Part 1: False starts, Botched Becomings
I have started, scrapped, and restarted this particular post numerous times. If you were to look into my notebook, dear reader, you would see at least three ‘assemblages of fragments, false starts, [and] botched becomings’.[i] Apparently this constitutes a form of creative-critical writing, so that’s good for me at least (being the PhD programme I’m on). But the trouble with writing this post doesn’t just come from finding out how to start, but to actually figure out what I want to talk about. Sure, I could easily do a direct sequel to my previous piece, starting from where the last one left off, in describing my complete and utter state of ambiguity that I found myself in after my first year as a full-time PhD student. But that doesn’t seem quite right. Because I cannot claim that there has been much of a change between now and then, I still feel like I am in a state of ambiguity, it’s just what I’m ambiguous about that has shifted… but not resolved.
It’s not like nothing happened this past year, either. In fact, loads happened: I didn’t get any funding again, so that means I have to find a way to pay for the rest of my PhD on my own, I passed my upgrade (hooray), and I even got to present a paper at a conference (double-hooray). So, I do have loads to share, but really, I don’t think any of it is relevant to really talk about what my second year of my PhD was really like. Because what I learned about my PhD this year is that the biggest thing that changed was my relationship to it. No longer are my PhD and I two single people just having a nice time in each other’s company. Oh no. Now, we’re co-dependent, and that realization has been strange to say the least. Strange in that this year, more than the last, really showed me where I stood in my relationship to my PhD.
Part 2: It’s not me, It’s You
To put this into context further, let’s take a look at some elements that go into a codependent relationship. In Wendy Rose Gould’s article, ‘What is Codependency?’, the dynamic is described between a ‘taker’ and a ‘giver’. The ‘taker’, the individual with more power within the relationship, constructs a relationship around the ‘inequity of power that promotes the needs of the taker, leaving the giver to keep on giving often at the sacrifice of themselves’[ii], therefore putting the ‘giver’ at a significant disadvantage through their own investment into the relationship. In regards to my PhD and I, I think it’s pretty clear who is who, but if not, let’s take into account some signs of codependency and see where I stand.
First, ‘a feeling of “walking on eggshells” to avoid conflict with the other person’[iii]. Since my PhD isn’t a physical being, this one gets a pass. Few, that’s a relief! Let’s look at number two: ‘feeling the need to check in with the other person and/or ask permission to do daily tasks’.[iv] Again, I don’t need to check in with my PhD to do things, but in some regard, like any other job, maybe one does have to consider whether there is time available in the schedule to do something other than the work. Still, tenuous, so let’s put a pass on that one and move on to the next: ‘often being the one who apologizes—even if you have done nothing wrong’.[v] You can tell that this was written by people from the USA, having never experienced British culture before…next! ‘Feeling sorry for the other person when they hurt you’.[vi] Yeah can easily scratch that one, I don’t feel sorry at all for my PhD when it hurts me, but this next one is an interesting one to consider: ‘regularly trying to change or rescue trouble, addicted, or under-functioning people whose problems go beyond one person’s ability to fix them’.[vii]
Now, outside of my umbridge with describing people as ‘under-functioning’, this bit did strike a chord with me. Mostly because my PhD came into my life when I did need rescuing. It was the pandemic, I could tell that my job was toast, and it was the PhD which saved me from being in the worst possible state I could find myself in – unemployment. So maybe we’ll give that one a half check? ‘Doing anything for the person, even if it makes you uncomfortable’?[viii] Not in my experience, so there’s that. ‘Putting the other person on a pedestal despite the fact that they don’t merit the position’.[ix] Let’s dive a bit deeper into this one.
When I tell people that I am doing a PhD, it often gets the response of, oh wow!, or, well done, that’s impressive, and that feels good. It’s the same response that I would normally get when I would say that I was working in TV, or that my partner was doing a PhD, it was all to vicariously feed this need distilled in me from a young age to gain value from other people’s feelings and opinions towards me. Oh look, number 8…‘A need for other people to like you in order to feel good about yourself’![x] The PhD does that on a surface level, but does it, as the quote says, ‘merit the position’? Well, it depends on who you ask, and probably what field. Very few people do a PhD, only about 2% of the UK population have a doctoral degree,[xi] and so in regards to rarity, it might deserve its ‘position’. But it also boils down to how relevant the skills are you develop as part of a PhD to the career you want to have going forward.
For instance, this year I got to teach for the first time. It was only as a postgraduate teaching position, so I wasn’t delivering lectures or anything, but I was responsible for weekly, one-hour seminars. Teaching and a career as a lecturer was one of the primary motivators for doing a PhD, so finally getting a chance to do it was going to be a good indicator as to whether I made the right decision. It was a great experience overall, if not a lot of hard work, and compared to the bit of tutoring I did for GSCE and A-level students, heaven. But to the defense of GCSE and A-levels, I was only tutoring, not teaching. And it was really more about the content, rather than the students, so that played a big factor in it as well. Regardless, doing a PhD doesn’t guarantee that you will develop teaching skills as part of your program. I’m just lucky enough to have selected a university that not only allows for teaching opportunities, but then has their own means of attaining an associate teaching fellowship. Another thing that I took part in my second year. So in regards to whether or not it deserves its pedestal, I’d say it depends on who you ask, but for me, maybe it does, bringing us to our second to last, and final, signs of codependence.
I’m grouping the final two together because they are the strongest points for demonstrating how this second year has gone, and how one can find themselves in a codependent relationship with their PhD: ‘struggling to find time for yourself, especially if your free time consistently goes to the other person’ and ‘feeling as if you’ve lost a sense of yourself or within the relationship’.[xii] It’s no common secret amongst PhD student’s that ‘find[ing] time for yourself’ is especially difficult. The process requires a lot from you, a lot of time and effort to go into research and then writing, on top of the added pressures of funding, as some funding bodies have strict guidelines while being self-funded has its own issues. For me, this really came to a head during the latter half of the academic term, when my upgrade was fast approaching. I was still teaching at the time, but I also needed to produce an upgrade portfolio: a document which consisted of an introduction, literature review, methodology section, sample chapter, bibliography, research questions, and timeline of completion.
If you read my last PhD update, dear reader, you would know that I wasn’t in the best position at the time for an upgrade portfolio. A lot of work and a lot of drafts of literature reviews and methodology sections went into putting together that portfolio, and while I managed it, and as I mentioned, passed the upgrade (again, yay!), I was only able to do so because I completely ‘lost my sense of [my]self]’ in the process. January to the start of July is, at the moment, a complete blur to me. All I can really tell you of that time was that I was either writing, teaching, or on a coach at 3am to get into London on time to teach, only to get back on a coach at 5.30pm to get home at 10.00pm. Oh, and I did the conference. See? Only 1300 words in and I already forgot about the conference too. But through all of it, my identity as a PhD student became all encompassing.
I would come back from teaching only able to really discuss what was going on with my research or my students. I would find myself waking up in the middle of the night attempting to try and solve a problem with my writing, or think about whether or not I had an issue with a student from the previous day. I completely stopped dreaming, and as I wrote about previously, my enjoyment for the things I once cared about almost evaporated entirely as I allowed my PhD to fully take over and cope with it through Benjamin’s Age of Distraction. But what I struggle with the most isn’t the fact that I was a willing participant in the development of this relationship with my PhD, but that it allowed me to experience the first successes I’ve had in the program since its start.
My first year of ambiguity was a lot of failing my way to solutions. No funds, no research question, cutting and chartering paths through odd ways of thinking unsure if it was the right direction or reasoning. But my second year, with the teaching, the upgrade, the conference, winning money to attend the conference, comparing the two years together shows that codependence is the way forward. And I feel like this isn’t anything new. People who really do well in their PhD’s (and by well I mean publish, lead to well established lecturing/research positions), tend to be the people who just really embrace the lifestyle. Go whole hog into it. But later down the line, they burn out. Mostly because our society really takes advantage of those who fully commit to anything (and that’s my one on capitalism for this essay), but also because through the PhD, there’s no one to tell you to take time off, to take care of yourself. Unless of course you have really good supervisors (like I do), or a really strong cohort of likeminded early career researchers. Or, luckily for me, a partner whose been through it already and just so happens to enjoy enabling time-off at any and every possibility.
Like I said, this isn’t new to any industry. Working really hard can often have good results. And when it comes to employability, networking, people want to see that you are a hard worker. People want to know that, unfortunately, you are likely to put the work before yourself, because that shows real commitment. But at least where I do my PhD, we get hit over the head with marketing about mental wellness, programs that are available to us, things we can do for selfcare. And while all of that is good, it still hasn’t changed the culture of success and reward that comes from codependence. And that’s where things get tricky, because what is the balance between personal responsibility for one’s mental health and the workplace/study place in which much mental health strain can take place? I sure as hell can’t tell you. I’m doing an arts degree after all…
Part 3: Reconciliation
Much like being in a codependent relationship, it only becomes really harmful when ‘the responsibility for relationships with others needs’ become ‘excessive to an unhealthy degree’[xiii]. And by my personal standards, it doesn’t look like I’m doing too badly with my codependent relationship to my PhD. Perhaps it is due to the developing self-awareness that I have with it, one of the first steps to ‘reducing codependent tendencies’[xiv]. Or maybe it’s because a lot of the material I work with is constantly inducing reflectivity, not just on my work but on my personhood, and the world I am coming to live in. It might also have something to do with the fact that I am slowly, but surely, trying to rediscover who I am without the thing that I am doing defining me.
This has been a part of me for a long time, and I am trying to work on it, but honestly, I’m terrified of what my life would be like without the PhD. Without that sense of thing giving me an identity. I think it stems from growing up in the USA, where identity and status are so tied up in one’s work and life that it’s just a tangled mess of self-actualization through one’s income. And while my PhD is of course a means to some kind of more financially stable end, as opposed to that of my television career, I still want to be able to reflect on the experience with some degree of fondness. Even if at the minute it’s just a blur of teaching, the Gothic, and funding applications. A funhouse mirror of self-replicating perpetual selves that hopefully, eventually, can provide some kind of sensible outcome. Or, at the very least, a bit more of a healthier relationship with myself and the work I do. So, maybe I’m not as codependent with my PhD as I thought. But, my dear reader, it’s easy to see just how slippery the slope can be.
Endnotes:
[i] Ståhl, Ola, ‘Kafka and Deleuze/Guattari: Towards a Creative Critical Writing Practice’, Theory, Culture & Society, 33.7–8 (2016), 221–35 <https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276415625313>.
[ii] Wendy Rose Gould, ‘What Is Codependency? Recognizing the Signs’, Very Well Mind, 2020 <https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-codependency-5072124#:~:text=Exelberg,'>.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Statistic is from the OECD, Education at a Glance 2021 report: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance-2021_b35a14e5-en.
[xii] Gould, ‘What is Codependency?’, 2020
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Ibid.