PhD Mum

Did you know when a PhD students starts a PhD they are actually registered as an MPhil (a masters degree)? About a year in, the university will “grade” the student to assess if both the work completed and planned work for the next two or so years is achievable and merits a PhD award. If they decide it is, the student is then moved on to the PhD award. After the initial flurry of feeing like you haven’t done enough, wondering how can reading be your only job, then finally establishing a research question at about the 6 months mark, you can be forgiven for feeling lulled in to a false sense of “I got this”. At the 12 month mark, it is typically the case that you are either knee deep in or just about to embark upon recruitment and participant data. It is during this time that you are asked to upgrade. This is the first time that you will officially be assessed as a PhD candidate and as such, it is stressful! (What if they fail me?!). But the good news is, everyone who I have...

I’ve lost count of the number of times someone said to me “I just don’t know how you manage to do a PhD and raise a child” during my studies.  And it made me realise that, perhaps from the outside looking in to my life, it did look challenging. I wanted to write this post for anyone who might be thinking of studying, whatever the course. To discuss the multitasking of child rearing and meeting deadlines. The majority of challenges of any course [be it undergraduate, accountancy, PhD etc.] are the same for most parents. If it’s not about the money side of doing the course, it will be about whether or not you can fit it all in and meet the course deadlines. The unsurprising underlying truth of this multitasking challenge is that it is difficult. It is difficult logistically, it is difficult financially, and it is difficult psychologically – particularly if your studying is seen as a “hobby” (as mine was by my family) and if you don’t get a weekly/monthly pay slip for ...

This was written from my experience of doing a PhD in a Psychology context. Please note, this experience is always going to be different depending on the subject so whilst I would encourage you to read my experience, I can't guarantee that this is exactly what you will go through if you are not doing a PhD in Psychology. So you have started a PhD – this is the most important decision you have made.  To start.  Well done!  (Try to remember why you made this decision and remind yourself of it throughout your PhD as you will question this at least 10 times a week until you finish it). I found the first 6 months of the PhD the most difficult to adjust to. Not only because I was pregnant, but because the pace of it was so different to what I had been used to. The emphasis was definitely on me, as an academic, developing a research question rather than just “doing a research study”. I think if you go through academic life without a break, this transitio...

What a year 2017 was. I managed to finish a PhD (I am officially Dr Nic ;)) with a toddler kicking around at my heels. I have been very lazy of late with my writing. Since submitting the PhD, I keep wondering what exactly I am going to write about. I started ‘PhD Mum’ almost 2 years ago with the aim of sharing my PhD and parenting journey with others who might be interested in doing the same. I was so hopeful that these small little posts could potentially encourage other parents to return to education and perhaps even provide some sort of support for anyone who is doing the same and having a difficult time – we all need to know that we aren’t alone. I find it is hard to write about my PhD journey without feeling like a 'know-it-all'. I think this is what has held me back from writing much about my PhD experience. Having submitted the thesis and the corrections, I know that each PhD candidate has a different journey and experience to get to the submission point a...

As part of my PhD education, I attended a training session on communicating research. During this session, the trainer quoted a well-known saying; that verbal communication is less than 10% of the entire communication process (the precise figure was 7%). The rest is “everything else”; body language...cadence…pitch. Communication is only 7% verbal/words Kids get this. Most toddlers don’t have a huge vocabulary but are able to understand easily the message that is being conveyed to them. In my house it is usually me stood with a hand on my hip, the other pointing at a shoe, eyebrows raised, high pitch. My kid gets it. They use the 93% available to them to figure it out. Toddlers: masters in communication. Whilst the accuracy of this 7% quote is up for debate, it still gets me thinking about communication via messages only. Particular in the world of Instagram, twitter, facebook, whatsapp…where a status/tweet/caption becomes scrutinised by all. It is part and parcel of part...

(within health/psychology) I wish someone had told me this when I first started my PhD. The key to a successful research piece: simplicity. The most basic and most often forgotten point of a study, at any level, is to have a very clear and succinct question(s) in mind that you want to answer. It sounds so straight forward and obvious doesn’t it. But it is amazing how, on a 3 to 5 year journey, you can lose sight of what your research aim is.  "If you can't describe a topic in simple terms, you don't understand it ." (Einstein)  Remember, within your study, you are not going to solve the world's problems.  I started wanting to improve end of life care for all; which in hindsight was very noble of me but completely impractical! In pragmatic terms, you have a time frame within which you need to do the study and present the results - save complexity for the reasons why you should definitely get a post doctorate post. This simplicity then pays off in dif...