On being a PhD student

Some days I am a PhD student, and some days I am a person who is enrolled in a PhD. They are two very different things, in my experience. Similarly, sometimes I am an IT manager, and at other times I happen to work at a university managing IT folks. Or a Parent, or a person with kids. I guess technically, I'm all of those things at once, but in reality, I move between those roles and identities. Of course, the raw external facts always apply - I'm enrolled in a PhD, I work at the Uni, I have kids, I have hobbies. But it's difficult to be a PhD student, a Manager, and a Parent all at the same time. Each of those people has different priorities, different needs, different ways of thinking about the world.

This has been on my mind lately a bit - towards the end of last year work got hectic and stressful, and left me with no energy for study. As time went on, that PhD student identity dissolved a bit, and the idea of spending my evenings reading, coding, thinking and writing seemed less important, and less like something I wanted to do. I would see other PhD students as "them", not as an "us". December was basically nonexistent, study-wise. January wasn't much better, but improved as the month progressed. A holiday last week seems to have restored me, and now I'm back to full strength (I hope).

It's all made me realize that doing a PhD involves being a PhD student. It's a whole identity - more than just an external fact about you're life, it has to become part of who you are. When that identity isn't in place, there's no stable source of motivation for spending all those hours tinkering away, to keep eating that elephant. Those other identities coexist, and of course they take precedence at times, but it's important to hold on to my student identity - letting go of that is the first step towards not completing this PhD.