Speaker 1: Doing a PhD is weird. Like, it would be weird if it wasn't weird. And the fact that it's weird means that it's actually really normal. I'm on the PhD subreddit and I just realized there are loads of people asking whether something is normal or not. So I decided to answer the questions in this video. Is this normal? Is it normal to feel burnt out and completely out of ideas towards the end of your PhD? The answer is yes. A PhD is a marathon, not a sprint. And at the end of that research marathon, your brain is tired, your hands are tired, your soul is tired, everything is tired. And it's important to realize that at the end of a PhD, you are now having to kind of do that final sprint. That final sprint is writing up your thesis, doing those final little experiments to fill in the gaps. And you have to do it all within, you know, the last sort of six months of your PhD when your brain is at its most tired. So yes, it's completely normal. And it's even more normal to really hate what you're doing at that time. I know loads of people who have rage finished their PhD just because they just want it to end. They don't care how it happens. And however you get to the end is up to you. But importantly, yes, it's completely normal to feel burnt out. Take time for yourself. Make sure that you balance in a good amount of sort of healthy sleep, making sure that you connect with your supervisor a lot in those late stages, because they'll be the people that will be able to guide you through those really tough final moments. But it is completely normal. Is it normal for your supervisor to ask for more work after you've left academia? I wish it wasn't normal, but it is normal. The problem is, is that when you finish academia, you finish your PhD and you've left, they're still there. And they still need to do what they were doing before, which is publish papers, get grant money. And they see your little bucket of knowledge as key to getting more research papers out there. So they may reach out and say, hey, can you just write this paper? Can you finish this thing? If you have got nothing to do with that research group, you're in a new career, you can just say, here's all of the data that you need. Leave me alone, essentially, like in nicer words, obviously. But you just say that to them, like, here's the data you need. And also, if you don't need papers or any academic outputs for your current career, there is no reason for you to do it. So it's completely normal for an academic to reach out, but it is not right. Give them the data, wish them the best of luck and move on with your life. It's easier said than done. Is it normal to go through a phase of hating your lab, program, work slash everything? I think if that lasts for a huge amount of time, it's time to rethink what you're doing. But if it is only just a moment in time, a day, even a week where you just hate everything, I would say that a lot of people would consider that normal. A PhD is not easy. Things go wrong. People leave. They take knowledge with them. Your supervisor may disappear on a weird sabbatical to somewhere exotic that you've never heard of. All of this is completely normal. And it just means that the uncertainty means that some days you just had enough. You're just like, you know what? No more. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. And that's why it's important to approach your PhD as a marathon. Take little tiny sort of like steps every day. But do not expect large kind of jumps in progress. Little by little, making sure that you look after yourself. And if that kind of hatred lasts for, I'd say, probably a couple months or more, it's probably time to rethink what you're doing. Ask yourself as your supervisor, your project, where you're living, your current financial situation. All of these things can mean that you kind of like are under so much stress. So importantly, keep an eye on how much you're hating it and act if it just seems like the hatred is not going anywhere. My supervisors are clueless. Is this normal? Feeling that your supervisor is clueless is absolutely normal. The thing about modern research is there's a lot of moving parts from different fields and your supervisor may only be an expert in one tiny slither or like bubble of that huge project. So it's important that if you're starting to feel like your supervisor is a bit of an idiot, which we all do at some point, you need to go find the skills that you need in other people or you're training yourself up to fill that gap in what you perceive as like a lack of their knowledge. Now importantly, having co-supervisors can be a way to manage this from the start but there are moments in every PhD student's life where you just sat in a meeting with your supervisor and you're like, you are an absolute idiot. You keep that inside, mind you, but you do think that like, how did you get to the position you're in? It's just mental. So it's completely normal to think your supervisor is an idiot but if it's impacting your work, go find the skills somewhere else. The next two are kind of interlinked. Is it normal that you feel lost when you're doing your PhD and at times you feel that what you are doing is not even good? And also, is this normal or am I really not meant to be here? Imposter syndrome strikes again. Kapoof. It is something that I think every single PhD student feels and also, trust me, that feeling does not go away even as you grow up and out of academia. There is a moment in everyone's career at nearly every stage where you're like, oh my god, I'm an imposter, like everyone else seems to be doing really well, I'm stupid and I can assure you, most people are feeling the same way. I don't know if this is sort of like good advice but I remember speaking about this with one of my friends and she said that she has to kind of like enact this character that's like middle-aged management is how she put it where you've just kind of got this weird confidence and you don't know where it's come from but I think that is the kind of mentality that can help you get through imposter syndrome. You've just got to look at any middle management in most companies. You're like, oh my god, you're so confident, why? And I think that confidence is something that is learned. That confidence is something that you can build up over time and then wear as like an armour, as a mask for the world. So, put on that middle management armour and just keep on going. If you've got no major tragedies happening in your current position, in your research, just keep going. Is it normal to have a really hands-off advisor? Advisors come in loads of different forms. There are hands-off, there are major hands-on like micromanagers and everything in between. So, it's normal. A really great PhD supervisor will adjust their supervision style to match different types of students' requirements. However, that is often and mostly not the case. Most PhD supervisors have one style and that's why it's important to speak to the PhD students in the lab you're thinking of going into and asking like, what type of PhD supervisor is this? I know of people who have literally had one meeting at the beginning of their course, of their PhD research with their supervisor and that was kind of it for ages. Every supervisor has their quirks and it's completely normal for them to be hands-on, micromanaging and everything in between. Just make sure that you match up with a supervisor that matches what you want from them. Is it normal to just take a day? The thing about academia, and I think a lot of jobs in general is sometimes it feels wrong just to take a day. But the thing about research that's different from a lot of other places is that things are super complicated. There's lots of moving parts. There is the frontier of knowledge that you're trying to bust through and sometimes that frontier is locked down. It is impassable. For some reason that day, that little thing you're trying to achieve is just not going to happen. And if you come across a number of days like that, I quite often took a sneaky day. Like sometimes I would just sit down in my lab, things would start falling apart. I'd try to do something in the lab with a certain microscope and it just wouldn't work. If it is not working and persisting through that problem is just frustrating you, it's just winding you up, stop. Stop for the day, go do something else. If I had something like that, quite often I would just go to the tea room for a couple of hours, chat with people and then go do something that wasn't so sort of taxing and revisit that task the next day. Taking time off is completely normal and I think we should start normalising it even if it's just for silly little days where you just want to do nothing because you've had enough. PhD speak versus normal. Academia has completely alienated itself from the world by making it incredibly hard to understand the technical jargon that we like to force and cram into sentences. I don't know why we've done it. Well, I guess I know why I've done it. It's because we want the language we use to be precise and accurate and the only way you can do that is by making sure there's no wiggle room in your sentences for being understood in a different way and that means that PhD speak requires you to read very slowly a sentence multiple times before you understand it and that's completely normal. I think it kind of has to be that way because of the interpretation issue but you'll get used to it and also today we've got tools like ChatGPT, we've got ExplainPaper, we've got Humata where you can just talk to PDFs of research. It just makes it so much easier. This one's a little bit creepy. Is it normal for professors to hang out with students? Yeah. Yeah, it kind of is. I've seen this in a number of instances where, for example, it could be a little bit creepy. When I was an undergraduate, there was a professor who would come out drinking with us in pubs and then in my PhD, my supervisor would also want to kind of like get a little bit loose with us and at the time it didn't feel bad or weird but I think this is the symptom of like working hard and playing hard and also these people often, I find, I don't know if this is true for a lot, let me know in the comments, but they kind of like have lost their youth to academia and they seem to be trying to get it back later on in life and the way they do that has been like, oh, there's a nice group of young students who I can hang out with and they kind of like try to hang out a little bit. It's kind of sweet, endearing, if not a little bit creepy sometimes. So it's normal for professors to hang out with students. Just make sure they're behaving appropriately. If you like this video, remember to go check out this one where I talk about how to finish your PhD faster. I include tips and techniques that mean you'll stay on track. It's a great watch. Go check it out. So there we have it. There are all the ways that PhDs are a little bit weird. Let me know in the comments what you would add and also remember there are more ways that you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter. Head over to andrewstapleton.com.au forward slash newsletter. The link is in the description and when you sign up, you'll get five emails over about two weeks. Everything from the tools I've used, the podcast I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract and more. It's exclusive content available for free. So go sign up now and also go check out academiainsider.com. That's my project where I've got e-books, I've got blogs, I've got forums and everything is over there to make sure that academia works for you. All right then, I'll see you in the next video.