Letter Fourteen: Dear Emotionally Overwhelmed

Here’s something I know to be true, shame thrives in silence. The quieter we are, the more hidden our feelings become, the more isolated we make ourselves, the worse off we are. I am here naming shame for you, as I recognize that you didn’t use that word yourself. Because what I hear in the fear of being a ‘waste of time, money, and energy’ is not being enough, not having a sense of worthiness to be there if you aren’t showing up emotionally in certain ways, of you not being ‘good’ if you aren’t productive and producing.

Letter Thirteen: Dear On the Topic of Romance

The story we often tell ourselves about staying is that staying is the ingredient to finding a partner. It is the key to the fantasy of the picket fence house and a long term relationship and all that, and I relate to how deeply that can bury under our skin. But what really ‘counts’ as giving a place a good enough go when it comes to dating? What is the cut off point for risking that fantasy? What is ‘stable’ enough to sustain a partnership?

Letter Twelve: Dear Dr. or Ms.

What I think is the most important here is what feels right to you. I think there are people who make their choice based on personal reasons to use or not use and I think there are people who make their choice for praxis reasons (putting theory into action) to use or not use and I think there are people who make their choice to use or not use somewhere in the middle of feelings & theory or even those who haven’t thought about it at all.

Letter Eleven: Dear How to Actually Study

It is wonderful that you were confident and proud of how you were a student in other stages of your life, it is important that you’re noticing that what worked for you then, is not working for you now. I think education is an ever evolving landscape as well and that means new strategies and apps and resources for students as well. Potentially at an even quicker rate than ever before.

Letter Ten: Dear PhD Abroad

There are many considerations to doing a degree abroad including the visa situation, if you would be doing a PhD in your native language, the cultural differences, the length of the deree, financial questions, ability to visit home or not during the degree. I don’t mean to list all that out to deter you; I would choose doing my PhD abroad again in a heartbeat! I just think informed decision making leads us to making the best choices of our lives and that requires considerations and intentional contending.

Letter Nine: Dear I Hate Thesis Writing

Thesis writing is a very specific kind of writing, and particularly if you are at an institution with a strong structure for the thesis or dissertation, it can take the joy out of the research topic and writing so easily. And this is coming from someone who very much considers themselves a writer… I would probably venture to guess that most PhD theses are written without feeling particularly great about the writing or the writing process. You would certainly not be alone with that sentiment.

Letter Eight: Dear The Night Before Your PhD Viva

Tomorrow is not a conversation to trick you or catch you out. Tomorrow is a conversation about what was accomplished and what could have gone differently. Tomorrow is about what changed and what stayed the same throughout time. Tomorrow is about who you are as a person impacting the work you did.

Letter Seven: Dear Stage Frightened Undergrad

You have no control over what people’s impression of you will be or what their threshold for ‘impressive’ is. Striving to be impressive leads you down a road of chasing external validation. Elusive validation at that. I would encourage you to shift your mindset for this talk to connecting with people.

Letter Six: Dear Apathetic

For the apathy itself, I don’t want us to think about ‘doing’ anything about it. I deeply understand the pull to transform apathy into something else; to do away with it even, but apathy is one of those emotional experiences (or lack thereof) that does much better when we try to befriend and understand it rather than change it.

Letter Five: Dear Uncertain Co-author

Part of why being a first generation student is so hard, I think, is having to create a support system and network of people that understand the environment of academia. It can be lonely and confusing to figure out the underbelly of academia which people don’t speak aloud or do quietly.

Letter Four: Dear Friendless Fretter

Within all the past communities and connects throughout your life, you have made effort to become friends with some and not others. College can work in the same way for you. You may not want to go the proximity route to friendship again or you may friend the first few weeks challenging, but I don’t want you to give up.

Letter Three: Dear A Stressed Out Partner of a Stressed Out Academic

Watching someone we love struggled and be stressed and feel helpless to change anything about that experience for them is one of the most human experiences. I want to start by making it so clear that your emotional reactions and responses to this season of your relation is so natural and human.

Letter Two: Dear Bewildered and Burnt-Out

It makes total sense to me that this leads you down the thought paths you’re on, especially your curiosity around your advisor’s intention. It seems perfectly understandable to be wondering that about someone who should want you to succeed (we hope just simply because that’s sort of their job but also because it reflects well on them when you do well) but whose actions aren’t aligned.

Letter One: Dear Lost in Academia

If you want to do a PhD, you can also be scared and uncertain and anxious without it meaning it isn’t the right choice for you to make. Many of us, but I’ll mostly speak for myself here, enter PhDs feeling out of our comfort zone, sensitive to failure or perceived failure, or afraid of not being good enough. And we make decisions every month, every week, sometimes hour by hour if those feelings are worth continually feeling and moving through, or if they aren’t.