The Difficulty Factor

There's a reason a PhD is so highly valued. Well, it is a stepping stone to getting a better job, but the reason it can do that is because it is generally acknowledged that getting a post-doctoral degree is hard work. In Singapore you're more or less expected to aim for getting one straight after Masters, but in Australia they warn you off if they feel you are not ready. Many students choose to work a little or even travel around the world before they commence a PhD. It is considered a difficult, time-consuming thing to achieve.

What they don't tell you is why.

Before I started, I thought it was the technical difficulty. You are, after all, expected to produce results of a certain quality. For some courses you might publish papers which will make up chapters in your thesis, and that requires passing peer review from people who have been in the business longer than you have. There is also the time-limit, for scholarships are only offered for a certain period of time and continuing a PhD without funding is a difficult task.

However, this isn't really why a PhD is difficult to achieve. Skills can be learned with relative ease. After you figure out how to produce high-quality results, it's little trouble to continue doing so. And not everyone has to publish papers - it is possible to write a thesis based entirely on negative results and earn a pass.

The real difficulty comes from within. From you.

Why doesn't anyone warn you about the mental anguish? It is always made obvious that you yourself are responsible for your project, but it is not obvious that it translates to every mistake being on your own head. Your supervisors check in from time to time, but most of the time you are under your own power. The responsibility for completing a sufficient amount of work - the precise amount which constitutes "sufficient" is never made clear - is up to you, as is the method to achieving it. I can't define how stressful this is. It is not possible for someone who hasn't been there to understand.

I personally have become more emotional, more fragile since taking up this project. Minor details catch my eye, so paranoid am I. Failures feel like big losses, victories ignored because from experience, they are merely the prelude to even bigger disappointments. Sleep and food become expendable luxuries. Every bit of progress comes at the end of a huge fight. It feels as if I have to keep running to stay in the same place, trapped, unable to escape and unable to stop. I want to quit, so badly, except there's nowhere else to go.

And apparently, feeling this way is normal for a PhD student.

A doctorate is awarded to people who are apparently resistant to mental torture.