Finding a Silver Lining

At the beginning of my PhD my University had previous PhD candidates share with us newbies their PhD journey. They were full of words like; perseverance, resilience, hard work, support, scary, challenging, unexpected changes, and life happens. Their presentation had images like:

I remember sitting there and thinking; of course it is hard or course there are twists and turned, but surely a good plan and a good team will help you through. I had those things, so I felt safe.

And then.

In the past 6 weeks I hit my first major twist. It started with my primary supervisor accepting a position in a different university. This caused me to talk a BIG deep breath, trying to stay calm and not stress or panic. Thankfully, I have a good support aournd me who helped me out with this challenge. He was staying with my and my thesis, his affiliation would change and while that would make things a bit more complicated. It would be ok. Just as I had settled down from that event, my second supervisor also announced she was also leaving the university. YIKES, but at the same time as I had gone through this once, I now knew the process and with the help of my programme lead, we came up with an effective strategy to deal with this.

With my other half's words in my head, "this is a good thing, it shows an active field, with job opportunities". As well as my mentors words, "this is a good thing, it will increase your network and open up other doors that might not have been possible". I set about not panicking and instead came up with a plan.

1. I am not helpless, I chose to view this as an opportunity to widen my network while still maintaining the current level of support,

2. Have open conversations to determine roles, and responsibilities in my widening circle of supervision,

3. Choose to see the good and focus on that! Who knows what doors it might open!

Like I've blogged about before, Hard does not equal bad. A PhD is a hard but exciting journey. This is an unexpected complication. It will make the logistics of things a bit trickier, but even that will serve me well in my future career as a clinical academic. It will teach me how to manage multiple individuals in different environments that are all working on a single project.

Did I plan for this? No! But I look forward to seeing how it will change my PhD experience for the better. I challenge you to look for the silver linings in the challenges your PhD presents.