A PhD: Highlights, lowlights and everything in between.
While it's still fresh in my mind, I wanted to write a reflective piece on my experience of doing a PhD. Sharing resources that I found helpful, things I wish I had done in hindsight and the reality of taking on such a task.
If you’ve randomly come across my blog, I’ve recently completed a PhD in TU Dublin, where I researched the scaling of social enterprises.
Before applying, I didn’t put a huge amount of thought into doing a PhD to be honest. It wasn’t something I had a burning desire to take on. I’d had a somewhat challenging undergrad experience in NUIG, and although I’d been back to 3rd level since to do a number of qualifications (some would say somewhat pathologically so), I had zero research skills, other than a couple of shorter research pieces during my M.B.A., I was a complete academic writing novice. And so, as I was sitting at my desk in ReCreate and an email arrived for a funded PhD project on the scaling of social enterprises, I was quite taken aback by how much I suddenly knew this is what I wanted to do next. I love social enterprise; I think it is the greatest concept in the world and has the potential to make the world an infinitely better and fairer place. That has not changed, thankfully, I believe it even more now.
Between the time I applied for the PhD and when I was offered it, covid arrived. When I accepted the PhD I think if I had known how long covid would last – I probably wouldn’t have made the leap, but before I knew it, I was sitting at my home office in the thick of lockdown googling ‘what to do on the first day of a PhD’.
Reflecting back on my journey, things I found helpful:
1. Number one hands down were my incredible supervisors, Lucia and Ziene. I had heard and seen nightmare experiences of PhD supervisors. I always felt they had my back throughout the entire journey. When things were tough, they spurred me on and were so supportive and challenged me when things weren’t right. They are the reason this experience was so positive.
Celebrating a successful Viva with my supervisors: Dr. Lucia Walsh and Dr. Ziene Mottiar
2. I worked in 6 weeks blocks mostly. I met my supervisors on average every 6 weeks, sometimes more sometimes less. After each meeting I did something nice – met a friend for a coffee, went for a walk or a swim. Keeping the Solas Project mantra with me to ‘celebrate the small wins’. That is very important on a PhD journey.
3. I love the topic I was researching and believe that my research matters. Definitely such an important factor. A PhD is very long and at times wearisome undertaking and very often you just feel like jacking the whole thing in – but I was always continually motivated to learn more, so that I can support social enterprises to change the world. I spent A LOT of time watching inspirational YouTube videos of people involved in social enterprises sharing stories of hope. That really kept me going. If you are going to do a PhD, make sure you are *really really* into the topic.
4. Speaking of YouTube – I also spent far more time than I could possibly admit watching ‘a day in the life’ vlogs of PhD students. [Shout out to Irish Vlogger, Ciara Feely, Kaelyn Grace Apple and Amina Yonis] Did they sometimes make me feel bad about my lack of progress etc – yes, but it was also weirdly comforting, and I picked up lots of tips from them. I even took to Instagram at one point to start my own daily check in.
5. Again, one more shout out for YouTube and all the great resources available. One of the big disadvantages of starting a PhD in a pandemic (I’ll get to that shortly) is that you are largely isolated and alone. Youtube was great for teaching me how to organise Zotero, maximise NVivo and lots more. I did formal courses, the NVivo QDA training course is excellent, youtube helped supplement this.
6. Back when I started, the artist formerly known as Twitter was a brilliant resource for finding out things. It led me to Raul Pacheco-Vegas blog which provided a really good structure for how to approach my literature review. Twitter was also really helpful to directly contact other social enterprise researchers and get a sense of who is in the social economy research sector and start to build a network.
7. Library support – You think you know how to use a library…but maybe you are like me and realise that you actually don’t! The librarians in TU Dublin were incredibly helpful, about 5 months in I went in for some support and they were incredibly supportive. To be honest I was a bit embarrassed about going in, I thought I should be able to figure this out but I wasn’t quite getting it right and there were so so many other resources available that I never would have benefitted from.
8. Notion and the Second Brain – I read Tiago Fortes book, the Second Brain. I then watched a youtube tutorial on how to set it up on Notion. I could’ve bought a template, but I think setting it up myself really helped me understand the system. It has been a game changer in terms of staying organised and keeping track of PhD goals, workloads and provided a visible tracker for progress. Before I adopted the system I had been messing around with Notion, but following a prescribed system made it so much easier.
9. Scholarcy – AI started to explode in the final year of my PhD. It is tricky to navigate the ethics of it as a researcher. One tool I used a lot was Scholarcy which summarises journals in an easy, digestible way. I found it incredibly helpful to read the summaries before I started reading new academic papers. Sometimes I read papers I genuinely could not follow or figure out what they were discussing and so I’d have to re-read them a couple of times. This process cut down so much time, I already had a vague understanding of the concept before I started reading.
10. People. I’ve met so many incredible people along the way. Through talks, conferences, and random connections. It has been brilliant. I wish I had attended more academic conferences but due to various reasons, I couldn’t, but it was something I got a lot out of. I also found a facebook group AWOWR - Academic Women online Writing Retreat - which is basically a 24 hour zoom room of amazing women working on their PhDs. I signed in most days, and looking up at the screen to see a group of other women always spurred me on. We would discuss our research progress, or lack of progress often! And of course, the people you already know. You could not do it without the support of your friends and family. I am beyond grateful. (Even if my dad constantly told me he thinks my cousin Orla did her PhD much quicker than me!)
11. Focus. Somewhere along the line, I picked up a piece of advice to spend every morning on my PhD, so for the most part I made every effort to do very focused work on my PhD tasks from 8.30 to 1pm every day. In the afternoons I did other pieces of work, that you might call PhD adjacent that helped keep me in the loop of the ever-expanding world of social enterprise! (clearly watched a lot of youtube!). This approach helped me move the dial, even marginally most days and help manage a more positive mental health.
12. Writing. I did a 3-month academic writing accelerator with The Academic Coach, which I found incredibly useful. Although it was fairly pricey (€650 if I remember correctly) it was definitely worth it.
13. My dog. Having a dog should nearly be a PhD requirement. They get you out for walks everyday even when you absolutely don’t want to talk to anyone.
On reflection, there are a lot of positives, but of course, things weren’t always great!
Things I’ve found challenging:
1. Not being on a team. I have found the whole PhD experience incredibly and surprisingly isolating. I think there are a number of reasons for this:
I started in Covid and so couldn’t go into the campus for almost a year, by the time I was allowed in, I was in the routine of being at home and found it hard to go in. Coupled with the fact that it wasn’t a very nice environment (aesthetically) to be in so I didn’t feel the draw to go in.
I’m older than most PhD candidates – I started my PhD at 43, most people I met were at a different stage of life and that made the connection harder. Being an older candidate has its advantages, but it was definitely brought challenges too.
2. Imposter syndrome – it is enormous and constant. I’m not sure I ever learned how to manage it properly, but being aware of it helps.
3. Understanding Methodology – Depending on your background coming into a PhD, different parts will be challenging. For me, methodology was a completely new area and I was very overwhelmed at the start. Thankfully, I was able to audit a class in TU on Research Methods with Christina Quinlan which was excellent and really helped me understand how it all fit together and how it underpins your approach to research.
4. Other people don’t get it. Nor should they. Realising that is helpful. They are supportive, they look after you but they are not in it with you.
5. Getting things wrong – mostly in life, I have found that if I put my mind to it, I can overcome most obstacles. That belief was severely shaken in the process of my PhD. There were different categories of this; times when I knew things were not going well and I had to try and navigate that – weirdly, those were marginally easier than the more difficult times when I thought things were going well but they were not. I am incredibly proud of the final iteration of my conceptual framework, but it did not come easily. There have been hours, days, and months of different versions of it. Other times, I would write a sentence “…clearly this demonstrates…” and a comment from supervisors would read -this is not clear! Or after the submission of my draft findings chapter, when I got the feedback that I was approaching this entirely wrong. I’m also fairly sure I’ve become *that girl* on the NVivo training who didn’t properly back up her system and lost a week's worth of work. I could go on..and on..and on… There were a lot of tears. Is this a lowlight? It felt very negative at the time but perhaps now they are the times I learned the most. I’ll call them character-building!
Would I recommend a PhD, absolutely – but not lightly. Personally, you learn so much about yourself, and professionally, I’ve developed expertise in an area. Coming from a practitioner, the expansive amount of time available to just read and digest information is incredible. Now comes the weight of responsibility to do something with that knowledge and support social enterprises to tackle and solve the social issues we face. We are in the fight of our lives globally, I have no doubt that social enterprise is an important part of the solution.
Resources list:
Literature Review:
Raul Pachego system - https://www.raulpacheco.org/resources/literature-reviews/
Scholarcy - https://www.scholarcy.com/
Research Rabbit - https://www.researchrabbit.ai/
Academic Coach - https://academiccoach.info/
Organisational Hacks:
The Second Brain – Book link, YouTube tutorial - Link
Vloggers: Ciara Feely, Kaelyn Grace Apple, Amina Younis