Ursula Crickmay, a PhD student in the School of Education, shares the first in a mini-series about stamina in part-time PGR life when you are in it for the long haul.
I have been a PGR student at the University of Exeter since September 2014, when I began an MSc Educational Research, a necessary precursor at that time to studying for a PhD in the School of Education. In the meantime my small children have become teenagers, I’ve established a new branch of a national charity, we’ve had a pandemic, I’ve been a lecturer, a research assistant, and published articles, and I’ve learnt a lot about chronic fatigue syndrome (which is not the topic of my PhD). I am still going and very much hoping to submit my PhD this year, September 2025. I have also learnt quite a lot about the process of studying for a PhD part time and that is what I am sharing here, in hopes that it may be helpful to others who are embarking on this unpredictable journey.
Life will interrupt.
Your schedule will slip. Accept it and move on. Be kind to yourself. You are running a marathon. Just keeping going is a huge achievement. Congratulate your colleagues who graduate in three years (or five, seven, nine years, however long you are taking, people will constantly graduate around you), but do not be discouraged by their speed. You are on a different journey. Congratulate yourself every day you show up at your desk and read, write or think.
You will forget everything
When you are returning to your writing after a week of other work/ picking up what you were reading earlier after doing the school run / going back to your literature review 6 years after you first wrote it, one of your big challenges will be to remember where you were/ what you read/ what it was that seemed so vital at the time you were working on it. This means that you have to be merciless in organizing your future self. I have found the following points helpful (several of which were pieces of advice I was given near the start of my PhD, included with thanks to all those who took the time to advise me):
Each time you finish work, make a note of where you intend to pick up again – even if this is later in the same day.
Be vigilant in all aspects of your filing: digital and physical filing needs to be done in a way that would make sense to someone else – you more or less are someone else when you come back to it after three years. This applies to everything to do with your data and ethics, but also to writing, reading, ideas development, correspondence, university administration etc.
Document your reading: again, using a system that would make sense to someone else. I document my reading in three ways: I use referencing software to file all my references; I maintain an excel spreadsheet of everything I have read and everything I intend to read; I keep extended notes using a standard proforma which I also file carefully. All this seems like a lot of administration at the time but saves you a lot of time later on.
Document your supervisions. MyPGR is surprisingly helpful for this! Some people find it helpful to record supervisions and make more extensive notes listening back to it. Personally I find it more useful to write down everything straight afterwards and to maintain a more concise record. I try to book myself a clear hour after every supervision for this process.
Use your research log to document any random thoughts, reflections and questions that occur to you as you go along. You will definitely forget these if you do not write them down and for me they have often proved helpful pointers for future development when I have gone back to them.
Keep writing
Write no matter what. For considerably more on this topic, read Joli Jensen’s Write no matter what: Advice for academics (University of Chicago Press, 2017)
Check back next week for Ursula’s top tips on managing time and getting your work out there.
Ursula is undertaking a PhD focusing on professional musicians and their creative music workshop practices, using a framework of posthuman theory. For the University of Exeter she has also worked as a lecturer and researcher in the School of Education, currently working on the Arts Council England funded Penryn Creativity Collaboratives. She is on the editorial board for the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity. Her background is in the development and management of creative learning programmes with artists and arts organisations. Recent publications include Sensing in liminal spaces: Words, music and dementia and Sound possibilities: Listening for the new in early years music-making practices.