Gratitude

I am grateful that I have a team of intelligent and kind researchers that work on my project with me. They say all PhD students go through slumps and downtime and perhaps many get into a rut because there was no one there to help them out or lift them up. But during my downest moments, where I was stretched paper thin, I had a team who continued to collect data, very good data... The project did not stall because of one student's failure to keep up, but it continued on because others helped out as they could.

A part of me feels ashamed that I did not collect all the data myself, but as B has told me, when good things happen to me, rather than feel guilt, why not feel gratitude? I am grateful that even as a small PhD student, I have a taste of working with an experienced and very qualified team to collect the best data we can. Now, it is time for me to process this data, and I shall do so with gratitude.

I will process it the best we can, make the best use of the data we can collected together, such that we can reveal the best truth and story from these data and write a report that may spark insights into the education system in Singapore and the meanings teacher make of citizenship education.

But more than that, I wish everybody will have fun, doing what we do, learning and studying together, figuring and pondering together.

"the existential loneliness of the long-distance writer"

I've ran two marathons in my life. Because of my perfectionistic tendencies and tendency for overachievement, when people ask me about my marathons, I sheepingly tell them I've ran two, but not very well. The first one I took 4 hours 20 minutes, the second one, I took 5 hours.

People often make it seem like a big feat but to me marathon running was much "easier" than other types of shorter runs where you had to run much faster. To me, marathon running was a lot of long slow distance, which suited my character that liked to take things easier. I preferred slow to fast, long to short etc.

We did a lot of training before hand to try to make the actual marathon more enjoyable. But, during the actual marathon itself, you will see the same effects of starting strong and persevering and finishing well with your depleted energy stores. You pay for misusing your energy stores as well, which I did for marathon 2. I was too eager to perform well that I ran the first half too fast, leading to a very slow second half.

Why am I talking about marathons? Today, I read this:

The more I give myself up to my run, let myself merge into and participate with the paths of Central Park, the more effortlessly I flow and finish. Each time I begin to brood about The Finish, my pace is broken, the run becomes a burden. And so it seems to be with writing a dissertation: the more the candidate is immersed in his files, flowing with his fieldwork, humming along on his office typewriter, deep, deep in the very stuff of the dissertation and conversely, less preoccupied with the magical/mystical Finish date, the faster the thesis is going to move ahead to completion. Obviously, this running/writing illustration is not designed to devalue the booklong insistence on organization and planning as fundamental to dissertation success. The point to be made - which many dissertation finishers and professional writers would affirm - is that, perhaps paradoxically, when one has planned and outlined, and planned again, what has to follow is, as Philip Roth might put it, a "letting-go," a self-absorbed merging with one's dissertation materials. (Sternberg, 1981, p. 175) 

Shuyi, it is time to focus on each element and work on them and let go and make the best of each situation. It is time to lose yourself in this work, not thinking of the end in mind. Like freediving, focusing on moment by moment, rather than the end goal. Process over outcome. Moment over finish.

Give it a try, I know it's hard. Hang in there and practice self-care too.

Why I feel like giving up...

I started this journey with such enthusiasm, maybe I felt I kinda got it. I found something that enables me to learn new things, challenges my mind, gives me an opportunity to work on my people skill and possibly also contribute to knowledge building in society.

But today, I am plagued with self-doubt and a perpetual mental fog. Some of my friends tell me that maybe I should give it up, some other of my friends tell me to hang in there.

I was just going through some of the revisions I've made and I realised that I didn't do too bad a job in revising them. But things have just gotten to such a state that I have very little passion or motivation to do much work. I can still do it but it has required me to drag my feet instead of come to it with much joy.

I didn't see this coming... And I don't really know what to do...

What I learned about writing

What I learned about writing is that writing happens even before you write it. It happens at the back of your head. The moment you engage with a problem, an issue, a feedback received, your mind starts working subconsciously thinking about how to solve it and deal with it.

I learned that your first thoughts and instincts may not be the best ones. By all means you can draw them out or write them down, but don't take your first drafts as final. Give yourself time to look at them again. Again, give your mind time to work on it. Expect that it is not the best and it will change and improve as you read more, think more, and sit upon it.

I learned that writing takes time and commitment. But what happens after you engage with an issue or problem is straightforward, you begin to try to solve it. Your solution may not be the best at each moment you come to the problem but if you keep working on it, it will be a better and better fit. So give it time and don't give up so easily. And don't procrastinate. Begin the process as soon as you can.

I also learn not to be afraid of feedback. Receive it graciously and consider it carefully and based on the time and resources you have, make the best of it.

And always take ownership of your work. If writing something is going to make you detach yourself from that piece of work because it no longer sounds like what you think inside, then maybe consider sticking with what you truly believe. Take ownership of your work. Except of course you have been engaged to write somebody else's work and then in that situation what matters is that person's voice.

How I see the PhD

The PhD to me is not the best one can produce and write and of the greatest passion, it is a working out of skills that can be eventually used in different settings.

It is not squeezing dry of one's energy and talent and knowledge and abilities, but the careful use of those to complete a piece of work.

It does not have to have an instrumental function to be worth doing. I don't have to have the PhD qualification. I can find the process of thinking, analysing, working in a team, reading, writing and thinking worthwhile on its own.

PhD is not trying to prove your worth or abilities or skills, but already having this worth, abilities, and skills, demonstrate it through a process and piece of work.

Getting a PhD doesn't mean you have attained the highest level, there is still much to learn and grow thereafter.

Am I thinking it wrongly?

Slump

I have reached such a slump in my life that it is difficult to find motivation to do work.

I told myself just now that I have been doing research for 10 years. Even if I close my eyes, I can still get the work done.

So yes, I am going to continue working through this slump!

Another update...

It's been a month. That 50-page document has been double-spaced and edited into a 131-page document. I haven't been here much. That process of focusing a mammoth sized mess hasn't generated a lot of inspiration. Today, it feels merely like I'm sitting myself down and by sheer willpower, typing and typing.

Writing is sometimes like that, especially academic writing. Sometimes there are no flashes of inspiration, just sheer brute willpower that keeps you typing. You come up with a to-do list, and you tick off one item at a time. Just that...

It's  not just PhD... Generally, life has become a bit like that for me. A list of to-dos, and I am getting by and getting through one item at a time. I am holding on... I am surviving by the day. I am doing my best to cope.