Witnessing my partner writing their PhD

tl;dr: a PhD is an emotional rollercoaster with side effects (sleep talking).

My partner, Sam, successfully passed his PhD Viva, taking ~4.5 hours. He monitored his heart rate and plotted it, seems quite a traumatic event.

This blog post is to acknowledge the stress of a PhD from a friend, partner, and outsider perspective. I hope this post isn’t misunderstood or reflects any selfishness: I am writing to acknowledge this stressful experience.

My partner, Sam, area of research is Bioinformatics and although we met at the beginning of his 3rd year, I was able to watch a rollercoaster of emotions. Sam had fun times, and I - in my best attempt - tracked the funniest things said, and kept a subjective emotional journal during his 3rd and 4th year. (with Sam’s permission of course)

In the Figure below, I show the wave of emotions (y-axis) over time (x-axis) from Nov. 2016 to May 2018 (approximately one month before his Viva). This plot is my subjective opinion of Sam’s emotion during that time point: timepoints have an annotation as “evidence”. Though it should be noted that some annotations may seem to contradict the emotion - this is explained further below.

Moreover, the colours chosen aim to reflect the emotion: grey is neutral, green is positive, blue is not-so-great/sad, and red is negative. There was time-blip between March (03/2017) to October (10/2017) as I was deep into my undergraduate dissertation and web project.

I saw that his emotions varied often, even in times he seemed happy or grumpy, he was often saying things that would imply the opposite. Screaming how “Bioinformatics is shit” seems like quite the negative thing to say yet he was laughing and seemed joyful, although it may have been the wine talking.

Although the trend curve is predominantly negative, Sam wasn’t a negative person. Sam had lots of positive moments in and outside the PhD.

Notable favourites with explanations (chronological order):

• WHO IS THIS GUY sad - Sam thought his work was scooped and had a few sad weeks.
• WINE TIME happy - Sam started to enjoy wine during his evenings of deep PhD work.
• fuck you LaTeX what the fucking fuck, I fucking hate computers not-so-happy - formatting a thesis is quite the challenge.
• pls no more lit review sad - reading and writing-up seems exhausting.
• THIS IS MY BABY very happy - Sam was making brilliant progress and was really happy with the current thesis state.
• how do bees do this? happy - Sam moved from wine onto mead.
• NEXT QUESTION positive - prepared a mock Viva for Sam and he was in good spirits.

PhD writing seemed most stressful but toward the end had more positive moments. Weather was a minor factor in Sam’s mood: raining meant that he would get soaked if he went to campus, so he knew he had to stay in the house (also rain reminded him of his bees and pondered if they were doing well).

Writing up the thesis is demanding: you set deadlines for chapters, but if something is not ready to write-up, how can you meet that deadline? Some complete the PhD work first then write, others write as they go. Some make schedules, however, breaks in writing was difficult for Sam as they found it tough to resume writing after dropping concentration.

All this writing and focus meant Sam forget to eat breakfast and lunch. I would have to remind him to eat in the morning before he left for campus. I found he loved the chicken coronation ciabatta from our local garage.

Initially Sam would wake up only to write until late hours. All this stress caused sleep talking. Sleep talking is reflected in the Figure are grey/neutral. Some things said: “the sequences don’t align”, “bad men at the bank”, and “it’s real science” (the last was shouted loudly). All, I would say, are related to his PhD: sequences in Bioinformatics, bank may relate to the 4th year of no pay (abeyance), and “real science” perhaps defending his work via peer reviews.

One activity that I noticed to help was a change of scenery (from the house). As I was writing my Masters thesis at the time, Sam and I would go places to write. We worked in different areas of the department: communal spaces, the library, the thinktank, and Sam most enjoyed a secret location in the Biology building’s skybridge. I also tried to get Sam to do something different in the evenings, he found some fun in a space game and wine/mead.

Sam handed in the thesis and I noticed an immediate weight off his shoulders. On the morning before the successful Viva, Sam was very nervous. I had never seem him that nervous before (understandably so). But absolutely rocked it! He wore a great waistcoat and a brilliant tie with chromosomes.

Post Viva, Sam had much more energy! We went on walks and explored Aberystwyth’s Old College (ashamed that I had never in my 4 years in Aberystwyth had visited). Congratulations Dr. Sam Nicholls!