Yes, it's about that PhD shit again.
Okay, so I've been pretty quiet since April. The reason is, you guessed it, mostly work and the fact that I've been traveling quite a lot (mostly on business. And that sounds a lot more glamorous than it is *thinks back to last week when i spent three days cooped up with a bunch of teenagers and two company grades in a 80°C conference room).
But since you already had a couple work posts, this is not gonna be one. Not really, anyway. It is, for probably the hundredth time, about me getting a PhD. Or not. Ugh.
So, it's been a while since I talked about this, and technically, I already had decided not to pursue one, for various reasons (mostly the framework like a lack of job security for academic personnel in Germany (if you think it's horrible in the US or the UK, you haven't gotten to know the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz yet...), my age, a complicated framework set-up of working in Munich but having an advisor in Potsdam...). Two weeks ago or so, my current boss kind of put a little pressure on me to make a decision (not really in a "you need to decide, it's a life and death thing" way but yes, he did ask a direct question).
First off: saying no wouldn't have any consequences for my current contract. Getting a PhD was not part of it, so if I decided against it, there wouldn't be any problems. I also already know that my boss would still support me getting a PhD, even if I had a different advisor. Technically, right now, I have dream conditions for getting a PhD: a full contract, a boss who supports his employees, and access to academic and university infrastructure like libraries, academic journals, IT infrastructure etc. However, my contract ends December 2020, and there's no way of knowing whether I'll get an extension or not. And that was, until now, the sticking point that made me go "no" regarding a possible PhD.
But ever since my boss asked me to make a decision - or suggested I make one, which is actually more like what happened - I did a lot of thinking and talking, mostly with my sister (who got her PhD in 2014). She kind of surprised me, to be honest. Considering that she knows how much blood and sweat and tears usually goes into a PhD and how both of us know a surprisingly big bunch of people who got a PhD and possible lost bits of their sanity on that, I was really astonished to hear her encouraging me. Her argument was mostly, "Well, I think you could do it, you'd like doing it, right now, you have really great conditions, there's always a way to extend a contract, and abandoning it if for some reason you can't finish it after all is not going to end your life. So go for it." I've been mulling this over for a couple weeks now, and then, a week ago, asked myself the question I didn't want to ask because it assumes ideal circumstances, and as a rule, I never assume ideal circumstances when I ponder something. I assume realistic circumstances, because one of my rules is "'Es wäre schön, wenn's schön wäre' ist keine nachhaltige Lebenseinstellung." (something like "'It would be nice if it were nice' does not a sustainable attitude to life make.").
Anyway, I finished the first draft of a proposal for a paper, sat back and thought: "So, if I had the same conditions I have now for the next five years... would I do this PhD thing?" And you know what, the questions is, yes I damn well would. I'd do a stupid thing, sit down and add a PhD to a full-time project job and I'd be happy while doing it. So yes, I suddenly went from "Nah, I don't need the title, I can publish without a title, and it would be too much of a hassle" to "Okay, so I need a topic that will go well with the project so I don't have two full-time jobs. If I manage to find somethig like that, I'll get the damn thing." *rolls eyes
So guess who spent those three impossibly hot days last week trying to figure out a topic and a research question (you know, additionally to angsting over one of the project aspects, working out a pandemic scenario and figuring out how to stay awake in 32°C humid weather after about four hours of sleep)... I think I might have found a workable topic (something, something, civil-military divide, something, something, Jugendoffiziere) but I still feel like I'm lacking an approach that is unique enough to produce some actual new content, general enough to yield content that isn't exhausted in a single paper and specific enough to stop the thesis from getting out of hand. This is driving me nuts, and I keep wondering if I just lost my topic finding mojo (I'm usually good at this shit, I swear) or if that's a sign that I lack the enthusiasm needed for a thesis and I'd really like to talk about this topic with someone who actually knows what I'm talking about (I'm already getting the feeling that there aren't that many people who did something on this specific subset of the topic of civil-military relations I'm thinking about...) and can point me to where I'm going wrong or into a direction I haven't thought about yet.
Ugh.
This is going to be a nother neverending academia story, isn't it? *rolls eyes
But since you already had a couple work posts, this is not gonna be one. Not really, anyway. It is, for probably the hundredth time, about me getting a PhD. Or not. Ugh.
So, it's been a while since I talked about this, and technically, I already had decided not to pursue one, for various reasons (mostly the framework like a lack of job security for academic personnel in Germany (if you think it's horrible in the US or the UK, you haven't gotten to know the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz yet...), my age, a complicated framework set-up of working in Munich but having an advisor in Potsdam...). Two weeks ago or so, my current boss kind of put a little pressure on me to make a decision (not really in a "you need to decide, it's a life and death thing" way but yes, he did ask a direct question).
First off: saying no wouldn't have any consequences for my current contract. Getting a PhD was not part of it, so if I decided against it, there wouldn't be any problems. I also already know that my boss would still support me getting a PhD, even if I had a different advisor. Technically, right now, I have dream conditions for getting a PhD: a full contract, a boss who supports his employees, and access to academic and university infrastructure like libraries, academic journals, IT infrastructure etc. However, my contract ends December 2020, and there's no way of knowing whether I'll get an extension or not. And that was, until now, the sticking point that made me go "no" regarding a possible PhD.
But ever since my boss asked me to make a decision - or suggested I make one, which is actually more like what happened - I did a lot of thinking and talking, mostly with my sister (who got her PhD in 2014). She kind of surprised me, to be honest. Considering that she knows how much blood and sweat and tears usually goes into a PhD and how both of us know a surprisingly big bunch of people who got a PhD and possible lost bits of their sanity on that, I was really astonished to hear her encouraging me. Her argument was mostly, "Well, I think you could do it, you'd like doing it, right now, you have really great conditions, there's always a way to extend a contract, and abandoning it if for some reason you can't finish it after all is not going to end your life. So go for it." I've been mulling this over for a couple weeks now, and then, a week ago, asked myself the question I didn't want to ask because it assumes ideal circumstances, and as a rule, I never assume ideal circumstances when I ponder something. I assume realistic circumstances, because one of my rules is "'Es wäre schön, wenn's schön wäre' ist keine nachhaltige Lebenseinstellung." (something like "'It would be nice if it were nice' does not a sustainable attitude to life make.").
Anyway, I finished the first draft of a proposal for a paper, sat back and thought: "So, if I had the same conditions I have now for the next five years... would I do this PhD thing?" And you know what, the questions is, yes I damn well would. I'd do a stupid thing, sit down and add a PhD to a full-time project job and I'd be happy while doing it. So yes, I suddenly went from "Nah, I don't need the title, I can publish without a title, and it would be too much of a hassle" to "Okay, so I need a topic that will go well with the project so I don't have two full-time jobs. If I manage to find somethig like that, I'll get the damn thing." *rolls eyes
So guess who spent those three impossibly hot days last week trying to figure out a topic and a research question (you know, additionally to angsting over one of the project aspects, working out a pandemic scenario and figuring out how to stay awake in 32°C humid weather after about four hours of sleep)... I think I might have found a workable topic (something, something, civil-military divide, something, something, Jugendoffiziere) but I still feel like I'm lacking an approach that is unique enough to produce some actual new content, general enough to yield content that isn't exhausted in a single paper and specific enough to stop the thesis from getting out of hand. This is driving me nuts, and I keep wondering if I just lost my topic finding mojo (I'm usually good at this shit, I swear) or if that's a sign that I lack the enthusiasm needed for a thesis and I'd really like to talk about this topic with someone who actually knows what I'm talking about (I'm already getting the feeling that there aren't that many people who did something on this specific subset of the topic of civil-military relations I'm thinking about...) and can point me to where I'm going wrong or into a direction I haven't thought about yet.
Ugh.
This is going to be a nother neverending academia story, isn't it? *rolls eyes