I started feeling a bit of a change this summer when it came to how I approached the work in my PhD program. I decided to use this space as an opportunity to share what my dialogue with myself around this looked like. I think this could apply to many different types of work, but my focus here is through the lens of being a PhD student.
What do I mean by “mid-PhD slump”?
What I think I mean is that I started to feel less inspired by the work I was engaging with and creating. I also started to feel a kind of effort that I hadn’t had to bring to it before.
When did I recognize I was in a mid-PhD slump?
When I started seeing this combination of feelings resurface again and again–decreased inspiration coupled with less ease of accomplishing my work–it became a good indication that something had changed and I needed to attend to it. Returning again and again to the work I was doing each day felt like more of an obligation as opposed to a choice I’d made.
Acknowledging that this shift had happened was especially challenging because so much of what had driven me up until the slump was the feeling of excitement I got from learning something new and the anticipation of what might be next for me to learn.
Why was this happening?
In part, I was gaining knowledge and skills that allowed me to become more critical and discerning when it came to reading new work. I became better able to identify when a model didn’t align with a hypothesis, a method, etc. So the feelings were in part the result of my development as a scientist and my critical thinking more broadly. And that was good.
But..
What had helped to sustain me in science before this shift was a feeling of wonder and anticipation, of the possibility of learning something new. And, to an extent, I felt this diminished.
I worried that if I let this continue it would grow into something like cynicism (see this piece on Maria Popova’s Marginalian website for a bit of what I’m referring to).
How do I want to continue in science if the feeling that initially sustained me has shifted?
I started going back to papers that had inspired me eight years ago when I first read them. This has been helpful but not totally solved the problem. It has helped me to recenter on why I started this journey–the theories, ideas, and experiments that first fascinated me. But, I needed something more than this.
What has been more helpful, but still challenging, is returning to a concept from Zen Buddhism–the idea of “beginner’s mind” (shoshin). “Beginner’s mind,” “refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner would.” This practice, “acts as a counter to the hubris and closed-mindedness often associated with thinking that oneself is an expert.” But to also bring up challenges.
Coming into science with a sense of newness, even as I’ve gained more experience, does–to an extent–help me prevent a drift into cynicism.
But, and what perhaps may be a key feature of this “slump,” is that I am at a point in my PhD program where I can’t altogether come off to others as a “beginner.” I need to have developed knowledge and expertise and skills to write papers, design new experiments, and write grant proposals. There is pressure to no longer be a “beginner,” since my growing expertise is what is supposed to help me with the next stages of my career.
I can perhaps distill everything into the following question–one which I realize I will be asking again and again as I continue as a scientist:
How can I present myself as competent and knowledgeable without shifting into cynicism and holding onto the wonder of being a new scientist?
Some ideas I have for myself include:
- Deconstructing what I think I “know” and staying in conversation with that knowledge.
- Regular experimental brainstorms where I come up with new ideas for experiments.
- Returning to inspiring papers, even if there are aspects of them that I struggle with given how my ideas and work have developed
- Coming back to beginner’s mind and embracing the idea of it being okay to feel “stupid” in science.
The Lazy PhD 