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Earlier this year I told some of my friends that I was enrolling in a PhD. This was a lie, but at the time I thought it was the truth.<\/p>\n
In February I was made one of those offers that you can\u2019t refuse, a true gift for an early career academic; I was offered a PhD place and a scholarship for work that I am already paid to do.<\/p>\n
This would essentially mean that I could get a PhD the easy way. I could take the journal articles that I\u2019m already writing and publishing (as a Level A academic) and wrap them into a PhD by publication, with a bit of extra writing to tie it all together. Plus I would get\u00a0both<\/em>\u00a0a salary and a scholarship to do it. This is like getting a really big cake. My supervisor said to me \u201cI wish someone had offered me an opportunity like this\u201d.<\/p>\n I felt that I should take the opportunity because it was rare and good. I applied. I prepared my partner and my sister by saying \u201cI need you to support me in this\u201d. I told some other friends that I was excited. I pinned the proposal to my wall.<\/p>\n Then I freaked the fuck out.<\/p>\n I have a history of anxiety. That\u2019s a nice way of saying that I currently have crippling anxiety and I have done for years. My anxiety episodes can last for weeks or months, and I can find it pretty hard to do anything except get myself fed, showered, and show up at the doorstep of my job. But some days, not even that.<\/p>\n In the days after I applied for the PhD I crashed. The main issue is that my work and the proposed PhD is in the discipline of social policy, and while I don\u2019t yet know what my academic direction is, I know that it isn\u2019t social policy. I was going to end up with a PhD in an area that I don\u2019t even want to work in for the long term, while simultaneously not even knowing what I\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0want to research for the long term!<\/p>\n It was clear to me that I was acting out of fear. I applied because I was scared that I wouldn\u2019t be able to keep my research position without enrolling in a PhD. I was scared that the Australian government would start charging students for PhDs. I was scared that I would look back at my work and wish that I had done a PhD (so I could go on to do a post-doc and keep running up the academic ladder).<\/p>\n I applied because it seemed like an easy way to get a PhD and I was scared that I wouldn\u2019t be able to finish one otherwise.<\/p>\n But when I thought of\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0doing the PhD I had applied for I had a\u00a0double loop<\/em>\u00a0of fear. Then I was scared that my anxiety was holding me back from achieving the things that I might be able to achieve if I were more confident, more decisive, more diligent and generally more \u2018correct\u2019 in the world of universities. Academia doesn\u2019t make a lot of space for people who aren\u2019t sure of themselves, it tends to eat them alive.<\/p>\n It was months before I made the obvious decision: I declined the offer. By this time at least, most of my closest colleagues and friends knew that I didn\u2019t want to do this PhD. They helped me decline it.<\/p>\n This experience opened up something else in me. I started to try to tell the truth to my friends and to my colleagues. I started to tell them that my current work is only my job, it\u2019s not my passion, and I don\u2019t yet know what my \u2018passion\u2019 is and that I\u2019m even starting to suspect that I don\u2019t have one.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an interesting experience to look my academic colleagues in the eye and tell them that \u2018this is just a job for me\u2019 and \u2018I don\u2019t want to be a Professor by the age of 35, and maybe never at all\u2019. It\u2019s not something that we often hear in academia. I don\u2019t want to be defined by my job, by my relationship to cultural or economic capital, I\u2019d rather be defined by my relationship to the people and ecosystems around me. I\u2019d rather be able to be flexible in my work and listen to myself when I think I might need to leave.<\/p>\n This makes me different in academia, because an overwhelming narrative is that we are working to our passions and strengths, that we are giving social commentary in the hope that someone listens and it helps to solve some of the biggest questions we that face like climate change and global migration and how to act respectfully towards each other. But for me, for now, it\u2019s just a job that offers me stability and kind colleagues while I try to look after my mental health.<\/p>\n I know that my reluctance to put my career first might mean that I don\u2019t progress, or that eventually I stop getting work in academia.<\/p>\n