Frank Carver is a part-time PGR in CMP at University of Suffolk. As well as doctoral research into the environmental impact of software development choices, he teaches computer programming, runs a software development consultancy and is mentoring his two daughters through their own undergraduate degrees.

Although enrolled here at the UEA, I am working on my PhD research at the University of Suffolk. Compared to our “big sister” in Norwich, we are a small university with an even smaller graduate school, but this seems to be particularly attractive to mature candidates broader life experience than the average grad student. In my role as one of the UoS PGR student reps I have spoken to many Suffolk PhD students, and have noticed an attitude which seems very common among such researchers.

There’s a lesson here for all of us, though. Bear with me.

The kind of person who has been successful enough in the world of work to contemplate a break or career change to study for a PhD has usually brought a variety of significant projects to completion, and learned the skills of time and project management under commercial pressure. To such a person the idea of taking three (or even six!) years to gather a bit of data and write 80-100,000 words seems ridiculous. That’s a six-month project, maybe a year at most.

So our hypothetical doctoral candidate goes through the motions with proposals and Gantt charts, signs up to the doctoral programme, and meets with supervisors, all the while making internal plans to get the whole thing done within a year.

And then the frustration hits.

Everyone is busy. Resources are unavailable. The ethics process is fiddly and interminable. Nobody seems to know what needs to be done. There is no clarity about anything. Each person navigates a different collection of setbacks, but the whole system seems designed to fail. How can this possibly make sense?

After observing this process several times, I have come to a tentative understanding. It seems designed to fail because, in some sense, it is. But perhaps not designed so much as evolved.

If we take a step back from the grindstone of day-to-day research, it should be clear that in the great majority of cases, even if this is personally hard to take, the larger world has no interest in your detailed investigation into the which-ness of the why. And that’s as it should be. Yes, you have made a contribution to knowledge, but not usually one anyone else cares about. There’s a reason it is so rare to find citations of PhD theses.

A PhD is not a commercial project with a “bottom line”. It is not a government policy document or patentable invention. It is not a citable paper destined for a high-impact journal or conference. A PhD is a process which we do for the sake of doing. The end goal of the PhD is not a specific item of research but a researcher with some experience of the challenges to be found in a research career. If we think only of the tangible output of the PhD, we can fall into the trap of ignoring the benefits of the process.

Consider a musician, perhaps a violinist, looking forward to a concert. It would be easy to focus entirely on that hour in the bright lights, but that would be a mistake. To produce the very best music our violinist needs to work on skill and technique, alone and with others, long before stepping into the auditorium. This should not come as a surprise. Nobody would expect quality work from someone who has never done it before.

When the concert comes, it’s all about doing the best in the moment. Missed a note? Don’t stop to try it again, but carry on for the sake of the overall experience. In private though, the opposite is true. Try it again, multiple times. Build the muscle memory which will help get it right when it matters.

A PhD takes years, and is filled with obstacles because it is practice, not performance. Embrace the challenges, try different strategies, learn from both failures and successes, and take the opportunity to develop as a researcher.