I honestly feel better having taken the morning to step back from my PhD and look at the bigger picture. It’s so easy to keep looking down, looking in so much detail at what you’re working on at that moment, to forget the bigger picture and what else is there. What can be done.
Having a plan not to plan has relaxed me. I’m focusing on my project and I think I have found something that I really enjoy doing. I’ll give it a bit more time and see how it plays out.
So, I guess this week I have a (double) question for anyone in academia who might be reading this: when did you start figuring out what next and what were your first steps? I’d love to hear from people who might be in the same boat, or who were in that boat and have reached their goals.
Once you’ve done something that’s got you some results, writing up the analysis should be easy, right? After all, it’s you that’s done the work, you know why you did it, you know how you did it, you know your results and the conclusions you’ve drawn from it. So what is so difficult?!
I don’t mean that PhD life and research are the spawn of evil and researchers are like Death Eaters using their skills to destroy the world as we know it. In fact, the name for this blog was going to be something like “You can’t just tick things off a list” – but I thought this was way more interesting (and I haven’t mentioned Harry Potter for a while!)
I honestly didn’t think I’d fall into the ‘trap’ that I was told that every PhD student does: that I’m going to want to try and do far too much! I’m guessing every PhD student thinks that as well?
Perhaps I shouldn’t be seeing “What Next?” as a negative question, but as a positive. I’m keen to work out where to go after I’ve completed each task on my to-do list. I can dwell on the issues of figuring out “What Next?” or I can flip that around and realise that this is how I’m going to move forward. If I’m not thinking about “What Next?”, then what am I doing and where am I going?
Shruti's PhD 