Written by Anuradha Ganapathy (PhD Development Policy and Management). Anuradha spent over 15 years working as a human resources professional in the banking and financial services industry in India and the UK.

I often imagined that there would be one BIG moment when the transition from corporate life to the PhD life would hit me. Turns out it’s a series of banalities, everyday blips, gasps of relief, sighs of nostalgia, fleeting a-ha moments, three cups of strong “masala chai” before 9:00 am, frantic searches on the internet for troubleshooting End-note issues, regular doses of “remember how badly you wanted this!” and occasional doses of “do you remember exactly WHY you wanted this?”. 

Anuradha Ganapathy Profile – Research Explorer, The University of Manchester

I think it all began when I initiated the immigration process and picked “student visa” as the category on the visa application form and became real when I figured that that I don’t have an office space anymore and have to hot-desk instead. But perhaps it hits you the hardest when you find out that even though you know a lot about world and its workings, you still have to use Google to refresh your understanding of “epistemology” and “ontology”.

On the sunnier side though, after years of boxing my arguments into 2-line summaries, it was a relief to note that I could take up more space with them, unpeel their many layers and stretch them in various (unplanned) directions to see where they would land me. No one was judging me if my email overshot the three bullet-point limit. But yes, nothing beat the joy of flashing the student ID for that (sometimes measly) discount.

Either way, even as you are still figuring it all out, the algorithm has pieced together all these unspectacular details of your life and has decided that you no longer need “tips for investing” or “saree draping tutorials”. It now shows you either cooking videos of meals that take less than 10 minutes to make (which you furiously bookmark, but forget to return to), or videos of PhD students in cool cafés, looking furiously into their laptops, while that (half-eaten) muffin languishes on the side. Suddenly your social media is ballooning with hashtags such as #PhDlife #academicchatter #PhDhacks and a zillion reels enticing you to use artificial intelligence to “super-charge” your literature review or speed-read 10 academic papers in 10 seconds.

Sometimes amidst the chaos of all those open tabs and unread articles on your laptop, you do actually long for that day in your past life when even if you had to burn the mid-night oil to clear your inbox, you could shut down and switch off after that. It strikes you that not being able to shut down and switch off, or not knowing “when” to do it, is the bug you hate the most.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

The PhD life may not feel like the corporate hustle where you have to compete with five others for that next big job, but it is still a treadmill that keeps you on your toes. Time remains a scarce commodity, and if your corporate life taught you how to straddle multiple deadlines or keep moving from one deadline to another, chances are that you will be well prepared for that time when the deadlines to submit the abstract, the paper, the proposal and the chapter edits miraculously converge into one single day.

Brevity continues to matter. Yes, you are less likely to be asked to turn everything to a one-minute elevator pitch (although we have those in PhD too), but you still get points for keeping it sharp and precise. You will thank that boss who insisted that you attend evening networking events when all you wanted to do was crash on your couch and tune into Netflix. Meeting people, getting comfortable speaking about your work and learning about others’ work, or even just keeping it all aside to enjoy an evening – either in a formal or informal setting – gets you out of the parallel universe that you seem to be operating in, and anchors you in the “real” world. Who knows, it may even land you your next big project idea or assignment.

Pro tip – when you have some time, open up the doctoral theses of past research students and read the “Acknowledgements” section. That’s when you know the value of building and developing networks, and the contributions that an entire village of people make to a project. So, invest in building that village. And that boss who corrected all your typos? They made you a better person, so you can finally stop cursing them.

A new year and some resolutions.

If I think about the one thing that I miss doing the most, it is reading for pleasure, without that perpetually nagging thought that this is time I should be spending on research. So, on my wish-list for next year is the resolve to read more fiction. More mystery novels. The latest bestseller. To read lazily.

And guiltlessly, next on my wish-list is a kind ‘Reviewer 2’ – tough and exacting, but never soul-crushing. I am told they exist. So dear ‘Reviewer 2’, wherever you are, I don’t mind if you have written out ten pages of feedback for me, as long as I can read it all and say – “Now that’s the kind of reviewer I would like to be”.

And finally, I know we all need passion for this journey, but what I also want is a healthy sprinkling of dis-passion as I write my way to imperfection morning after morning. As much as the PhD may be an extension of questions that have / will define a big part of our life goals and purpose, it is also helpful to sometimes view it as a project that needs to be completed within a certain timeframe. Passion is good. Passion is great. Passion is needed. But then passion has its own eccentricities. It stands firm on some days, and withers away on others.

So rather than fetishising passion as something we need all the time, we may be better off trying to find ways to make our work count and keep the wheels in motion on the days that we are not able to find the passion for it. Because God knows… the clock is ticking.

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