My philosophy of life could probably be summed up as one of extremes and my daily moods reminiscent of two central characters in Winnie-The-Pooh; most days I am will be either full of Tiggerly vim and vigour being overly-enthusiastic, excited, giddy (and probably highly annoying) or pessimistic, full of doom and much more like Eeyore. No in-betweens. All or nothing.
Embarking on a PhD has definitely tested my (predominantly) Tigger tendencies; it seems there’s a distinct lack of bouncy-jolly-ness in academia which has made me question my ability to stick with it but that’s for another post on another day…
Over the last two weeks, the atmosphere in PhD-land seemed to be perfect for Eeyore to find a resting place and get comfortable. As I continued to write, I was finding myself much more inclined to think every sentence was terrible, that every article I read was incomprehensible, that I wasn’t going anywhere except down. With a supervisory meeting looming, I wasn’t holding out much hope that the few thousand words I had written was remotely what they wanted to read.
And this is where PhD-Land is clearly going to keep surprising and shocking me, and why I want to write these moments to look back on. In PhD-Land the word ‘good’ is magical. And in that meeting it was also preceded by an even more magical one: ‘very’. I could have fallen off my chair and bounced back to my desk. Yet had that word ever been used to evaluate any one of my lessons when I was teaching I’d have been devastated – good was NOT good enough. Neither was very good.
But in PhD-land, good / very good feels incredible. It feels magical. It feels like Winnie himself has given me a giant bear hug and told me I can do a Tigger dance and Eeyore wants to join in! Tigger’s glass is definitely half-full and I’m going to try and remember this moment and drink it in very slowly!
followmyphd 
Leave a comment