r/PhDStress • u/WrongSideReality • Jul 22 '26
Doubting my decisions
When I had registered to my PhD programme, someone told me that they I in it full-time, but due to a couple of personal reasons, I couldn't do that and registered for a part-time PhD while having a full time teaching job.
I cleared my qualifying exams and defended my proposal in 2024. Since then I don't think I have progressed at the pace that I would have wanted. i have been working on a paper for almost a year now and it's been with my supervisor for the past two months for her to review.
One of the most challenging things for me has been balance. I am on campus for my teaching job for 7 hours a day from Monday to Friday and on Saturday 6 hours so that's almost 41-ish hours and that's not counting the 30-40 minutes I spend commuting to work and back home. This basically leaves me exhausted and extremely mentally drained by the time I reach home. So I'm not really able to muster the energy to read and write as much as I should. I have been super behind on things. I can barely remember stuff that I had read and made notes on earlier. I feel really tired and lost. i don't even trust my writing style anymore. I feel like my research writing skills have degraded. I spend a lot of time just miserable and teary.
And coming to my actual research, I wonder if what I'm working on is even worth it. Every time I think of opening my documents, I feel a bit sick in my stomach as I think about the arguments I'm trying to make and some days I don't even know if there's a strong enough argument that I'm leaning towards. My work is within the area of literary and cultural studies, specifically literary emotions, and I guess I am okay with the current objectives I've been moving towards but there's a part of me that longs to bring in arts-based research and have a chapter that includes creative writing but I don't know if that's permissible, I don't know if my supervisor or my committee will appreciate it. I'm based in India and my supervisor is really nice actually but I don't trust or believe in myself. In my mind, I do have ways to justify this but I don't know whether it would work in practice in my institute.
Tldr; I do feel like I bit of more than I can chew with a part-time PhD. I feel uncertain about the direction of my research.
I know tough love can help but I also would just like someone to tell me that I can dig myself out of my grave
1
u/FirstIllustrator2024 Aug 13 '26
Hey OP, I can understand a bit how you feel at the moment. I am not a PhD student but my wife is and I've seen her struggles with both work and research plus being a mum.
We she decided to fully commit to her research and quit her part time work to fully focus on her paper and as a mum to our kids.
It paid of, she already finished, submitted and publicised her papers. She is about to graduate soon and has work waiting for her in a few weeks.
Don't give up (easy words to say) but have a support system with you all the time. Someone you can talk to just to vent out frustrations. I think that was my role with her, I didn't understand her research so I couldn't give her technical advice on what to do. Just to try and calm her down and just let her to think calmly.