3. Ph.D. and stress: Uncertainity

The third topic is on Uncertainty.

What does uncertainty mean in PhD life?
First-year in PhD is fun. It is the year you think "everything is under control". After some time, problems escalate. It is frustrating because problems may delay experiments, data collection, analysis, papers and eventually PhD Thesis...When things go wrong, you feel stressed and you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel...

Do you have inconclusive data? Don't be afraid. I spent a considerable amount of time on one of my projects. Lots of experiments and lots of analysis... The results did not support our research question. My supervisor and I decided to leave this project behind and carry on with a different question. It is the right approach in science but I couldn't escape from the feeling that I gave this project a lot of effort for nothing (which was not true!). It was my third year and I was under a lot of stress. In the end, there was only one question in my mind, "when will I finish PhD?".That time I had the biggest frustration of my PhD life. I talked to my supervisor. It was a long talk. Thanks to his encouragement, I thought I should carry on (Never give up, right?). So I started writing. I wrote the manuscript of our second project. Writing and reviewing process of the manuscript took very long but we were able to submit our paper to a nice journal at the end. After a long reviewing and re-writing marathon, our paper has been ..wait for it... accepted! :) One day, I realized that I sent my first draft exactly 1 year ago. I couldn't believe that this whole paper process took one year. It can be seen as a normal period for scientific publications, but a whole year with all its frustration and stress is actually not easy to handle. Well, the reward of "publication" is nice, of course.

What is career coaching?
For a very long time, I thought, okay maybe I need to talk to someone about PhD because I cannot see what is waiting for me. A friend of mine asked me "how about career coaching?" I did not even know what a career coach was doing! Surprisingly after some time, my PhD training group offered me a chance to take career coaching. During the coaching session, the career coach realized that I say "I am not happy about this, I am not happy about that, things are uncertain" and she asked me "when do you think you will be happy?" and I answered, "the day I submit my thesis". She was surprised that I was delaying my happiness for an indefinite time...She asked me "..but you told me you have done this experiment and that analysis and gave a lot of effort for your projects and did your best, am I right? so don't you think you should be happy with what you have achieved so far?"

Suddenly, in my mind, I was like "Oh. She is totally right!"
I needed to hear that...

Express gratitude for "yourself"
Academic life is tough with its long term projects that are not clear when and how they will end, and it is very personal. 'Your' name is on that papers and you do not have the luxury to do a single mistake. You always feel the pressure of learning, doing, and finishing certain things. But after all, we are humans who have feelings. We are not machines.
Be patient with yourself, go home, pour yourself a cup of tea and start appreciating every effort you give for your PhD. Start from the beginning. As you can imagine, I had a lot of gratitude to catch up when I did this for myself :)

Start writing
Shortly after that time, I created a word file with the name "my PhD Thesis" and started writing. If you are feeling unhappy about the uncertainty of your PhD, stop feeling like that. Take action, start writing. If you dont have results, just write your methods. If the method is not clear, start writing your introduction or just create an outline.

And don't delay happiness...You are giving a lot of effort, never underestimate any of them. Feel happy when you finish an experiment, an analysis and a PhD day!

...and then just go out, take a walk and smile! or plan a holiday for yourself. Recharge.

You are human, not machine, and it is awesome that you did this far in PhD! :)