I need some encouragement (thesis and life)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So I’ve been working on a PhD thesis for about three months and am almost done. I’ve finished all the science chapters, and am just finishing up the introduction/background and the conclusions chapter. To do this in three months (bad timing, I know), I’ve been working many, many long days, and have been getting really irregular sleep. To give an example, for three days last week, I worked around 8 hours at school, went to my husband’s place of work and worked a few more hours there, slept there on the couch, woke up at 4am to go home with him, then slept again for another few hours before going back to work. (My husband is also working super-long hours, and he has a downright nocturnal schedule.)

Because of all of this, I’ve been really stressed out, and two things have started happening. First, I’m getting burned out and am starting to gloss over things that really need more attention. I notice myself doing this, but I just want to get this darn thing done, so I don’t really care. But I should care, because I’m afraid someone is going to notice a glaring error because of my carelessness.

The other thing that’s starting to happen is weird thoughts. Especially when I’m very tired at night, I’ll have these really strange thoughts enter my head. Once I heard the cleaners waxing the floor outside, and I found myself wondering if they were cleaning up blood from a murder they’d just committed. Just to be clear, I don’t actually believe they’ve committed a murder, nor do I actually believe there’s blood anywhere. It’s just a thought that enters my head, and makes me go, wow, that’s weird that I would even think that. I also get really jumpy at night, and tend to think every shadow is a person in the corner waiting to get me. Again, I know there’s not an actual person there, but it’s like I’m on a super-alert level when I don’t need to be.

Hopefully, assuming you’ve read this far, sharing all of that didn’t make me sound totally crazy. I’m just wondering, does anyone have any advice or encouragement? What do you do when you’re burned out, but you know that you need to keep functioning to do things properly? And does anyone else ever get weird thoughts like that, or am I actually going crazy? Do I just need to sleep more?

2

You don’t sound crazy at all. I was a teacher (is that what you mean by going to school?) and wrote books. I got to the same stage when I was nearing the manuscript deadline.

I really don’t understand the PhD, though. I am doing one as well - but it will take over 3 years, not 3 months. I assume 3 months is just writing up. What is it about? Are you still motivated by your topic? Why are you doing it?

As for the strange thoughts - know them well and I’m not crazy. You need sleep and a break from stress.

3

Thanks for the reassurance about the weird thoughts - I was really starting to wonder about myself.

I was unclear, sorry - I’ve been in a PhD program for astronomy for six years, and wrote a few papers during that time. I’m now in the process of writing up the PhD over the past three months. I thought it would be a lot of copy and pasting of the papers, but there ended up being a LOT more to do than I originally thought.

I’m not sure if I’m motivated by the topic…my results are all very wishy-washy, no really strong conclusions, so it’s hard to get excited about the work. Every now and then I do get excited about something or other, but that tends not to last very long, and I come back down to earth pretty quickly. At this point, I doubt I could get excited about anything even if it were a brand new discovery, I’m just so burned out.

As for why I’m doing it, I honestly don’t know. I, oddly enough, kind-of fell into astronomy. I liked it in high school and college, applied to grad school, got in, and kind-of just kept going. I wanted to go into academia for awhile, but only because it seemed like the standard path, not because I had a real passion for it. I’m realizing that you need that singular passion to survive in this super-competitive market. I don’t have that single-minded drive to do research or teach, it’s just something I do right now until I do the next thing, if that makes sense. I’m doing a post-doc after I graduate anyway, so I’ve got two years to do research and work on getting the next stage of my life set up. For now, that next stage seems to be science writing, and I’ve been working on getting some clips.

4

Can’t offer any advice about the PhD situation (I’m entering a graduate program now so I have that to look forward to!) but the summer after I graduated from university and was getting ready to move to a new country and start a new job I experienced something very similar. I would get extremely paranoid–lie awake at night absolutely convinced that someone was going to come into my house and murder me and my family, or that something terrible would happen to my mother or my father before I left the country, etc. It went away after I left and got accustomed to my new life. I think it’s a fairly normal reaction to stress. Try to get some rest and think positively (as corny as that sounds).

5

My wife’s in the middle of writing her book for tenure. I’m in the middle of writing an academic book on game design. And I helped my wife get through her PhD thesis. I know where you’re coming from.

You sound tired. Are you under any particular time pressure to finish quickly? Because you might actually benefit from a short break where you get your sleep schedule back to normal.

I’ve also found that, with writing, working longer hours doesn’t always result in more getting done. You might try scaling back your working hours a bit to give yourself a little more time to think and decompress between stretches of typing. It’s very hard to write a book with bursts of manic energy. You should try to cultivate a steady, persistent work schedule.

Don’t get discouraged. You’re in the home stretch now. Your work is better than you think it is. Once you’re deep in the middle of something, you see every flaw. Plus, you’re so familiar with your research you’ve probably lost the capacity to judge how original it might seem to someone who looks at it with fresh eyes. Trust in yourself, be true to the spirit of the work, and keep plugging along.

6

What helped me get through my Diss was lots of tea (making tea is a very calming ritual) and eating trail mix. The nuts gave me energy and whenever I’d get too stressed out I’d go, whelp, time to make another pot of tea.

It was such a relief when it was over! So you have something to look forward to.

7

Damn, anyone in the “tea drinking world” knows that tea itself isn’t calming on it’s own.

The tea must be made in a pot (any "english breakfast tea blend) properly, that’s served with milk (no sugar) and on the side it’s got to be scones, buttered (real butter, not the god awful faux stuff that masquerades), spread with jam (any will do, but strawberry is traditional) and topped off with “clotted cream” (or whipped double cream - I suppose you lot in the US would call that thick or heavy cream).

Hence it’s not the tea, but the relative stupor that your digestive system puts you into when it’s working it’s way through that lot…;):dubious::smack::smiley:

regards

fatbloke

8

This.

It goes for any hard work. Particularly work that requires you to think critically and not make mistakes.

You can work hard. Then harder. Then harder still. But, in my experience, at some point you work yourself so hard you get LESS overall done than if you were working not quite so hard, long, and continous. So, more time spent, much more misery, less work done, and more errors. All for naught to boot.

Work long solid days. But take SERIOUS breaks every now and then. Like a WHOLE day hiking or going to a museum or whatever floats your boat. Or maybe in your particular case working every day is fine for you, but you need to limit the hours you intend to be up AND you use a good solid couple of hours EVERY day to actually rest/relax/ and recreate.

9

Ok, you’re all right - I do need more breaks, and I need to work shorter hours. I took a break yesterday and hung out with my husband and my sister, and then with friends in the evening, and it felt wonderful. But today I need to go back into work (late in the day, as usual), and I am so depressed about it. My defense is in a month, so the deadline for handing over my thesis is in about two weeks. I’ve still got an awful lot to finish before then - it’s doable, but barely. And part of me just wants to stop working and just relax and enjoy a Sunday afternoon.

Fortunately, that’s only part of me, and I’m heading into work now…

10

Fatbloke, no, heavy cream is not the same as clotted cream which is absolutely divine. I know, I’ve had clotted cream on proper English scones, along with the strawberry jam. Oh, heavenly!

I just had to come offer moral support. Yes, taking even brief breaks will help. Hang in there! Even getting up and doing some arm circles, breathing and stretching will likely help. Yes, lack of sleep and stress can do a number on your mind and cause you to think weird thoughts. Try taking catnaps, too.

11

Ha, yes, I’m quite good with naps. Less good than I used to be, but I can still sleep pretty much anywhere, anytime. Too bad I can’t get a PhD in that…

This might sound silly, but what I’ve been doing these past few days is to synchronize my breathing to my steps while I walk to work. I don’t have time to do much of my usual yoga, but I’ve read that the benefits you get from yoga come from synchronizing the breath to movement, so I figured I can do that while I’m just walking to the metro. That and getting more sleep have been helpful.

In case anyone cares, I figure I might as well give an update on the actual writing:
I just got revisions back from my advisor on one of my chapters - he was positive overall about the chapter, but there are quite a few changes to make and it might take some time. I’m trying to stay positive about that, since there are specific changes and I know what to do to improve the chapter. Only two weeks til the thesis is due…