A Testament to My PhD
I'm going into my fourth year starting August, which feels... bizarre to say the least. Partially because it feels like I've been at this forever, and partially because I can't believe how much time has passed. I remember looking up to the fourth years in my group when I joined, but now that I'm in their shoes I feel just as unknowledgeable as I did as a first year. People have started expecting me to be the knowledgeable one, to be the mentor, and I feel so out of place being in that position.
My PhD felt turbulent to say the least. I struggled with bad grades and mental health issues my first year, particularly my first semester, partially to do with moving to a new city, partially to do with really being alone for the first time. I went in to grad school with the expectation that it would feel like work, but it honestly did feel like undergrad 2.0. I felt extremely alienated. Another heartache was the lab group that I really wanted to join turned me down, and I just felt directionless.
After finally joining a lab, I thought everything would go smoothly. I started research, and I loved the project idea. I wanted to work with organic chemistry and materials, and this project was just that. One of the biggest hurdles of grad school, that I think people aren't the most upfront about, is how much time you can spend recreating an experiment. It took me seven months to synthesize a single compound, and this was just the base compound for all my research. It was so disheartening. I struggled so much without help, and I think I cried from happiness when I managed to get the compound. I learned many things, and came out a more independent and stronger researcher because of it. But I hit hurdle after hurdle. Conflicts with labmates, slow progress, conflicts with my PI, funding issues, failure after failure after failure. I remember spending 3 months trying the same experiment over and over and over again due to my PIs insistence that it should work. And it didn't. It never ended up working.
Things came to a head Summer 2025, when a culmination of funding issues federally, state-wide, and institute driven ended with me cut off from funding. I made the poor choice of picking a group that was flat broke, and when push came to shove, we were the first on the chopping block. I remember just crying in our side room about how my choice was to hope and pray, or quit my PhD, and the feeling of losing two years of my life to something that cost me so much. It was the first time I truly felt unimportant and replaceable, and that my research was virtually worthless. I really struggled, and I decided I would try to switch research groups. While not common, it happens. There's a stigma attached to it, but at the same time sometimes it's the only thing keeping someone in grad school. So I did. Later on another faculty member told me that everyone in the department was rooting for me to find a new group since they knew I had to drive.
So last fall I joined a new professor's group. He is fresh out of a post doc, and we sat down and essentially designed a project that would be a compromise of both of our research interests. We set up the lab together, I worked with deciding what we did and didn't need. It felt strange at first being a third year in a lab that was less than a month old, but at the same time it felt like a fresh start. We gained two grad students and a few undergrads and research started chugging along. I love this work, and it's finally related to exactly what I want to do.
At the same time I feel like I have just thrown myself into work, but the academic side of it is falling apart for me. I never give myself a chance to organize myself, write things down properly, not just scribbled on printer paper. I don't spend the amount of time I need reading, and I design experiments on a whim. I feel like I want to work more on that, on feeling like the academic I am rather than just a labrat. But alas, such is the PhD. It's hard coming to terms with how much time is spent, and sometimes wasted, doing the PhD, especially in wet lab research. I'm going to need an extra year to graduate, and coming to terms with that has been hard. It's a joke that I'm the group doomer, that I'm the tired, jaded older grad student who does whatever, comes in whenever, and doesn't give a fuck about anything.
Because I am jaded, and I am tired. I feel like this work so far has put me through the wringer in a way I never expected. I was touring some prospective grad students a few months ago, and at one point one of them asked me point blank "Do you like [school]?" And I had to hesitate. I couldn't just say no, it's not all been suffering and I didn't want to make them afraid of their grad school experience. But I couldn't say yes either. It was a heavy question, and I answered it, but not in a way I was satisfied with. I don't know if I like it, because I do, but also, I don't.
This has been the most difficult thing I've ever done, and it's not getting easier. Sometimes I reflect on how things have been, and all these what-ifs if things had gone differently. But I'm trying to accept things. I'm trying to participate, and I'm trying to be present. And in grad school sometimes all that matters is trying.
