Imperial Historian, on 02 December 2016 - 08:42 PM, said:
Andorion, on 02 December 2016 - 04:51 PM, said:
I am going to moan for a bit. Feel free to ignore
I seriously hate my life right now
My PhD feels like its going nowhere. I have data. Huge huge amounts of data. I am going through archives other researchers have not touched. Yet I have no clue how it all comes together. How do I turn this into a coherent thesis? I am seriously stressed out over this.
my health is not what it should be. My allergy is totally out of control. On the days of allergy attacks, I can barely breathe let alone work. I am on the latest gen of meds, dosage is high, but they can't keep up with the air pollution. All of this means I amnot exercising. I need to lose weight. But how can I do that when I am coughing and wheezing.
And all of this is making me depressed. I am having more and more trouble snapping out of it.
And I always feel like I don't have enough time. My reading time is down, I have not touched a game in weeks. I want to play Fifa, I want to learn Skyrim, but there is no time. Its this conscious anxious prodding on the back of my mind - no time.
And I averaging less than 5 hours of sleep over the last few months. I have no clue whether that is bad or not.
To be honest I think I am having self-harm type thoughts. The other day I caught myself staring at the pointed end of my table and thinking how nice it would feel to just smash my forehead onto it.
I don't really know what to do
Sheeeesh
Vent over
Doing a PhD is mentally tough like almost no other activity, the uncertainty and huge amount of mental stress are different from nearly any other activity. Nearly every PhD student I know including myself has gone through this form of stress at some point. It's normal and it will pass eventually. Do your best to hang on to your me time, the nature of a PhD intrudes on daily life, I found it was best to set strict PhD working hours and outside of that ignore it as best you can. Ultimately it's better for you and you will get more work done in the end this way. A thesis is a daunting task you will figure it out eventually, talk to your advisor (If he falls into the not a dick category, which is about two thirds of them from my experience) or your university probably has a professional who is used to dealing with people in the same situation. Talk to other students you'll probably find a surprising number are hiding similar stress. As mezla always says if you do a PhD without some form of mental breakdown you didn't do it right! Whatever you do though take care of your mental health it's not worth burning yourself out over a Phd, make sure you take the time to get yourself in the right frame of mind.
Oh boy, I wish someone had told me this a year earlier.
I messed up my work routine. It was entire days, including weekends of wonly work and then obviously I got burnt outand just lay around for more days.
Working hours. I need structure. Thank you very much.
Mezla PigDog, on 02 December 2016 - 09:21 PM, said:
I'm changing my mantra to add "if you do a phd or motherhood".
Keep going Ando. I didn't really understand this advice until the very end but a wise person told me that a PhD only has to be good enough to pass. It isn't your lifes work. It feels like your lifes work but it's not and everything gets easier once it is done. I think it's because they are all consuming because you could ALWAYS be working on it. Do what IH said nand split up your time.
And the self harm bit - I genuinely used to hope to get run over by a car on the way to uni to buy more time when I was trying to get mine finished. Just keep going!
That is actually a great insight. You see, I got access to this previously untouched archive. Now, in history, this sort of thing is considered to be something like the Holy Grail. So I have been telling myself that I need to justify this by doing something path-breaking, and to be perfectly honest I don';t really have the ability, time or experience to do something like that now. Its been eating me up on the inside.
Gorefest, on 02 December 2016 - 09:43 PM, said:
Yeah, what everyone else said. We've all been there mate, PhD life can be tough and at times it feels completely overwhelming. But as Mezla rightly said: don't see it as your life's work. if you put the time in, you'll get there. The important thing is to try and get a format down on paper, a framework. Don't get lost in the details. Try and clearly formulate for yourself what you question is, where you want to go, and how you roughly can divide the path to the finish in logical chapters.
And if you have difficulty sleeping, what really used to help me is the simple realisation that there is nothing useful you can do in the middle of the night. Instead, If you're stressed out of your head at 2am, formulate a list of three action points that you are going to take first thing the next morning and rehearse them in your head. Just imagine yourself doing those three things and hold on to the sense of accomplishment you'll get from doing them.
Framework - yeah this is something I have been trying to visualize. I can write fast, really fast, and if I can only get the framework right, the other stuff just falls into place.
Yeah, I need to get my thoughts in order before sleeping. Last night I went to bed stressing I had horrible nightmares, waking up trying to call people and do things then noticing it was 3 AM.
Its a good thing I couldn't get to my phone
Help
