Dear Doctorate Diary It’s the 31st December 2020, it’s taken me several months to write this one post, and what strange year this has been, though (for me anyway) this year has actually had a balance of negatives and positives. I’ve been working from home and even longer hours than …
Dear Doctorate Diary This seems to have become a monthly update, what a change from the beginning of my doctorate journey when I faithfully updated you each week. I’ve not made time for much exercise the past couple months and that really does have to change. I managed to complete …
Dear Doctorate Diary I stopped writing here for several weeks because I had suffered a sense of humour failure and all I was doing was complaining. I’ve been busy complaining to myself now and feel as if I am beginning to regain my sense of humour about the absurdity of …
Dear Doctorate Diary After the last two posts I took a bit of a break from writing these posts as I literally did not have one spare minute for this sort of thing. I did consider packing in my doctorate and had a meeting to discuss this with someone who …
Working six – seven days a week and long hours each day continues, but even so it’s been quite a good week. I passed my 3rd doctorate assignment (we only get a pass/fail grade at this stage) and am officially in my second year of being a doctorate student. I …
Things feel impossible right now. I know this feeling doesn’t make me special because most people I know who have already completed their doctorate have experienced struggles along the way. I think my struggle is compounded by the amount of workwork I am having to do. I am only supposed …
Work is a bit overwhelming at the moment so I am spending a lot of my non work time (evenings and weekends), actually working in order to try and get on top of it all. I’m not being very successful but I am just about keeping my head above water, …
I had set myself the target of starting assignment 4 but I spent Saturday having a life and Sunday prepping for teaching this week soooooo…..it didn’t happen. I must make a start this week because I need to have the first draft done by Oct…and actually I should have been …
My eye consultant had a cancellation so he offered the operation slot to me. I got the call literally two minutes after I had walked out of work to start my 3 week holiday. Of course I said yes to the operation date, I’ve been waiting for it since Feb …
It’s been a week with things to make me smile (see, it’s not all histrionics). I finished the first draft of assignment number 3. I’m feeling ok about having to spend my summer holiday working on assignment number 4 (see previous posts for why I am having to work so …