The Wall

One thing that I was told in my PhD induction is that at certain points, you will be very busy and you will have to work long hours, sacrifice much of your weekends and evenings. In the last four months I have reached a level where for one reason or another I have been unable to take a prolonged break (or in some months even just a break)! I have reached a moment that is commonly found during physical exercise.I have reached a wall in my working ability and motivation.

So to update, my last four months has been filled with presenting work at conferences, travelling large parts of the country for testing, new project students, paper writing and many more things. Now none of this is actually much different from where I was this time last year. This type of scenario has also been covered superbly from PhD Comics. There is however one crucial difference to before. Now I am doing more social things.

When I started writing about my thoughts on doing a PhD (both here and here). I knew that having social time would be important. I am now doing that with the right people, I am playing sports again, I am being better at keeping in contact with my friends that are not in Newcastle. This has been great and I truly do not regret doing this. It has however left me with very little time to just relax and properly rest. This is what has been causing my tiredness, an imbalance in the three factors that make a PhD: work, social and personal. One year on, I still can't get the balance right and now the imbalance is noticeably starting to affect other areas of my life and my own personal health. Something was going to have to give, I had arrived at my wall.

When I was coming back from late testing session, I had a realisation. It was that I was pushing myself too hard to try and get too much done too quickly. Being ambitious can be a good thing, it can give you drive and a purpose. But unchecked it can be detrimental when your expectations are not met and this can lead to inevitable disappointment. That is currently where I am at present, just feeling a little bit despondent. My ambition had lead to me becoming frustrated with my own lack of progress. It was getting me down, especially when other PhD students have much less travelling and are seemingly able to finish work much earlier than I do during the working week.

Yet, in one of the those bizarre things that seemingly characterize my life I got inspiration from somewhere. Or more exactly a fictional character, Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation. Whilst watching episode 20 from season 4, "The Debate". During the closing remarks of the Pawnee City Council election debate Leslie makes an impromptu speech about why she believes she should be elected. As cheesey some portions of that speech may have been, particular aspects of it certainly resonated with me. I guess that being able to take motivation out of what may seem small or inconsequential is important to being able to get past this wall. After all there are many walls in our lives, it may take a day, a week or month, or even a year but if you don't get past that wall, it will remain there forever.

To paraphrase the end of the speech. When you care about something, you are prepared to fight for it, you take care of it. As a PhD student I need to make sure that I make the most of my time being one. If I seem too passionate it is because I care. If I come on strong, it is because I feel strongly. And if I push too hard, it is because things aren't moving fast enough. This is my PhD, I still face a wall, but I am not going to back away from it.