PhDs at 'Sea': Sailing and Staying Afloat

Dr Scott Midson is a postdoctoral researcher based at the Lincoln Theological Institute, University of Manchester. When he's not paddling with nautical metaphors, he explores the relationship between humans and technologies in the interdisciplinary field of posthumanism, connecting these insights to theology using topics such as theological anthropology, and themes such as love. This blog draws on his own experiences when he was a PhD student, and partially on research conducted for an AHRC/North West Consortium DTP- commissioned report, 'Realising Relational Researchers: A Review of PGR Skills, Partnerships, and Employability in the Arts & Humanities', which is being used as a basis for ongoing research into the place of Arts and Humanities in HE and in the wider context of economics, politics, and society. Follow Scott on Twitter at: @scadhu

I like metaphors – they’re great tools to think with, and they offer a useful way of swerving our attention from what’s directly in front of us to help us make innovative and interesting connections or critiques (this is academia, after all, and where would we be without critiques?!) that we otherwise might not have made. And so I offer a not particularly original metaphor for my reflections on the PhD, namely, a nautical one. There are many great metaphors that can be used and that you might be encouraged to explore in various doctoral training sessions – I recall having to design a mountain pictorial metaphor at the dreaded second-year midpoint of my PhD that, although it looked like it had been drawn by a child let loose to doodle with some felt tips and unnecessarily huge flipchart paper, I was oddly proud of – but I’ll stick with the nautical one for this post. (Bear with me: this is being written by the same person that put smiley faces on cloud symbols…)

What most PhD metaphors will highlight is the journey and the turbulence of it. There will be many ups-and-downs throughout the PhD: there will be days where you have intellectual breakthroughs and you’re ready to shake up your field – nay, the whole of academia, nay, the whole world – with your research; but all the same, there will be days where you feel so stressed and overwhelmed with your work that a duvet cocoon and Netflix and coco pops binge are the only options. (Spoiler alert: these vacillations aren’t exclusive to the PhD, either, and it turns out they pop up in postdoc research, too.) There will be times when (here comes the metaphor) you feel like you’re steering the ship adeptly; there will also be times when you’re on turbulent waters and just about ready to abandon ship. Without meaning to downplay either of these feelings, one of the things to be clear about is that you’re not alone.

For me, going through the PhD, that advice wasn’t always the most encouraging. I looked around at the other captains steering their research boats. (Is this also an exercise in the limits of metaphors and the dangers of overstretching them?) While my boat was seemingly tearing away from my control, everyone else seemed confident, capable, and cruising along at a satisfying pace. I couldn’t help but compare myself to other people, and nearly always found myself lacking. But the important thing to note here is that you are never alone in your triumphs or struggles. And you’re not a bad researcher for losing control of your boat/project at times – indeed, this is part of the journey: you don’t necessarily know the destination. If you knew the destination, there would be little point in undertaking PhD research that is supposed to be pioneering and innovative. To do that, you need to embrace what a colleague of mine based in anthropology, Dr Hannah Wadle, has referred to as ‘positive liminality’ in academia and research: it’s about preparing yourself for the choppy seas and accepting that you won’t always have full control of your ship/research. (Here I think back to clinging to my PhD proposal for weeks into the programme like Linus of Schulz’ Peanuts comics with his comfort blanket, only for my final thesis to have evolved into something that addresses somewhat different questions to those I’d originally intended. It took a while to embrace letting go of that proposal…)

So, as PhD students, you bob along in the vast and uncertain waters of the research field. Practically, what would be ideal to have is some kind of a map – but this can’t of course be a conventional map, as your research most likely will end up taking unexpected swerves and turns (much like metaphors themselves). Instead, what I offer – following reflections on my own experience as well as research into the broader context of PhDs in Higher Education, politics, and society – is a conceptual map (I can’t help it – as an Arts & Humanities student, I love a good slightly intangible concept) for navigating the other vessels bobbing along in the ocean with you. This ‘map’, or ‘network schematic’ as I referred to it in my report that I took it from, is designed to provide a way for researchers to reflect on their wider networks in order to make the most of them. There are various stakeholders involved in PhDs, and these will have a key role in matters relating to researcher development, careers and employability, and general researcher wellbeing (which is at least as important as the other sections yet is perhaps the easiest to forget). The networks that these groups – including governmental departments, funding bodies, institutions, industries and organisations – comprise are deeply significant for the PhD and are key to making the most out of it.

Without going into too much detail on the report (as it’s 95 pages long and so would probably be overkill for a blogpost), the point most relevant here is that the PhD, though it may feel isolating, is actually about providing an opportunity to make connections and to capitalise on them. It’s a good idea to look at the bigger picture beyond your research occasionally: where can your thesis take you? What career(s) are you interested in? What other opportunities might enrich your employability and your thesis?

Going back to sea, then, what’s important to note – and this is the value of the metaphor that I’ve admittedly overstretched – is that you may be at the helm of your project, in your thesis-boat, but you are not a lone ranger (I’m not even sure if there’s a nautical equivalent here…). Those around you are not resources to taunt your frustrated thesis-brain by comparing yourself against them (everyone’s research-boats are so different anyway that such comparisons are nearly always fruitless), but are resources for support and assistance. Similarly, and on a related point, it’s not counter-productive to take a couple of moments to take your hands off the wheel, and to map out the networks and connections around you that you can make the most of, not only for your thesis, but also for your wellbeing and your career. Ultimately, they are indeed choppy waters that you’re in, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make a few helpful swerves here and there, both accidental (or ‘serendipitous’) and purposive, and ultimately enjoy the ride. (End of metaphor.)