======= Date Modified 23 Dec 2010 23:31:04 =======
Hi everyone
I just thought I'd see if this has happened to others, or if anyone can tell me what's going on...

A little random I suppose, but ever since I have submitted my PhD, and I suppose ever since the summer when I started the real writing up phase, my head has been totally all over the place. I expected to be a bit mad over the summer, and I know I was extremely stressed, and tense, argumentative and generally irritating to be around. I have since been told by a very good friend that I was actually a bit mental at the time and she starting to get concerned near the end. However, since then I thought I would go back to normal, but it's not really happening! I'm not sure why, and I don't like it. I can easily begin to feel really down and let little things really bother me. Like tonight, I had been doing some viva prep, so my thesis was sitting out when my cousin came round who I haven't seen much since I finished. I asked her if she wanted to see it and she just brushed it off, saying she didn't have much time and would look at it later. It really hurt me, as this is the culmination of over 3 years of work that was just brushed aside like it didn't matter. I'm starting to get really easily irritated by people and questioning even staying in the relationship I've been in for over 4 years.

I guess I'm just wondering if this is usual for post submission? I haven't got a job yet despite 2 good interviews, but there has only been one other vacancy in my field so there aren't even many jobs around. Plus I still have to do my viva, so I'm not sure if it's just residual stress...I feel really unsettled, and hate not being able to have much control over what happens.

Hi Algaequeen, this is a very salient thread to me. Virtually everything you have described is relevant to me and I'm sure that I'll experience what you're currently going through, post-submission. I can't say whether it's normal or not because I don't know many people, personally, that have completed PhDs. I feel that when something has been a central, defining part of your life for 3 years, then it is only natural that you view things very personally and take things to heart. It represents all of your hard work, effort and determination to see it through; you'll will rightfully be proud of what you have done and feel that it deserves appropriate recognition and respect. Thats how I feel, and it has been a source of arguments and tensions in both my acadmic and very minimal personal life. I'm not chauvanistic, not elistist and certainly not pompous. However, when it comes to my work, my responsibility for the past 3 and a half years, the thing that I have given more attention to than friendships, personal happiness and health, I am jealously protective and like an overbearing parent who wants the best for their child. Maybe a little melodramatic, but I haven't worked on something for over 3 years without developing 'feelings' for it [yes, maybe that says more about me than my work!]. Perhaps not the best similie, but it's like being a master baker: you use the best ingredients possible to bake a cake with great care and attention, and then some seemingly snooty individual says 'no thanks' to a slice.
I feel that you haven't experienced the anticipated resolution of these feelings because it isn't all fully over yet, not until after the viva. However excellent your thesis may be, it's not going to feel like it's all done and dusted until the examiners have signed on the dotted line. So, you're still going to feel anxious, nervous and sensitive about your thesis because you can't put it and all of the associated feelings behind you yet. I think (for me, anyway) that things will feel a whole lot different (and better) after the viva because then the thesis, the task, will have truly ended and you'll be able to more easily put it all behind you and move on.

Hi AQ - I don't really want to comment too much on how you are feeling as I am yet to start my PhD so do not have a similar experience to draw upon; I just wanted to show my support. I have felt a bit like this, although not on the same scale, since submitting my MSc dissertation and I'm really worried about it, but trying to focus on getting off to a good start on my PhD rather than constantly worrying about the worst case scenario of failing my MSc and not being able to do my PhD.

Submitting your thesis is a major achievement and that is of course a positive thing, but it must also be very difficult to 'say goodbye' to something that you have spent so much time and emotion on, knowing that you will revisit it in the near future. It marks a different part of your life, but also signifies the beginning of a very grey area between submission and viva, which could give you time to question things and worry about them more. This is not unusual, my supervisor told me she woke up in tears every morning for a week after submitting her thesis. Christmas is also a difficult time as it seems to highlight everything that is less than perfect, and the lack of daily routine doesn't help either.

I hope that has helped in some way, take care, Nxx

No, it's not just you!

Like Natassia I just wanted to show my support. I'm a few months away from submitting so I say 'Good on you' for having submitted your PhD. I am finding the writing up process difficult, not in the writing up per se but I find I am constantly doubting myself and what I say, with the result that I am saying very little. It's definitely a case of 'the more I learn, the less I know' :-(

As for your cousin not really being interested in your thesis, let's face it, nobody really understands the whole process and how traumatising it can be except you, and of course those of us embroiled in the same relentess PhD process. My mother asked me the other day "tell me again what you're doing, I'm having lunch with a friend and want to be able to tell her". And so I told her, for the 100th time!!

I'm jumping ahead to what happens after the Viva as well re jobs, or lackthereof. I know I don't want a postdoc and yet want to get something that will vindicate all these years of study.

Anyhow chin up and chillax over Christmas - as my daughter says!! Put on 'It's a wonderful life' and let James Stewart remind us all what it's all about!

A

Hi, and sorry to hear you are going through this. At the same time, I think its a perfectly normal and natural reaction to the situation you are in! As a good friend once told me, limbo is a hard place to be--and that is exactly where you are after you have submitted and before you have viva-ed. As well, the future looms hard on the horizon, the post PhD life that has to take some shape and form. I think you hit the nail on the head, when you talk about the lack of control. So many things have yet to happen that are important to your future, and yet they are now ( literally) out of your hands ( with the submission of the thesis) or yet to happen ( the viva...). And it is hard to move forward with jobs, etc, when that PhD is not yet in hand.

Is your viva scheduled soon? Can you turn your energies to prepping for that, in the sense that restores some sense of "control" to the world you are in? Can you focus on applying for jobs, or looking for post docs, or some task that makes you feel like you are taking pro-active steps ( helps make you feel back in control) and not at the whim of some vague forces out there in the universe?

I would guess the irritation that you feel about people and things even beyond the PhD are just part of the stress you are under. And do not underestimate the stress--yes, it is there! Its real! its justified to feel stressed. That said, I would guess as well any little ( or big) steps you can take that restore some sense of control and forward planning would help allieviate the tensions you are under.

As well, sometimes the holidays also ramp up life stresses, and this time of year might just magnify already existing stress.

When I finished my viva, and got the PhD, I kept waiting for a change in how I felt. I felt a bit numb, a bit surprised, a bit....like...why has nothing changed???!!! Why is life still the same? The sudden change I was thinking would sweep me up and away instead happened in maddeningly slow dribs and drabs. Bit by bit, a new future took hold, but it took some time, and I had to keep working hard at things to coax this into being. I went through a period where I even felt like I bitterly regretted having done the PhD, thinking--is this what it was all for?

Also I think once you have turned in the thesis, you might become more aware of all the stress you were possibly carrying but could not focus on whilst you were writing up. Now you do not have the immediate burden of submission in front of you, but the stressors have not gone away, and so might be more noticeable.

It sounds to me like what you are going through is just a normal part of making it through a still ongoing stressful process. There is still the viva, and then getting a job...and those are still major events out there....

There is little way to make limbo a comfortable place to be. To the extent there is anything you can do that makes you feel back in the driver's seat of life, and in control of some part of the situation, I would say go for it. Even just a CV update to remind yourself that you are a wonderful, capable human being could help!

hang in there and best of luck with the viva and job search! I am sure that things will turn out just fine for you in the end!

am sorry to hear that you are having a tough time.

when i was doing my phd.. my family said i had got very defensive on the matter. but thats coz they kept nagging about when i'd finish and putting me down. so naturally.... one would expect that i'd be defensive. another thing is they're naysers or don't see the need to do a phd. so obviously, they irritated me.

now during viva prep i have decided to quit my job. everything there irritates me. my bosses. the customers. i have developed a short fuse. i have been to the doctors and they have said that am run down and depressed and need to work on improving my mood. am not surprised. what could be more depressing than writing a whole phd thesis. LOL. :-)

anyhow. my aim next yr is to recover.... in fact the next three yrs. i will never be as serious about anything and i won't pour my life into anything like i did with this phd.

there is more to life. don't worry. you'll be fine in time.

and.... try not to expect others to be as clever and interested in your phd. why would any sane person be interested in reading such a long document? be objective about it. its that thing that makes you different and special that made you write it and read it a million times. not everyone is like that. but if you ask me.. i'd say they're sad. they just haven't discovered the joys of intellectual rigour. but that's me.

merry christmas!

======= Date Modified 04 Jan 2011 16:40:16 =======
============= Edited by a Moderator =============
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Hi everyone!
Thanks for all the great replies, it has actually really lifted my mood and helped me not worry about it so much!! I think it's definitely right to say that the very long time it takes for the whole thing to be over and resolved is totally maddening, it feels very hard to get a sense of closure about it and possibly that's why I can't really move on yet, so thanks for that suggestion. It's nice to hear it's not just me, but at the same time I hope everyone starts to feel a bit better about things soon, it's really not a nice situation.
As for the thing with my cousin, I would never expect her to read it, that wasn't my intention, it was just to show her what I had done. I guess it was just frustrating as I have spent years looking at all her work and talking it over with her and going to her art shows etc and I would have expected the same courtesy in return. But, it was just one time, a small thing, and I'd say she would have no idea that it would have bothered me so, it surprised even me how much it got to me.
While I feel very proud of what I've done and hopefully everything will go well with the viva, I'm not sure it's healthy to put so much of myself into one thing the way the PhD has been, and I certainly wouldn't go to that intensity again. It's hard to claw your way back to normality, especially when you aren't sure what normality is anymore as a PhD can change you so much. I feel almost like a teenager again, trying to figure out what kind of person I am and what I want from life, what job to do etc. I'm not intent in staying in academia, but at the same time I don't want to leave it behind altogether or do a job that isn't challenging. So who knows?! I have decided to try and look at things in a different way, and instead of being afraid of not knowing what I'm doing or where I'm going, I'm going to try and enjoy it, and look forward to where life goes next. After all, hopefully we'll be here for a long time, so no point spending it worried about things that can never be known in advance. If that even makes sense!!