Posted on by Mbuyi Shadrack

I could quit, I should quit…

Growing up in the mountainous landscape of the eastern Free State, I had enormous dreams. I imagined performing on some big world stages with the biggest names in the industry. But I guess that I was robbed of singing talent for some or other reason. Well, I Quitwouldn’t have made it in sports either. No Pop Idols, no Olympics… maybe I had something else? I think it is important to realize that the path I took was really meant for me. In 2015 I decided that academics is the way for me, but since then, doubt has reared its ugly head many, many times.

 
The 2017 academic year was the longest year of my life. Over and over, I asked the question, “How many weeks do we still have to go before the 31st of December?” Sometimes I said this as a joke but a lot of times I meant it. I wanted to rest. Take a break from it all. Go on a journey where it’s just me and my thoughts, because then I would get peace of mind and be able to discover what else I’m good at. Maybe right there I would get the courage to pack up my stuff and leave this life behind…no…maybe right there, alone with my mind, I would discover that I do not have to be made for it to find myself in it. Maybe it is just a journey I have to take and I’m glad I took it. I learnt a couple of lessons last year.

Time is of the essence, use it wisely. I found myself, at times, stuck on a task that is due the next day or in two days. There’s something to be said for procrastination – it works when you have only one thing to do. But having another big deadline on the same day makes it impossible to just sleep and push it off to the following day. This embedded in my heart the words by Benjamin Franklin, ‘Never leave that until tomorrow which you can do today’.

The task is always easier with just a little help. I learnt that there was no way I could make it without asking for assistance from time to time. Throughout my undergraduate degree I didn’t see the need to consult with the lecturers because I felt they had already said a mouthful in class. However, being an infant in the research field means swallowing my pride and asking for help from people who know better than me. I began to ask for help as often as I could. That paved my path and I think it made 2017 a little better, my days a little brighter and my struggles a bit more tolerable.

Giving up is never an option. It may be a temporary solution but then waking up in twenty years and realizing that I could have been ‘That,’ had I not given up is not the life I am planning for myself. Studying when I’m tired, staying awake when I should be sleeping, drinking endless cups of coffee when everybody else was building their social networks with the help of some liquid courage… This often made me consider giving upeyes open and leaving this place. But then, my plan is to deviate from normality. Hence, I stayed on and I kept gathering the energy and the strength not to give up no matter how strong the desire was.

Surround yourself with like-minded individuals. One of the reasons we give up so quickly is because we surround ourselves with people who do not understand why we do what we do. Choosing people who encourage you to hold on a little bit longer because they have been through it before makes the journey worthwhile. It doesn’t make the slope less steep, but gives you the strength to keep climbing.

Yes, I could quit. Sometimes I lay awake and wonder what would have become of my life if I’d dreamed of being a kindergarten teacher or a chef, but you know what, I would never quit. Apart from the challenges and the time that moves at the speed of light on submission days and at a snail’s pace when approaching Results day; I am enjoying the ride. I would not substitute this journey of learning for anything in the world!

As the greatest have said, never stop learning because life never stops teaching.

Posted on by mamothena

So, what brings you here?

When I meet another person pursuing their PhD, I am almost always tempted to ask them, “So, what brings you here?” This might actually interest me more than their research topic. I exaggerate, but it’s something I think about quite a lot.  This interest in other people’s motivations might stem from my own preoccupation with why I am pursuing a PhD. The answer to this depends on how my research is going 🙂

hows research
Not my advisers, of course… 🙂

I decided to do my PhD when I realized that I could not wait the indefinite number of years required to become an expert in Public Health. Building expertise through experience in Public Health is tricky because the field is so broad. In my short career, I had already worked as a community health researcher, a program assistant, and an analyst in two unrelated fields. The Masters in Public Health degree I held was multifaceted enough to allow this.  This was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand you need a job, and a generalist degree allows you to secure one much easier: on the other hand, you need deeper technical knowledge and a stable trajectory to build expertise in a field. And since we all need jobs, the market largely dictates where we end up.  In African public health, donor interests and political whims sway policy and dictate whether your sub-field is hot or not.

If you are like me and prefer to delve deep into your area of interest, jumping from one random job (however interesting it may be) to another can be seriously stressful. And, honestly, I’d already realized during my Masters that I am attracted to practice that had a heavy research component to it. The broad coursework was interesting but the most enjoyable part of my Masters in Public Health was the thesis year. I finally got to choose a topic I liked, and conducted research that contributed some knowledge to the world. I published and I was hooked. I knew that I loved research and wanted to do more of it. As my early career trajectory oscillated somewhat uncontrollably between unrelated public health fields, from infectious disease epidemiology to health market analysis, I knew that I needed to pause. I needed to go back to the basics, shut out the noise, and find my happy niche in the minefield that is Public Health. Something I wouldn’t mind dedicating years of training to, fighting for opportunities and innovating.

I’m not sure what works for others…

 

reasons
Definitely don’t do it to be called “Doctor!”

Apparently you shouldn’t do a PhD get out of a bad job or find one, simply to be called “Doctor”, or to impress your friends/colleagues/family. In South Africa, I would venture to say, you should also not do it simply because the government is eyeing your demographic group for some sweet, sweet funding.  All of these things are real motivations for people to pursue a PhD, however. Do you fall in any of them, and do you think it affects how you work at all? Because sometimes I wonder if the reasons for doing a PhD really matter, in the grand scheme of things. If you are putting in the work, do your motivations really make a difference?  A completed PhD dissertation, done for the right or wrong reasons, is a completed PhD dissertation. Right?

“A completed PhD dissertation, done for the right or wrong reasons, is a completed Phd dissertation”

A PhD is balanced with so many other demands in our lives. If you are me, these include young children, a rising cost of living, and the constant pull of exciting opportunities “out there”. And then I have to wonder if my personal motivation, the intrinsic pull towards knowledge, is going to be enough?