PhD blog: 9
Graham Foster is a PhD student at the English Research Institute of Manchester Metropolitan University. He is researching how 9/11 affected North American literature. Under the weather This last week I have been in bed with lady flu, and she has given me quite the mauling. I write this having barely recovered. The problem with illness and the lifestyle of the unfunded PhD is that they do not mesh together. Things just carry on, whether your body is up to the job or not. I am currently supporting myself through teaching and freelance work, and neither job offers any sick pay, so I have been trudging into Manchester everyday, limbs aching, coughing, shivering, and sweating, in order to earn enough money to fund my PhD.
My PhD, by the way, after an eventful week of form-filling and deadlines, has stalled. It’s very easy to let everything else push PhD work aside, and I haven’t read anything, or written anything, or even thought about the general thrust of my argument, for nearly two weeks. My illness has made me even more aware of time passing, and the knowledge that I will have an interview for the internal studentship in a few months is sharp in my brain. On your marks…One thing that has been pushing PhD work aside is marking. I have now finished the class-based part of the teaching, but now I have three assignments to mark. This is unbelievably time-consuming, and frustrating. It’s quite amazing how much time one can spend on a single student’s work, then multiply that by 28… Well, it really dominates the week. There seems to be no structure to this work, just a big pile of papers that need to be red-penned. I’ve been doing it in my sick bed, at every spare moment I have, hoping that I’ll be able to get it finished. The marking, it could be said, promotes the illness, and every piece of work looked at sends the marker further into the foul, body-trembling sickness, thus giving even less time for PhD work. I am reaching the end of my first year as a PhD student, and am desperate for some kind of funding. I do not think I have the energy of the discipline to do anymore unfunded work. The juggling of my many jobs, and the research, has left me exhausted and struggling for both money and time. Is it worth it?So a year in, how would I advise anyone pursuing a PhD part-time and unfunded? That depends on the individual. I’m reasonably organised, but have found myself overwhelmed by the amount of personal scheduling it involves. It’s difficult to earn enough money to live, and enough money to pay the fees, and it’s also difficult to switch off from both work and research. Every pint in a pub is money that you can’t afford, every film you watch is time you could be doing something else. This leads to a very strained mindset. Passion for your chosen subject only leads so far, and having to structure that passion with the quotidian things is extremely tough. However, if, like me, you are positive that a PhD is the right path for you, then these are mere setbacks. And yes, you get ill, and don’t see your friends, and miss every single episode of that great TV show everybody is talking about but, by God, when you do actually get to the nitty-gritty of the research, or uncover a new piece of information that will support your argument, all the strife vanishes into thin air. But now I’m going back to bed to shiver and sweat and cough, in the hope that I’ll be better by Monday, when I have to earn more money. I’ll hopefully have something more productive to say next time… Read Graham's previous blogs:
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