okay we're going with this, we've got a cactus and a chair guys so it's a winner
hello welcome back to my channel if you don't know my name's Lucy and
I'm a PhD student who likes to travel can't really afford to travel at the moment
it's whole other issue we're in a new location again I'm still trying to work out like
what the best filming location is it has been a while since I've done a sit-down
video I am slowly making my way through all the Central European vlogs I took in
September so I will put a link to the playlist in this corner so I'm a PhD student
as I mentioned. I'm at the University of Birmingham and I'm about three months
into my PhD, I'm actually going home for Christmas tomorrow I'm so excited I love
Christmas! But I thought that made this a great opportunity to kind of talk to you
through the expectations versus the reality of doing a PhD from someone
who's about three months in so I kind of got the lay of the land now. I'm going to
split it up into four categories: workload, friendships, PhD life, and money because I
think those are kind of the big sweeping categories that will affect most people
when they do a PhD. Workload, expectations. Before I started the PhD I kind of wrongly
assumed that you would start writing straight away, because you know you've got to come out
this PhD like a hundred thousand words and you're kind of like that's going to take
ages, I've only ever written like twenty thousand before, probably for your
Master's dissertation, possibly even less 15,000 and now you'll be expected to 100,000
It's a lot! So you kind of expect you're gonna get going straight away, you kind
of think you're gonna immediately get into the library, you're going to be doing loads
of researching, you're gonna be writing it's gonna be nose to the grind 24/7.
It's not quite the case. Not really the case at all actually. I would say your
workload kind of goes like this. You're going to have moments where you are really busy
when you're kind of working to a deadline be that a funding deadline be
that a conference application and abstract whether it's an internal
deadline you've kind of set yourself where you've said I want to read these
ten books by the end of the week because that will really set me up well for blah
blah blah but then you're gonna have down periods as well you're gonna have
days where you don't feel like you do a lot or were you do a lot of admin stuff
and this is what I didn't expect of the
workload PhD. Most of the stuff you do day in day out is very non-research
/writing focused. It'll be networking, it'll be sending
that email to that person, making sure you've sign up for that conference,
making sure you're touching base and going to that workshop, identifying any
gaps that you need to address. If you're applying for funding you're gonna
spend a lot of time on funding applications, particularly when you start because
you're not going to be used to how they work. So there's a whole load of other things you
have to do outside of the PhD and I'm mainly talking from someone who wants to
go into academia, just to clarify my end goal if I
get there is to go into academia. So for me in particular there's so much around
the PhD that I need to do to kind of get to that end end goal so I need to be
going to conferences I need to be networking with people I need to be
thinking about the wider community I'm hoping to become part of so because of
that I have to do things, like go to conferences or give presentations or
join the Ad Alta peer review group, So there's all this stuff I need to
do which doesn't contribute to my final PhD but it's just as important and I
think that's the thing you don't realize but because of that you are gonna have
ups and downs you're gonna have days where you do a lot, even weeks where
you do a lot and then you know weeks what you don't do that much you don't
feel like you're doing that much because at the end of the day you're not
superhuman you're not going to be able to just do everything all at the same time you
have to prioritize week by week or day by day however it works for you and also
it's human we're not we're not meant to go like this. Progress is like this.
Sometimes you're gonna hit a research stumbling block, you're gonna have to
rethink or you're gonna discover something that's going to completely
change how you want to approach it and that might require load a new research
which could set you back but actually is helping you move forward the workload is
quite different from what I expected because I didn't expect all this
surrounding stuff. Friendships or friends or making friends so my expectations for
this were pretty low this is my third time around I'm 26 I've already got a
pretty good group of friends, to be honest, not bragging, but they're pretty
great so I didn't come into the PhD expecting to make loads of friends. I
thought oh maybe I'll make one or two. I've heard loads of people say PhDs
can be really lonely, so I had really low expectations. I remember telling my
friends who dropped me off well if I don't make any friends I'll just be home
to see you guys all the time for the next three years. So my expectations
on the floor really didn't think I would make any friends and if I did, I didn't think
they would be good friends I was wrong quite nice too mom we have to making
friends at the PhD is I personally found it fairly easy that is not the case that
everybody I would like to highlight I am just giving you my perspective most of
the friends I talk to now on a fairly regular basis I met during freshers week
so I highly recommend as a PhD student please go to freshers week put yourself
out there go to the events whether you think they're interesting whether you
just think it's an environment where you will make friends be that a coffee
morning be that a campus tour, that's where I met most of my friends weirdly. So you have to put
yourself out there. I pretty much in freshers week was out
of the house everyday, but that doesn't mean I was going out getting drunk. but I was
going to at least one or two social things a day, just to try and meet
people to build those connections and if you meet someone you get on with be like hey
do you want to add me on Facebook hey do you want to follow me on Instagram just
have some way to communicate with them because this is kind of the one week
where everyone's in the same boat so you want to take it advantage of the fact that
if you message someone after only meeting them one time they're most
likely gonna say yes if you ask to hang out, because they ain't got any friends
either so please go to freshers week, put yourself out there, ask to add people
on Facebook and then follow them up if you met someone who you think was really
cool and you really had a good time with and you were laughing and joking you're
like hey I could see myself being friends with that person send them a message two days
later being like 'hey you're going to this event it looks really fun you want to
come with', even if you don't become friends with that person you might at
that event have more confidence because you already know this person so you think they're
cool so I'll talk to this person. Don't skip freshers week especially
international students please please please don't skip freshers week because
that really is the time to meet people and kind of make friends that's when I
met I'd say 90% of my friends. So I suppose the reality was I actually found
it easier to make friends then I thought I would and part of that I think was
because I did force myself to be out of the house in that first week a lot kind
of the first two weeks and also just because I think me at 26 I've got more
confidence in who I am and I was just very you like me or you don't that's
kind of on you, I like me and I realize that's not the case for everybody but I
think that's partly what helped me make friends just cuz I'm
at a stage of life now where I feel a bit more confident in who I am and yeah there
are still days where it can be lonely, because everyone's got their own lives
they're doing their own things but overall it's pretty good. So that brings me to quite
nicely the next point which i think is the most ambiguous, i've call it PhD life
and it's kind of all the things you're gonna do at the university that maybe
aren't directly related to your PhD but you're still on campus for them
so as part of this I'm talking about my job on the student team I'm talking
about any kind of workshops I've gone to you even if I've just like met up with
people for an 'oh we're doing similar like PhD topics do you want to meet for
a drink'. My expectations for this was zero because I didn't realize this was a
thing I thought I was just gonna come and sit in the library for three years.
I was wrong. PhD life is quite important and I think it's something you
need to be aware of when you go in that you want to get involved with your
department definitely, your college if you can and even the wider community.
Be that through joining societies that are quite friendly and welcoming to PhD students.
I'm going to be doing a blog post on that soon so keep your eyes out or whether it's
getting involved in an academic reading group or you're setting up a something.
There's so many things you can join so there's academic reading groups and also
this is something very much English PhD perspective there's academic reading
groups there's magazines you can join to help like edit or peer review or write
for there are you know regular lecture things that are happening for PGR's (Post-Graduate Researchers)
particularly, there's loads of stuff at Westmere, which is the University of
Birmingham PGR, postgraduate researcher, hub. There's always events
going on and just go to them you will sometimes be surprised sometimes there's
awful I'm not gonna lie to you, sometimes they are awful and you're like why did I waste an hour coming here but
other times they're pretty good and you'll meet people in your chat and
you'll hear about there research and think that's pretty cool, so there's so many
things you can get involved with but I think it's really important in your
first kind of month just find out where these things are. I found that quite
tricky you might have to subscribe to some mailing list, you might have to talk
to a certain person. Find out where they are, put them in your
calendar, you're not committing to go but at least then you know even you get
closer to the time and you have a free afternoon and you know there's maybe a
a festive Christmas event happening at Westmere you can just go
along. It's free food most the time, so I recommend going along. The reading groups
are also really fun I have only been to one Gothica and I've been setting up one
in January so that would be quite exciting. Another kind of aspect to PhD
life that I thought about but I didn't really know if it was possible is I'm
currently auditing, I audited this term two PGT classes, and the next term I'm
auditing, I think it actually might be a third year undergrad module
but the reason I'm auditing them is because they will help me with my research they'll
provide me with greater context, they'll give me a good base and make sure I've
got that good base for some of my topics. Base I feel like I said that word too
many times now, base base base it's all about that base, about that base. Anyway! You might end up auditing some
modules and that actually is a really great way to meet people through your classes
they won't be PGRs or they're very unlikely to be, but you'll have something
in common with them, you've all picked the same modules and you might end up
making some quite good friends. All you're friends don't have to be PhD
students, let's just clarify that, they di not all need to be PhD students to be
your friend. One of my actual closest friends is a master student and she's
lovely and we met at a workshop, of all places, who would have expected that. So
that's what I mean by PhD life, my expectations where zero because I
didn't realize it was a thing and now it's probably one of the better aspects
of it because it's a way to like meet people and keep in touch and kind of
expand your research in ways you wouldn't expect. The final one I was a
bit hesitant to talk about, but it's money. I feel like especially British
people we don't like talking about money but I think it needs to be discussed. I'm
not gonna get into the details of money but basically my expectations was that
oh I'll be fine I've got savings I'm gonna have two
part-time jobs I know how to budget. Yeah I didn't, didn't know how to
budget. Didn't have a clue. I forgot one aspect of being a student again is you eat out
a lot, you tend to be with your friends a lot, you tend to spend money without
thinking about it if you go on a night out. Also you don't have money coming in
regularly so it's pretty hard to budget when you have no
income, do you know what I mean, you're still gonna go down even if you budget
really carefully, you're still gonna lose money at the end of the day. You're gonna
be spending money that you're not recuperating. My expectations for money
was that I would be fine the reality I'm pretty broke right now and it's partly
because one of my part-time jobs took a long time to pay me, I'm hoping I will
get paid soon. Hopefully I get paid today. the money situation I think in the long term is gonna work itself
out. I'm still applying for funding, there are options open to me but I think I was
a bit naive when I went in and I thought I could live off less than I can.
The reality is you're gonna have to be paying for food you're gonna be going out and
meeting people, even if it's just for coffee that's a fiver. You're gonna need
to be getting around, you might be going home some weekends, you also gonna have
rent and bills potentially to pay depending on your situation. You might
also have to be paying your tuition fees depending on your situation so just be
realistic with the money you are gonna be spending don't be like me and be like
oh yeah I know I'll only spend like a tenna on going out a week, I'm gonna just
not go out. No, if you get talking to people you're gonna want to go out
because you're gonna want to make friends there are some cheaper ways you can do
this and I'm by no means an expert but just realistically think about your
money situation and work out in advance ways to do it. You can totally do it
I'm doing an unfunded PhD, I'm making it work but don't go in it naive like I did.
It doesn't help anyone you're just gonna come down with a crash and probably call
your dad crying being like 'dad I can't afford to buy groceries and then he's gonna
send you a food package', so yeah 26 adulting real well. That's kind of what I
wanted to talk about money because I think we don't talk about it but maybe
we should and just the situation is there like things with funding if you
get funding that's great if you don't get funding you can still do a PhD but
you just need to be a lot more aware of the realities of how much money you're
going to want to be spending. I think that's everything!
That's my first three months expectation versus reality of a PhD. The reality
is better in a lot of ways: my research has changed a lot since I first started
it's gone in new avenues, it's gone in new directions I've done a lot more around the
research I've made more friends than I thought I would. I haven't done so well on
the money for I'll grant you that but I'm making it
work, I'm applying for funding I've got two part-time jobs I'm hustling. I'd love to
hear how you found the reality of doing a PhD compared to what
you expected it to be like, so leave me a comment below and I will love to hear
from you. I don't only ask for comments so this feels weird,
but trying to get better at that thing. Okay this is Lucy signing out and I hope
you all have a wonderful Christmas, Bye! I think my cactus is dying I'm trying so
hard to keep it alive but it's leaves are molting like crazy and I don't know what
I'm doing wrong I'm not watering it very often
am I not watering it enough, I don't want to overwater it because I know that's a big
killer. I'm watering it, well I'm trying to water it like once every two weeks
when I use a spray bottle so I don't even overwater it but maybe I'm not
watering enough anyway not important for this video