So, just over a month ago there I was, sat with a lovely ice cold beer in a lovely little pub in an unseasonably warm Amsterdam with my lovely fellow sociology PhD student Lauren and thinking to myself “Well, this PhD malarkey isn’t all that bad after all!”
After two years of working full-time, this felt like heaven. No crippling early starts every weekday morning, no need to have early nights and miss out on late night socialising opportunities, no having to wear ridiculous pencil skirts and send overly polite emails….
And yes whilst that is all true – ah wait I still send plenty of overly polite emails actually – fast forward to today and it certainly isn’t all fun and games…
You will of course be delighted and relieved to hear that I am actually getting some of this ‘work’ thing done and not still in Amsterdam wandering lost around the Red Light District with no money – it’s very expensive over there! – and a lack of appropriate winter footwear.
The first couple of months since starting at the end of September have certainly been a time for finding my feet and getting settled into a routine. Obviously it is so different to working and the main thing I’ve noticed already is how motivated and self-disciplined you need to be (I mean self-disciplined in the work sense only, I still eat biscuits at every opportunity)…. With a job you just sort of have to turn up and sit down and switch your computer on and actually start working, or you tend to find yourself in a whole lot of trouble (although some of my more misguided friends would beg to differ as I did work in the public sector). Don’t get me wrong, there are ways to procrastinate in every job, but this PhD is a whole different animal.
With a lot of unstructured time stretching before you and few immediately looming deadlines, plus the fact that three years seems like such a very nice long time to get everything done, you really do have to find innovative ways to get yourself working sometimes.
Setting lots of little deadlines and tasks for yourself for the day or the week helps, plus you do always have the next supervisor meeting to work towards. And then of course, once you get really into looking at a text or you start writing time can suddenly fly and you realise you’ve spent hours having an amazing time in the company of Foucault, Marx or some other big-thinking dude. And I must admit that so far – mostly – my experience has been really positive and inspiration levels have remained promisingly high. The PhD and I have been getting on very well recently. Just enjoying a lovely little Festive break and looking forward to being reunited with it in the New Year. Fingers crossed we will get off to a good start in 2012, although I don’t doubt that some sort of hurdle / writer’s block will make an appearance at some point in the near future!