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Martin Paul Eve



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This is just a quick post about my experience of submitting a Ph.D. having worked full-time on it previously since October 2009.

It's odd.

During the Ph.D. I wrote several articles for journals and book chapters concurrently (ie. that were nothing to do with my Ph.D. work). Now I'm awaiting a viva it suddenly feels a great deal harder to undertake exactly the same exercise, even though I have a great deal more time. I've got three articles at about 30%, 50% and 75% respectively, but the drive to complete them amid uncertainty feels so much harder. I never had the real depressive slump during the Ph.D. work itself (and I'm not depressed now), but it feels as though really getting down to a new project is much harder while I'm still waiting on the outcome of the other. So, at the same time as feeling pretty pleased with submitting, I'm also feeling various anxieties: the viva, the need to keep writing and publishing, the need to get a job with a more secure contractual basis. Feeling anxious about any one of these aspects is obviously detrimental to the others, but it still feels strange.

In fairness to myself, I have been speaking at multiple conferences over the past two-three weeks, alongside launching my journal, writing the OA guide and various other goings-on, so perhaps I'm just feeling the same weirdness I get if I don't write enough in a day (hence the return to frequent blogging, I suspect).

Nevertheless, would love to hear other people's experience of submitting, but with a twist. I've disabled comments on this blog, in its entirety. I don't like them. I appreciate that they facilitate conversation here, but I find I take them needlessly to heart and I've had a few abusive comments in recent days. As the web is a decentralized system, if you want to respond feel free to write your own blog post, drop me an email or say hi on Twitter.