A transit in Azkaban… (Published in Campus Review On-Line, week commencing 12.10.2009)

The all-consuming nature of PhD research leaves little of consequence to hold on to once the thesis is submitted. Feelings of worthlessness and lack of purpose amplify one’s anxiety in the wake of thesis examination. The vestiges of previously accustomed student support structures and the need to reforge alliances with work colleagues add to the feelings of despair. One is destined to wait in limbo, a persona non grata even, till the fateful day the examiners’ judgement is proclaimed. This post-submission nightmare can be a sharp contrast to the years of PhD studentship. 

My own experiences as a PhD student were pleasant and memorable. I wish that all PhD students could have the inspirational supervision, support and guidance that I was fortunate to receive. My fieldwork took me across Australia and I met and learnt from some of the elite in my discipline. To culminate, I submitted my thesis at a celebratory event for research students at the Australian National University. Then the umbilical cord was severed, without provision of post-natal/submission care. The thesis, a foetus nurtured in the womb of research scholarship, was launched into the world and its creator destined to nourish on despair.

The privileges to which I had grown accustomed as a student were gradually revoked. My membership to the university library and building access were phased out without prior notice, while I still remained in the full sense a “PhD Candidate”, pending the outcomes of my thesis examination!

It is possible to go without facilities and services, alternatives can be found. It is harder to reforge alliances, particularly when those people wish not to know you. For many you are either a PhD student or subsequently “Dr”. This dichotomy does not recognise one who has completed the former and waits in hope for the latter. Answers to the question “So what are you doing now?” are of little consequence, unless it involves examiners’ comments. In short, one fails to exist between the period of thesis submission and graduation. If one needs to maintain a presence meanwhile, it has to be wrought by a justification to exist. I argue, why is this so? Why does one have to suffer justification when this transitionary existence is beyond one’s control?

Meanwhile, those who wield the scales of judgement, the thesis examiners, remain oblivious to the students’ despair. Many examiners take months, sometimes more than a year, to return their comments. Their identities are never revealed. Such is the non-transparency of the PhD thesis examination process, carefully guarded by the research student office Cerberus.

There seems to be a great void in terms of help for PhD candidates during this desolate transit. As a parallel resolution, the Egyptian Book of the Dead comes to mind. This document provides detailed advice to a departed soul as it transits from this world to the afterlife. A similar transition takes place between the culmination of PhD studentship and admission to the degree. Whether the latter is comparable to afterlife, I’m yet not qualified to say. Irrespective, there is an obvious lack of guidance for PhD students who are in transit. They are left to fend for themselves like lost souls in limbo, feeding on despair like JK Rowling’s Dementors.

What happens to these hapless students, the reader asks? Some are offered post-doctoral fellowships. Others join the workforce. A few, like myself, are absorbed as research associates or associate lecturers by their departments. With the exception of a few, almost all go on to graduate as Doctors of Philosophy thereafter. All experience in varying degrees the “non-existent existence” while waiting to hear from examiners. All remain scarred by post-submission anxiety, self-doubt and the lack of self-worth.

Yet the journey from submitting a thesis to reaching the gates of PhDom is compulsory for all who embark on a research degree. However, it seems to me that this last lap is much steeper than the three to four-year-climb of PhD studentship. It lacks short-cuts, but presents detours in the form of examination delays. It is a lonely journey. The figurative travel companions, inns for rest and Sherpas that were available to the PhD student cease to exist. You are your sole companion and solicitude. The only option is to abide this transitory journey in silence, with perhaps a weak smile to mask the anxiety. I can hear some readers grunt “get a life”. Though that may seem like an option, it is not particularly easy to do, especially when for the past several years one did not have a life outside one’s research parameters and the page-margins of one’s thesis.