PhD Tales Pt.3 _ The "Ah! what have I done?" phase

When everyone of my friends already in a doctoral programme told me that the PhD would have been the most difficult thing of my life - professionally speaking - I didn’t believe them. Why would I? I was about to start researching on MY topic, the one for which I had moved to London in the very first place. Also, not to brag, but I have done pretty difficult things in my life, starting from a master, in a foreign language and in the middle of a pandemic while also retaining some mental sanity. So I thought they were just being a little dramatic.

They were not.

Technically, there is nothing I don’t know how to do. For example, I need to write a long essay (20K words) for a deadline in May (nothing important, just my upgrade!) which needs to contain theoretical framework and methodology. Easy. I’ve done that already for my Master dissertation so this just needs to be longer, no? Well, turns out it’s not exactly like this. I believe the difference lies in the fact that this thesis is all I’m thinking about day and night. There is nothing else. Just me and my ideas and this is really really scary.

Every time I write down something, there’s so much of me in that writing. Also, I’m not just writing for myself, I’m responding to guidelines and demands of the “larger” academic community: how does my idea fit that huge discipline that is *anthropology*? Is my research ethical? Which methodologies will I be using? Which kind of interlocutors will I be talking to? What is the larger impact of my thesis on society and economy?

Sometimes I would just like to scream that I don’t know! And I don’t know because I haven’t done this research yet. I still have to go out in the field, talk to interlocutors, see who they are and what they do, understand which methodology suits them best and listen to what they tell me and see if it is useful to society.

If it sounds stressful, well, it's because it is stressful! But also, on the other side, I am so madly in love with my topic and I just can't overcome how lucky I am to be actually researching on something I love so much.

So yeah, to keep it real I am obliged to say that it's been a tiny bit of a stressful period (lots of small deadlines coming up) but I am grateful for my topic, grateful for my supervisors, grateful for SOAS community and ... luckily we’ve got PhD memes!