Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March, 2015

The Diary of a PhD Student: Is it normal for me to feel this overwhelmed?

Or, in this case, just before you start again. So I’m aware that it’s been quite a while since I updated this space and I thought that rather than let the silence linger on for another uncomfortable month, it might perhaps be a good thing for me to actually write about what’s been going on. It turns out PhD degrees are actually quite difficult. I know - who would have thought it? It also turns out that despite writing 30,000 words of the first draft of my novel, I had somehow still ended up writing my way down the wrong road. And this is where the cracks appeared. For those who aren’t familiar with the process of doing a PhD - or at least, the process at the university where I’m doing mine - during your first year you are faced with the daunting task of going through Panel. It’s terrifying; the thing of nightmares, in fact, and I can feel palpitations building at the very mention of it. It was during the first few weeks of discussing Panel that it first became clear to me that ...