FERSA University of Cambridge Blog
Faculty of Education Research Students' Association
Whether you will stay in academia or not, attending conferences might be one of your must-do things during your graduate studies. Attending conferences is a chance for you to meet people in your field, network with academics and peers, and get different ideas which could build into something greater and enlighten your way of thinking in your field of study.
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Most funding bodies fund PhD research for three years (full time) and five years for part time students, maybe four at a push for full-timers, and six for part timers. Other students successfully plan to self-fund, or partially self-fund for the initial three or five years. However, we all know (on the down-low) that many projects extend beyond the funding/planned period. So what do people do?
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I’m incredibly interested in the push and pull of digital distractions that we encounter during virtually every waking hour of our everyday lives. It can be quite easy to fall into certain patterns of behaviors and social media habits, and this is very much by design.
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Among the many encouraging positive comments I received at the BERA-BAICE Writing for Publication Workshop, a persistent message conveyed by other early career researchers was this: it was important for them to learn about not only my successful publication experience, but also my vulnerability in the face of rejections. Given space constraints, in this post I will focus solely on how I dealt with rejections.
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Throughout the three years of my PhD I had the opportunity to contribute to different research projects, to publish, and to teach; although it might seem like a bit of a cliché to say that the experience was an apprenticeship into academia, for me, that’s exactly what it was. So here are a few personal reflections on what I feel were the most influential factors in progressing from the PhD, to a postdoc position on the MEITS project, and ultimately into a lectureship.
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Just after submitting the soft-bound copies of my thesis, I started to feel anxious about my viva voce. I was worrying about the result I would get after five years of hard work for my PhD in Cambridge. But, almost everyone that I talked to seemed to have experienced a level of anxiety with regard to their viva examination as the situation could be difficult and quite unpredictable.
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When I was planning my transatlantic move and really being forced to think about what kinds of books might come with me, and later how I would build my library here, I largely ignored academic texts. When packing, I chose books – and films – that would be a reminder of home, but also things that that would remind me why I chose to pursue this career. My hope was that I would become better at stepping back from the work and into a literary space that remained enjoyable and could act as a balm for a too-often overtired mind.
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