It’s been two years since I submitted my DPhil (PhD) thesis. It was – I do not overstate this – the happiest day of my life. But when I remember the last stretch, and its unrelenting endlessness, and the unwavering resources of energy, commitment, and faith that it demanded, I think of the very particular question that acquaintances would ask.
‘Have you finished yet?’
This question – voiced in meetings, cafés, and supermarkets – came in two flavours.
The first was pert, chirpy, and casual. In its off-handed delivery there was little sense of what ‘finishing’ meant, nor the fact that ‘finishing’ was inevitably tied to conceiving and making and rigorously intellectually-triangulating, and then doubting and re-conceiving and re-making and re-triangulating (repeat) an enormous work of scholarship, pretty much written in my own blood.
Willingly. But still: blood.
Mostly, the question was well-meant, its utterer blissfully unaware of its potency. Occasionally, it was clear to me that the asker knew that my answer would be ‘no’, and that what they wanted was to make me feel small, even if only in some fleeting way whose motivation was unaccounted for even to themselves.
Either way, I felt tired when I heard it. There was the work and then there was managing others’ impressions of the work, and towards the end, I only wanted to do one of these.
There was a second way the question emerged, however, and this one was tentative, quiet. The asker might screw up their face as if in pre-emptive apology. I sensed that they were already allowing me to shake my head ruefully, and say, ‘no, not yet,’ if that’s what I had to say.
When I did, they nodded in response. My answer was not unexpected, and yet, we mutually understood, this was nothing to do with me. It was simply about the gargantuan nature of the task, and how it typically ends not with a bang, but with a whimper, and how that whimpering phase is – well – long.
(Until, that is, the real end, when there will be a really banging and absolutely insane couple of weeks where you don’t sleep or eat. But that’s for another time.)
Usually, this questioner had completed something big themselves: a PhD, a book, a project – some multi-year edifice of skill and doggedness, vision and courage. The subtext of their inquiry was ‘It will end. I promise.’ There was still a gulf between us, because after all, I was on one side and they were on the other, but they were smiling back at me and I could just about see that there might be a rope bridge from here to there, and that helped.
It helped even more when people didn’t ask the question, when instead they simply said, ‘you’re doing so well,’ and ‘how are you?’ and ‘let me know when it’s done and I’ll take you out for lunch.’
So say those things, friends and acquaintances and loved ones of PhD students who are in the end times but not quite at the end. Swallow ‘have you finished yet?’.
And then: buy their coffee, or their groceries. Their funding has run out. They will appreciate it.
Kitty Wheater 