For approximately the four hundredth time since starting my PhD last year, I’m again sitting here thinking that I’m studying the wrong thing. Any normal person would take this as an indication that perhaps they are indeed doing the wrong thing, and they would change their topic – right? To be honest, my topic bores me to shit. When I started this PhD thing I was so totally gung-ho on the fact that I wanted to be studying online culture, because at the time, that was my passion. Don’t get me wrong – I still love the Internet with most of my heart and would be totally lost without it, but… do I want to study the Internet for my PhD? Actually, I don’t think so. Shit. I started here in March 2008, and it’s suddenly October 2009 and I’ve really not made a whole heap of progress, because I really just don’t think I’m doing the right thing.
There are problems with this. Primarily, changing my topic now means drawing out the inevitable. Changing topic would mean commiting to another three years of research; in terms of years, that means I wouldn’t finish until the end of 2012 (at age 28! Oh noes!). Currently, I’m slated to finish in June 2011, but to tell you the truth the likelihood of that actually happening is fairly slim, seeing as I can’t actually scrounge up the motivation to research, much less write, this stupid thing. But what’s the worst thing that could happen if I changed my topic now and therefore pushed back my finish date to 2012? The very worst thing, perhaps, is that my scholarship money runs out in April 2011, meaning that I would have 1.5 years of study with no income, asides from perhaps some teaching. This in turns means that we would have to survive on Rhys’ income alone, which isn’t impossible, because he has a good and stable job that pays him a liveable salary (hi honey).
The other main problem is that I’m not entirely sure what I would study instead. As you may know, I have an honours degree in English, so my background is literature and culture studies, which I love. My main interests in the field of literature and culture studies are Indian Fiction and creative writing. I enjoy postcolonial studies and, yes, online culture. Away from strict literature/culture studies bizzo, I love food and photography/the visual (as in, the study of these things – not just eating and taking pictures).
So remind me again what the hell I am doing researching a thesis about the experience of selfhood online?
It’s not all bad. If I’m going to be completely honest with myself, I will admit that I do like my topic. I’m more bored of the fact that I can’t seem to get organised, can’t seem to get motivated, than anything else. Why is it so difficult to just sit down and read and then write and then ponder my reading and writing and write some more? How long is this going to go on for — am I going to spend the first six months of 2011, the last six months of my PhD, locked in a dark room by myself, smashing away at a keyboard and rarely coming up for air, all because I couldn’t get my arse into gear way back in 2009 when I still had two years to go? The reality is that if I change my topic at this point to something that I am equally unsure of, I will likely be in this exact position in another 18 months time… only then, no one will be taking me seriously when I say I want to change topics yet again. There will certainly be no money left, and I will have been blacklisted by the department, so no one will take me on for supervision.
I am finding that my disillusionment with the Net and blogging is growing every time I sit down at my computer and read an article or post on the topic. It angers me that people are increasingly blogging for the money, rather than the love. It angers me that the vast majority of writing about blogging that is coming out of universities at the moment is about problogging and the (financial, celebrity) opportunities that allegedly abound for bloggers. I liked it better when people were shouting that blogging was dead, long live blogging.
It’s probably high time that I just sucked it up and got on with it. This PhD isn’t my life. It’s the means to an end – granted, and end that I’m not sure I want anymore, but an end that will provide me with a steady income for the first time in my life, and that will surely lead to opportunities that I do want. I’m becoming more interested every day in writing for my own sake, rather than for research, and I suppose the quicker I actually get this PhD finished, the sooner I can write for myself. I’m pretty confident that I can say at this point that I no longer have the desire to enter into academia – at least not teaching. Writing is my primary interest, so now I just need to wait for the story to come to me – hopefully with a dose of talent in tow.
What would you do, though, if you knew you were doing the wrong thing with your life at this point in time? Researching isn’t making me happy, and if it were anyone else, I’d tell them to quit, take some time out, do something they love. Dropping out of the PhD program scares me shitless though. The fear of failure (or rather, being seen as a failure) far outweighs my need to do the right thing by my own existence, and that’s bullshit, but it’s how it is. At 25 years of age though, am I supposed to know what I want to do? I started an Arts degree in 2002 at the age of 17, and here I am, eight years later, still on the same path despite always feeling that it wasn’t quite right. Maybe it’s time that I took a long, hard look at myself and worked out whether this is really what I want to do after all. In my mind, I’m seeing the option of deferring my study for a while (or indefinately) as throwing away eight years work… but it’s not, really. I have a first class honours degree. It won’t get me a brilliant job, but I don’t really want a brilliant job. I want a job that I love, and right now, that job might be working in a bookshop or a small supermarket (or writing… but that doesn’t pay bills).
What should I do?
