The PhD legacy: Should I have pursued it at all?

If I could distil 4.5 years of a PhD into a 4.5 minute song, it would be a tune I half-heard one morning at the gym. I hadn’t heard it before, and I was sufficiently intrigued by caught lyrics to hunt it down. When I heard the whole song – direct from my laptop to ears – there was a deep resonance.

“Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck,

Some nights I call it a draw.

Some nights I wish that my lips could build a castle,

Some nights I wish they’d just fall off.”

There were many nights during my PhD I’d stumble home late. My last reserves of energy had sputtered towards cleaning my glassware for tomorrow. I would either feel the glow of satisfaction from a completed task and encouraging result, or a dull pulse of despair knowing I’d stayed late for the sake of reactions that had failed.

Nights were never my biggest PhD problem. I slept well, never built up a sleep deficit. In the first two years I lived on campus, a safe 5-minute walk from work. Cook dinner, nip back to lab, knowing I’d spend the evening with company.

“Some nights I wish that this all would end, ‘cause I could use some friends for a change.”

I knew what I was getting in to with an American Synthetic Organic Chemistry PhD. I was warned about The Hours. I was warned about The Hours in this particular lab. I was quick to give up my evenings and Saturdays. After a while I gave up my Sundays too. If you only have one free day per week then you can’t go anywhere or do anything. You’ve killed your extracurriculars, you’ve choked off your social circles. You may as well go back to lab.

Philadelphia was only 90 minutes down the road. That city and its people was the reason I came back to the Eastern Seaboard. I wanted the magic of 2009-10 back. Couldn’t have it. If I’d done my PhD in the UK and scheduled US summer trips I’d probably have spent more time in Philly than I did living in New Jersey.

“But I still wake up…”

The only thing in my life for 4 years was that PhD. And I wanted it to consume me. It was easy to find purpose: I understood the justification for our research, I saw we were going after hard challenges. I joined in, beating other research groups to the punch with my keynote project. Our group won several races to the press and improved upon concepts more elite labs had already disclosed. We were scrappy and smart. The group coped with stress by evolving in-jokes and delicious dark humour. When talking amongst ourselves about our boss we’d always title him “your boss.” Lines of dialogue from our PI or former group members would be quoted for years as punchlines or linguistic shorthand. We built our own language of references, riffs, Mandarin or Hindi interjections, and comprehensive verbal takedowns.

Getting my research moulded into a publication was a thrill. Three first-author papers (2 submitted during my PhD) is not a large number… but they all felt delicious. I savoured condensing years of work into a concise table; when I looked at the NMRs of my products I pored over the clean beauty of their flat baselines. When I think back to the conferences I attended off the backs of publications, the memories have a dreamlike filter, like the lighting of Midnight In Paris. Late nights laughing in bars, the adrenalin of personal connections running through my veins as I grinned myself to sleep. The PhD hits & highs were addictive.

I’ve already spoken about the lows. I went down far enough into Hell that I emerged blinking out the bottom. Worse things happened to others. Some were in my department. Some in my lab. I wasn’t always happy, but I wasn’t always miserable. The lows of mid-grad school faded from my present state – my emotions ended up more positive than negative.

“So this is it – I sold my soul for this?”

When I transitioned into my end game, the come-down was brutal. The rest of my lab had moved to another university over the summer. I was left in an empty lab, an empty office. I’d proved the points I needed proving. Whatever force of nature that had carried me for 4 years faded away. No need for late nights or weekend work. No rush to generate large quantities of data. No pressures. I could breathe and look at my life.

Was the PhD worth it?

I’d systematically destroyed what had given my pre-PhD decades their meaning. Diverse, separate friendship circles. Challenging extracurricular activities. Culture. I’d cut back on blogging during my PhD not because I didn’t have time to write, but because I’d lost my voice. The words wouldn’t come. My voice has always been strongest on paper, and I’d silenced myself. Over the years I’d met people whose PhDs had hollowed them out, who seemed broken. Was that now my existence? Would this particular PhD even get me the lifestyle I craved? Had it been worth it?

“When I hear a song, it sounds like this one”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have doubted my ability to bounce back and revert my life to its pre-PhD patterns and values. But if I won my PhD, crossed 9 state lines, then immediately attempted to scrub the experience from my mind… was it something I should have pursued at all? Can my PhD benefit me when I half-pretend it didn’t happen?

I don’t know. New experiences reframe old ones. Wounds heal. Scars look cool. I don’t need to package myself, my identity or my emotions into neat labelled boxes. Stuff just is. Perspectives are built to move.

“Some nights I always win.”

Dr. Claire Jarvis (@StAndrewsLynx) is a Science and Medical Writer at Covance. This story was published on August 4, 2018, on Dr. Jarvis’ blog, St Andrews Lynx’s Blog (available here), and has been republished her with her permission.