Roseanna Doughty |

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how we rarely take the time out of our PhDs to celebrate our achievements and encouraging you all to go treat yourself to cake or do a little desk dance next time you accomplish something. I am still a huge advocate of the desk dance boogie and am happy to report I’ve seen some great moves in the office of late- top-notch dad dancing! Recently, however, I have come to the realisation that it is equally, if not more, important to celebrate our failures as well.

Talking to PhD students who are transferring into their second year, many of them are extremely concerned about their upcoming first year review. A lot of this seems to result from a lack of information about what the review entails, what your examiners expect and crucially what happens if you don’t pass. These anxieties are not helped by social media statuses declaring them nothing to worry about, because there will always be a part of you asking ‘but what if…’.  To reiterate Fraser’s wise counsel, each review can be a very different experiences depending on your supervisors, your internal examiners, and your project. Well folks, my first year review was an unmitigated disaster- I am still here. And yes it was shit and it’s taken a lot of hard work to get back on track but I reconvened my review six months later and passed.

These anxieties could be alleviated if only we talked about our failures more, but heaven forbid we come across as anything but super-academic in this highly competitive environment. Doesn’t it feel better though to know that somebody else has gone through, or is going through, the same thing and survived? We all experience some form of failure at some point during the PhD process, most of us experience multiple, and actually it is often the best thing for your PhD. I certainly learnt more from my failings than I have ever from the successes I have had since. Talking can help you work through your problems, give you fresh inspiration- but you’ve heard all that before. The most important reason for talking more about the bad times is to counteract the impression that everyone is achieving everything and create an environment where it is okay to make mistakes. Now I acknowledge that there is a fine line between admitting failure and dwelling on it, but our catastrophes can be used to a positive end. I know it can be difficult to broadcast your problems and I am all for the throwing that rejection in the bin, stamping your feet, sulking and eating your body weight in chocolate method. But in the end the rejections, the problematic chapters make us better PhDs. Surely talking about when it goes wrong will help normalise theses problems and make us feel less rubbish when they occur.

I am of course not the first person to come to this realisation and we’ve had some excellent posts here at Pubs and Pubs by people brave enough to stand up and say it isn’t always plain sailing and that’s alright. But failure needs to become common parlance.

We’ve been asked over the last week or so what advice we would offer new PhD students and so I guess the best guidance I could give these fresh-faced researchers is to embrace your failures, let people know when it isn’t going to plan because they’ve probably had the same problem somewhere along the line and can provide useful advice #firstyearproblems.

(Image 1: www.pixabay.com)

Roseanna Doughty is Pubs and Publications Deputy Editor-in-Chief and researches media representations of the Troubles, 1969-1997, and their affect on the lived experiences of the Irish in Britain. You can check out her failure to spell anything correctly on social media outlets including Twitter, where her handle is @RoseannaJane.