Courageous Conversations is a series of monologues that use real-life personal statements from UEA PhD students to form a narrative. This is the first in a series of four, all of which were originally performed during the Courage Festival in September 2019. The sources for these monologues are all anonymous; in publicising them we hope to draw further attention to the difficulties and troubles faced by postgraduate researchers as they navigate academic spaces.
Doing my PhD is not the experience I was expecting. I was prepared for the hard work, but I wasn’t prepared for the feeling of isolation, the belittling from my supervisor, and near-constant feeling that I don’t belong here.
I’ve thought a lot about what went wrong. During the first couple of months of my PhD I had some really difficult things happen in my personal life. I had just arrived in the UK and didn’t feel like I had a support network here, so I didn’t talk to anyone about it, just kept my head down and tried to carry on. It definitely affected my work; at the time I should have been excited about starting my PhD in a field I thought I was passionate about, I felt completely detached and numb. I couldn’t focus on my work, and already felt the pressure of being behind. I was coming in to the lab on weekends just to try and keep my head above water, and soon realised that this was almost expected.
I went home to my family for a short trip and I felt such relief to be out of this environment. Just before I was supposed to come back to Norwich, I experienced my first real panic attack. I’ve always been quite an anxious person, but this was a completely separate and terrifying experience. I had intense chest pains, couldn’t breathe, was shaking and sweating. I genuinely thought I was dying. I couldn’t understand how I could feel this all so physically. Looking back, I think it was a reaction to coming back here.
When I did come back, I made an appointment with student support services. I broke down when I was talking to the wellbeing advisor, and told her everything I had been feeling. I started seeing a counsellor through student support services the very next day. I’ve heard people have experienced long waits for the counselling service, and I’ll always be grateful that this wasn’t the case for me, I honestly don’t think I could have coped otherwise. The support I got from them has been amazing. I also went to the medical centre and started taking antidepressants.
Student support services said I needed to let my supervisor know I was struggling. That’s a conversation I never want to have again. Their response, “Ok, why are you telling me? There’s nothing I can do." Just a little acknowledgement that this was really hard for me to open up about, or understanding that I’m going through a tough time, would have gone a long way, and instead I got nothing and felt ashamed. What makes it tougher is I hear my peers talking about how great their relationship with their supervisors are, while I feel perpetually on edge, waiting for the next bout of criticism. I berate myself for not being the dream PhD student my supervisor wanted.
A few months later, I realised I needed to take time out. This process in itself is stressful and archaic and needs to change. I had to wait 3 months for my request to be approved, by which time I was already getting ready to come back. While I recognise I needed this break, I now worry that I will have even more PhD left at the end of my funding. I don’t know how I will support myself financially when my funding ends. The fact that PhD students in my lab group have stipends for either 3, 3.5, or 4 years, and yet we’re all expected to produce a thesis of the same quality, is, in my view, offensive, but again this is just how things are.
In my experience, academia is a toxic world. There seems to be an acceptance that doing a PhD will be a drain on your mental health and well-being. I feel it’s almost treated as a rite of passage. I constantly question why I am here. I feel I don’t belong in this environment, and I blame myself for being too sensitive, not driven enough, and not being able to work the expected impossible hours. I sacrificed a lot to move to the UK and do this PhD, and right now I don’t think it has been worth it.
A note from Alastair Grant, Adacemic Director of the UEA Doctoral College: If this story reminds you of anything in your own experience which you are concerned about, please talk to somebody about it. Confidential support is available from UEA SU’s Advice(su) or UEA Student Services. They can support you in raising issues with your Head of School/Institute or PGR Director. If the issues relate to your academic supervision or research, you can also seek advice in confidence from the Head of Postgraduate Research Service, Vivien Easson, or the Academic Director of the Doctoral College, Alastair Grant, on appropriate way to raise and seek to address your concerns. We take bullying and harassment very seriously and are committed to do all that we can to eliminate them. - Alastair Grant, Academic Director of the UEA Doctoral College.