. I’ll be visiting family soon and going camping over the weekend, hoping it provides a mental reset similar to the Venice trip I took with my partner last year. On that trip, I had a breakthrough during the flight back regarding my introduction and literature review.
Relying on inspiration is definitely part of this stage in the PhD journey.
This realization made me laugh in a somewhat unhinged way.
Things seem to be progressing.
Additionally, this summer includes a family visit in the States, a two-week trip with my best friend exploring England, a long weekend in Dubrovnik, and a trip to Egypt with my boyfriend, brother, and sister-in-law. I also won a small prize in a school competition that must be used for research funding, and I have a remote hope of using it to fund a trip to see A Morte do Corvo in Lisbon, which might be a stretch. If it happens, I’d also get a quick trip to Portugal at the end of June.
I’ve also got to retake my driving test, which I failed a couple of weeks ago. That was a delightful experience.
Theoretically, I need to submit these two case study chapters and the workshop chapter to my third supervisor—who is both strict and miraculous—by the end of the month. Following that, I need to refine the discussion chapter and write the conclusion in June. Hopefully, I’ll receive their feedback by mid-August, giving me about a month to finalize everything for submission.
I realized this week that given my new timeline, I might finish too late to participate in the graduation ceremony in January, pushing it to July instead. This is a bit disheartening, as returning to my normal job might prevent me from attending. I can’t imagine turning down a well-paying job just to attend a ceremony, which is a bit of a downer and not the best source of motivation.
