Edwards Magazine
Edwards Magazine

 

erDiary of A Stressed-Out PhD Girl
Emma Robinson

December 2007

 

As my PhD process is slowly and painstakingly drawing to an end (hey, maybe by next autumn I’ll actually have finished it, post-viva corrections and all!), a strange feeling creeps over me from time-to-time. It feels, and I apologise for this being all touchy-feely, like I am slowly being reborn. It is as if I am emerging from very deep water, as though some of the stress of the last 3 years is slowly, slowly sloughing off. 

There are moments when I get giddy with the sense of freedom coming (slowly) nearer. The feeling that I am finally going to re-enter what I have constructed in my head as Adult World: a nine-to-five job; commuting to work; a regular, hopefully substantial, salary; no longer wearing jeans every single day of my life; and the clearing of my overdraft – though I will miss the interest-free life.  This feeling comes to me at the weirdest times, most often when I am reading a women’s magazine (yay for Marie Claire and your inspirational wardrobe suggestions) – what that says about my level of superficiality I do not want to consider. That grown-up world of suits, high heels, smart handbags – it will finally be mine again. Not having to take work home with me! Weekends off!  I am seriously the most pro-office job person the world has ever seen! 

I’m aware that all of this is hopelessly naïve. I know through my experiences at my part-time job , and through the sufferings of my boyfriend, that the office-job world is nothing like the dream I hold in my head. Office politics. The pressure of just trying to keep your job. Incompetent bosses or colleagues. Nasty, competitive people determined to squish you as they climb the career ladder, if that’s what it takes. All of this is what I will find when I eventually get back into that world. Yet despite knowing all of this, an office job has become my Eldorado, my earthly Paradise!

The only downside of this is that I have to constantly remind myself that I am not there yet. I have to reign in my imagination , stamp on that little spark in me that screams “Freedom! Life! Liberty!” I am realistically at least 9 months from that stage, maybe more. I can make no plans. I have to remain absolutely focused on my thesis and try not to get carried away. I will have corrections and I have no way of knowing how long those will take.

In the meantime, though, excuse me while I leave you to plan my first-day-in-dream-office-job outfit…

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