{"id":2883,"date":"2019-06-12T11:54:10","date_gmt":"2019-06-12T11:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/on-phd-life-homesickness-and-constant-transitions\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T06:33:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T06:33:06","slug":"on-phd-life-homesickness-and-constant-transitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/on-phd-life-homesickness-and-constant-transitions","title":{"rendered":"On PhD life, homesickness, and constant transitions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin:0cm 0cm 10pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt\"><span style=\"line-height:115%\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri,sans-serif\">One of the hardest things about doing this PhD and all the travelling that comes with it, is the constant transition. I would say jet lag plays a huge part, but even more than that is getting used to the two hugely different \u201clifestyles\u201d that I have to step into as I jet back and forth from the UK to home. Being a mother to six and coordinating getting my work done amongst all the chaos at home and then stepping into living solo for weeks at a time has been harder than I expected. You would think that it would be so easy and having all this time and space when I am away would make things oh so much easier, but in fact I find it hard \u2013 hard to focus sometimes, hard to sleep, hard to get motivated. It\u2019s frustrating, as I find myself having to fight against wanting to just mope around. It\u2019s actually more than just \u201cwanting\u201d and I am truly beginning to understand that homesickness is in fact a \u201creal\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/article\/63304\/homesickness-real-illness\" style=\"color:blue; text-decoration:underline\">illness<\/a>, as described in this article. And while I am maybe only suffering from one of these symptoms (trouble sleeping) \u2013 fever, lesions, trouble sleeping, heart palpitations, emaciation, organ failure, incontinence, and dysentery \u2013 let\u2019s hope it doesn\u2019t come to heart failure or dysentery! It is somewhat comforting to know that I am not a big wuss and that I can somehow try to work towards acknowledging how difficult being away is instead of trying to ignore it and beat myself up for not being as productive as I could or should be.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><i>Mamalegato is a mother to six, PhD student, and theatre artist. This story was published on May 3, 2015, on her blog, <\/i><i><a href=\"https:\/\/mamalegato.com\/\" style=\"color:blue; text-decoration:underline\">Mamalegato&#8217;s Marathon<\/a> (available <a href=\"https:\/\/mamalegato.com\/2015\/05\/03\/homesickness-nostalgia\/\" style=\"color:blue; text-decoration:underline\">here<\/a>), and has been republished here with her permission. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the hardest things about doing this PhD and all the travelling that comes with it, is the constant transition. I would say jet lag plays a huge part, but even more than that is getting used to the two hugely different \u201clifestyles\u201d that I have to step into as I jet back and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":955,"featured_media":33313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2414],"tags":[2676,2666,2454],"new_categories":[],"new_tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiring-researcher-stories","tag-parenting-in-academia","tag-phd-life","tag-researcher-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>On PhD life, homesickness, and constant transitions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mamalegato is a mother to six, PhD student, and theatre artist. 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