Alarm. SMACK! It's 7:10 am. I turn on the lights and stumble out of bed. For some reason the air is heavy and it seems darker than usual outside. Some primitive sense of foreboding has already taken hold of the day and it's only 7:12 am. As I walk out of my room, the shelf full of random whittled mementos from past camping trips catches my eye.
Maybe I could just live in the forest permanently? Yes. Perfect. Then I could whittle and chop wood every single day and I wouldn't have to go to work at all. I would build multiple shelves to hold all of my 'creations' and a log cabin to provide shelter in the winter and...As my brain wakes up a bit it chastises me with unassailable logic. "Get ahold of yourself man! You could never grow the necessary beard to make that plan work!". Defeated, I begrudgingly move on to the kitchen but decide not to shave that day in quiet protest. I eat breakfast, make my lunch, and hop on my bike to ride to work.
A couple of kilometers along I feel an unusual weariness in my legs. I must be going slower than usual. "I should buy a faster bike!", I think to myself. I come to a stop at some traffic lights just as a stunningly attractive, but slightly younger, girl cycles past in the other direction. The light turns, and my mind shifts gears as quickly as the car trying to speed past me off the line. "Maybe I should ask out one of the new grad students in the department! No, no, no, wait a minute. Better get a faster bike first!"
Finally I arrive at the office. By this time my brain has fully awakened and it starts to plan out the day's endeavours. Absently it takes notice of the date. Uh oh. The feeling of foreboding comes on with full force. I knew there was something wrong with today! It's exactly 2 years since I started my PhD. I am supposed to be half done but I don't have anything! Nothing thesis-worthy in the last two years!!! Suddenly the morning began to make sense. The escapism. The desire to purchase a faster "vehicle". The thoughts of dating a younger grad student. It could mean only one thing...
I'm having a mid-PhD life crisis!
Now this may not happen in exactly the same way or at the same time for everyone, but it's pretty common to hear a grad student lament about how they should be further ahead given the number of years they have left. This might be accompanied by some intense new or renewed interest in a side hobby that provides a sense of completion or accomplishment. "Hey Tony, like, wouldn't a blog be an example?!?"...No! Definitely not! Mind your own business!!!
The commonality of the mid-grad life crisis confused me so I decided to take some time at work to deliberate (procrastinate) on the issue. Invariably, some students must work harder than others, are more talented than others, or get more "lucky" breaks than others. This would lead to a natural distribution of students with some feeling in control of their degrees and others feeling behind right? However to the contrary I've observed and heard about quite a few very intelligent and diligent individuals who are decidedly a part of the latter group. What gives? Are these folks terribly unlucky or just slackers in disguise?
I think neither. As mentioned earlier, grad school can be like a long dark tunnel where the light at the end only becomes apparent when you are already there. This is because a great deal of the productivity in the first couple years of grad school can be completely intangible. At first we are pawing around in the dark (unknown), desperately looking for a frame of reference with which to direct ourselves. We blindly wander in multiple directions charting out the tunnel, finding out where all the walls and dead-ends are. In this way we eventually figure out which questions we might be able to answer and which direction the light is in.
This is the very HEART of research!
The problem is that it is very difficult to quantify and appreciate this kind of productivity despite how significant and fundamentally important it really is. It often leaves almost no trace of ever having existed and is therefore easily forgotten. Papers do not have a "other crap I tried on my way to these ideas" section! When paired with the one paper/year rule of thumb, this can really bring a person down. If we don't have two papers after two years it seems damn near impossible that we would produce three or four in another two years. The result? Angst. Self-doubt. Whittling.
And yet somehow it still happens! Theses are written and successfully defended all the time by both the diligent and not so diligent alike. It`s important to remember that papers are only the FINAL product of all that fumbling around in the dark. There will be a systemic tendency towards publication occurring more frequently in the second half of the degree than in the first. Accordingly it is totally natural to feel a lack of progression in the beginning because papers are the most tangible milestone in grad school. So now that I think about it, maybe, just maybe, my bike is quite fast enough. I just need to keep pedaling...
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