Hello and happy new year, this is my first video for 2020 and i've had a bit of a crazy
week already.
On New Years Eve I got stranded in Brisbane actually after having some flight troubles
but luckily I was able to make friends with a couple of strangers I met in the airport
who were in the same situation, and we were able to even watch the fireworks together
in the hotel that the airline put us all up in.
It's been a bit of a crazy week (month) in Australia with heaps of bushfires and it's
super smokey outside which has been really quite challenging.
I even went to go and try to buy an air purifier at the shops but the entire town had sold
out of air purifiers as well as smoke masks so I had to get the next best thing which
was the three last little pots of basil that were at Aldi and I was thinking that maybe
at least they can give me a little bit of oxygen, I know that they probably wont, but
that's why this hilariously sad pot of basil is by my side today.
So it's been nearly a year since I uploaded a video called I Quit My PhD and it's been
actually a bit over a year since I did quit my PhD and I thought I would provide a bit
of an update about what i've been up to since then and the things I've done since leaving
and I guess just answer a few of the major questions that I've received after posting
that video.
I will say I received quite a few comments on that video or even messages from people
saying that it's given them some kind of inspiration to want to leave their own PhDs, which is
not the intention of the video at all and I want people of course to make their own
decisions and PhDs (doing one) can be definitely the right decision sometimes and really good
for you so I don't ever want the purpose of that video to make it seem like i'm attacking
the PhD system and saying that it's bad.
It was just a video that I made because I had to tell you what I was up to and give
you an update.
I had to let you know that I had decided to leave and it was the best decision for me
to make.
So first of all, do I regret leaving my PhD?
Well the answer is no, I don't regret it.
And i've done lots of cool things in the year that i've just been kind of out on my own,
and i'll go through some of those ups and downs in this video.
I don't regret it because even though there have been ups and downs in this last year,
I've had an enormous amount of freedom.
The freedom to do what I want and to work on what I want and work when I want and I
think that freedom in working is really important to me and I think that i'm very lucky to have
it.
Of course i'm only able to have it because of my amazing audience and the support from
all of my viewers.
So thank you for making this last year possible for me and making it possible for me to, I
guess, follow my dreams.
So i wrote down some of my highlights to tell you about over the last year.
And they include things like travelling to Zurich where I filmed a few videos, I travelled
to VidCon in the US which was amazing, I went to VidCon in Melbourne as well.
I gave some talks including at the University of Sydney and to a group of astronomy students
in Brisbane and I did lots of awesome collaborations with other people like my friend Petr, and
Jess, and Cody from Codyslab, and Physics Girl, Andrew Dotson, I was in the Flammable
Maths recent video and I was even interviewed on the radio in Australia about being a YouTuber.
And what was awesome about that was that Hank Green joined us live on the conversation and
that felt like really a highlight to me because I really look up to Hank.
You might have seen me sharing lately on social media that I was involved with this Vsauce3
collaboration, I was in the Jumanji episode of Could You Survive The Movies? and that
was also quite a big highlight of the year.
And I just wanted to quickly tell you the story of how that came about because the whole
thing was crazy and random and I think it's a good story.
So I was at VidCon in the US in July this (last) year and I just went to one of the
Vsauce presentations.
It was Vsauce 1, 2, 3 on the stage in the expo hall with quite a big audience.
They were just talking about themselves and maybe answering some questions and it was
the first event of VidCon, the first event that I went to.
And I was a bit late going to the talk because i'd been at registration.
I walked in about half an hour late to the talk and I'm trying to walk in the back without
bringing too much attention to myself and just minding my own business but I heard at
that time, Michael from Vsauce1 was actually talking about some smaller educational creators
who he had met the day before, one of which was me and he did mention my channel name
as I was walking in.
He didn't know I was there but when I heard my name I gave him a little wave from the
audience, I wasn't sure if he'd see me or not but he did and he said 'Oh speaking of
Tibees, there she is now walking in'.
And so people turned around and looked at me and I gave a little wave and I was a little
bit embarrassed but it was nice.
And then Jake from Vsauce3 was also on stage and he called out 'Oh Tibees, are you around
next week?
And would you like to do a collaboration?' and I of course was super keen but this was
communication over I guess hundreds of people in the audience.
And I couldn't really say anything back because I didn't have a mic so I just did a little
thumbs up from the crowd and it was kind of organised right then and there in front of
everyone.
So I think I was just in the right place at the right time.
Jake was looking for a physics channel to be part of the video and I was keen and around
so that's how it happened.
I'm really glad it did, doing that video was an awesome experience, I got to meet Casey
Neistat and do a scene with him which is something I never thought would happen and just to see
what it's like to be on the set of a super high production video.
A highlight that I can't forget to mention is the whole veggietales saga.
I repeatedly apologize to viewers who have been recommended the veggietales video from
me.
The whole thing with that I guess exploding from 4 thousand views to 4 million views in
2019 was something that I didn't expect and it's been kind of funny, it's been kind of
a meme.
Lowlights that I will talk about include just like the nasty comments that I get, the gross
and obsessive comments as well.
There's like some really terrible stuff that I read that just ruins my faith in YouTube
comments and has kind of made it a place that I don't really want to read through a lot.
Having said that though there are lots of good comments, probably outweighing the bad
ones ten to one and thank you to the people who do leave really nice and encouraging comments
because i guess the existence of those is what enables me to not take these horrible
ones very seriously.
While I was still a PhD student and while I was starting to grow my YouTube channel,
I guess that what I was doing was going to the lab and being at uni all day, working
on my PhD all day and then working on my videos at night and on weekends and really trying
to be efficient and squeezing it into my spare time.
So I was kind of getting both done but I knew that I was really stretching my time thin.
I guess I thought that when I left my PhD that I would free up these huge chunks of
time during the day that I would be able to just spend on videos so I would be able to
do videos all day as well as all night and maybe with that same intensity but that's
not what I found happened.
I guess I left my PhD so i was no longer doing that but I don't think the amount of time
extra that I was able to spend on videos really entirely replaced the time that I was spending
on the PhD.
I think if anything I was still just working on videos at about the same rate, getting
them out and uploaded.
Maybe they were slightly higher quality and I definitely couldn't have done as many if
i'd still been a student.
But I also think that I increased the amount of time that I wasted or procrastinated or
did other things, some of which were good and some which were probably a waste of time
so that is something that I kind of dislike about the last year, I kind of feel like I
wasted a lot of time, especially because my expectations were so high.
I thought that if I don't have this PhD to do at all, i'll be able to spend so much time
on videos but I guess I didn't have the same intensity of working on it when it was no
longer a side hobby and when I had all day to do videos I guess I didn't spend all day
doing videos.
But I don't know if that's good or bad but that's just a thought that i've had.
I have been plagued by a bit of anxiety this year both related to being a YouTuber and
completely unrelated.
But overall i'm really happy with where I am and i'm just excited to keep doing the
same thing and keep doing what i'm doing for this next year and into the future.
So i'm going to answer now a few more specific questions.
The number one question when I tell people i'm pursuing being a YouTuber is How to you
get paid? and so I thought i'd briefly mention that.
The way that i'm able to continue making videos on this channel is that I make money from
Adsense so that is directly scaled with views and it's just directly from YouTube themselves
from the ads that play before videos or around videos.
I generally don't put midrolls in just because I don't really like midrolls myself and I
feel like if I can avoid putting them in in most cases then I just will.
But there's that and there are sponsors as well, you've probably seen me do a few sponsored
videos.
I try not to do too many sponsors like I know some channels do every video sponsored and
i'd probably make a lot more money if i accepted a lot more sponsorships but I try to just
keep it at the minimum that I kind of need to just keep the channel alive.
And I do only work with brands that I think are spreading something good, are good products,
and have the right attitude towards their customers and genuinely want to support learning
content on YouTube.
I also made a Patreon account and you can support me there is you want to directly support
the channel.
Another question I got is What does a day in your life look like? and I kind of find
this a bit hard to answer because sometimes i'm not even really sure myself.
But the most probably average day that I could give you is that if i'm working on a video
then working on anything from planning the video which can take a while, especially if
it contains math or physics ideas that I don't want to get wrong like a proof or something
i'll try and like do a bit of reading about it.
There's also the time it takes to come up with a good topic which I think is most of
the success of the video (determined by) so i'm always actually thinking about trying
to come up with good topics and trying to do a bit or market research I guess you'd
call it to see how I think they'd do on YouTube before I make them.
I do everything myself in my videos, occasionally I will have a cameraman if you see the handheld
shots but other than that it will be me who does the research, the idea, the filming,
the editing which takes longer than filming and I always film way more footage than I
end up using by quite a big factor so i'll edit that down, uploading it and promoting
it and trying to engage with the audience a bit and just generally replying to emails
and doing everything around uploading videos because there are a surprising amount of random
tasks that I find come into this job.
And if i'm not doing any of that then i'll be doing some other random thing maybe writing
which is something that I haven't made the most progress with but will continue to do
and hopefully I can share with you eventually.
The next idea I want to cover is What do I miss about my PhD if anything?
And there are things that I miss, like being a PhD student is a whole lifestyle you have
your friends and your lab mates and everything like that and I guess I had to step back from
all of that which was a bit sad and I do miss that social aspect of having people to work
with and having lab mates and people who are just in it together.
I do probably get a bit lonely just making videos by myself but yeah that's one things
and also just like the facilities that you get when you're at uni.
Whether that's literally the labs and like the microscopes and stuff and just the access
to all the cool stuff int he lab which can come in useful, I miss that but also things
like the uni library and the ability to check out books that would otherwise be really expensive
but you can get on your student card.
So yea there's things I miss but they're not that big and they're not big enough to want
to go back to it, i'm really enjoying what i'm doing.
And i'd probably miss the freedom of this a lot more if I was to ever go backwards.
So am I thinking about ever going back to my PhD?
Well the answer is right now, no.
I'm just not, I think that i'm only still kind of just getting started with what i'm
doing, i've still got so many ideas I want to do, i'm still so excited to try so many
more things and i'm far from running out of ideas or anything like that.
The last thing I want to talk about is the question, Do I think other PhD students should
quit?
And when should they quit?
Now I could give some kind of fuzzy advice a long the lines of, it's a shame to be spending
your time working on something that's not right for you and if it's not right for you,
you should leave.
But maybe if you are in this situation you don't know if it's right or wrong for you
and you just don't know if you're on the right path.
And of course if you were on the wrong path you would leave but you don't know if you're
on the wrong path.
Well I think maybe some more solid advice i've realised is that you probably know some
of your strengths.
And you know what you are good at and you've had enough experience of things to know what
your strengths are.
And hopefully you can tell whether or not your PhD or your job or whatever program it
is, is using those strengths and is allowing you to use those strengths and to combine
those strengths and the skills that you know you have.
And if it's not bringing out the best in you and the things that you're best at then you
probably should leave.
I guess one of my strengths that I thought was really important to me was the ability
to be creative and to combine art and science and that's what I really loved doing.
And whilst I was kind of good at the stuff I was doing in my PhD, it wasn't using my
best strengths.
I knew what my strengths were and I wasn't using them, and now I think i'm using them
a lot more.
So maybe that is some more solid advice to find out if you are on the wrong path or the
right path and then you can decide what to do about it.
So thanks for listening (watching) this video and thank you to all my viewers and supporters
for making this last year possible for me and i'm excited about what we can do together
this year.
Thanks :)