Fern* is a doctoral researcher whose structured, part-time, online PhD has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and has taken 10 years to complete. Here is her story in her own words.

*Fern chose her own pseudonym

The PhD has positively affected my wellbeing but there have been dips. I started the PhD journey in 2015, and it was impacted quite a lot by the pandemic. When I started, you met once a year in person for a few days which was absolutely invaluable for being able to work online because I had made connections with people face to face. I’m not great if I only see people online. Obviously, that was impacted during the pandemic when it all became online. There was a definite shift pre- and post-pandemic. I think things became a lot more intense.

The first two years were taught online and I absolutely loved it. I thought it was absolutely brilliant because it was really structured and you had weekly online discussion to contribute to and I really enjoyed that because I had more contact with people. Moving into the pure research element required greater independence in online learning, and I think it demanded greater self-awareness to appreciate what your needs are, as a learner and as a human being, which for me required time and challenged me to grow as a learner and as a person.

When I had the face-to-face opportunities, I really made the most of them. I would speak to everybody that I needed to speak to and make connections with people, so that in the future I could go back to them online with an established relationship. I came up to campus in between my yearly academies for the first few years to meet staff. I definitely went out of my way to sort of meet people face to face. I don’t know if I would have finished it had I not done that.

Peers that I kept in touch with got me through to my confirmation panel. I made a friendship with one of my peer groups. There were seven of us in my cohort and I’m the only one that was left after about two years. But I stayed in touch with somebody else and we supported each other and that was invaluable. It was just one other person, but she was invaluable to me and she kept me going. I kept her going, it was mutual support. I was thinking about giving up at one point and my supervisor suggested that I had coaching and it was absolutely brilliant and that really helped me. I got an opportunity to work as a research assistant. And again, doing that, I met other people who were doing doctorates in that university. So again, their support was invaluable. There are things that I did that I don’t think I would have finished had I not done those things because I got support around me.

I have a very, very strong group of female friends and they were a very strong support group of people who believed in me. There were times when I just thought, ‘Oh my God, I can’t keep doing this.’ And there were times when I had to completely prioritise the PhD, so I had to not see some of my friends, and it became a double-edged sword. I was conscious that I need to see people for support. But there was a point where I thought, ‘I can’t see anybody anymore. I just need to focus on this and get this done.’ I had to be quite selective about who I spent time with and who I spoke to, which on one level was isolating, but on another level I just had to do it to get it done. Other people knowing what you’re going through was absolutely a necessity.

I get messages in dreams, and I had a couple of dreams in the last six months that told me I only had 40 days to finish it. And I didn’t. I actually had a few months to finish it, but it completely panicked me. But it got me going and I knew I had to really focus on it. I thought, ‘This is it now, if I don’t focus now, I’m not going to finish this.’ And then another dream that I had a few months before I submitted basically told me that I was going to finish it, and that really helped me.

My meetings with a librarian were really invaluable. I met up with them online very regularly as I was doing the systematic review. They were really supportive and they guided me through the process. I was seeing them really quite regularly. Maybe once every couple of weeks or once a month. It really, really helped. My supervisor suggested I made an appointment with academic support for my writing. They were absolutely brilliant as well. Basically, if I was suggested anything, I did it. I took advantage. But it was all done online, through Teams. And because I was using arts-based research methods, I sought out external courses, which were all online. Again, that was due to the pandemic. But it made a lot of courses much more accessible, rather than it being face to face, as I could then do them online from wherever I was. I also did a summer writing group. That was really helpful because I developed a relationship with one of the other participants and we kept going beyond our organised group. And that’s probably one of the key things, making relations with people to share support. There was a meeting maybe once a month. It would be about your blocks around writing and helping you move forward with the writing. And then you’d have sessions in between where you could initiate writing sessions with other people. Me and another girl would meet online at 9am, maybe for an hour four times a week. But if we didn’t turn up or the other person didn’t turn up, you’d still log online and you’d still write. It just got you to write. And then once you established that in the morning, you just keep going.

I had quite a lot of supervisory changes as well. I’ve basically had six pairings of supervisors. That was quite a challenge. I’d like to have had less supervisors. I thinking having a change of supervisory teams was quite impeding. And honestly, I found the appraisal system quite pointless. It was more of a tick box thing to really protect the supervisors, rather than a system that really helped me. I had to request a change of supervisor at one point because I just wasn’t connecting with them. And I found that quite challenging. I think it took me a while to appreciate that they were having a negative impact on me. You almost need somebody outside of the supervisory relationship to have an honest conversation with. That’s the role that the coach took when I spoke to them. It was an objective person outside of the supervisory relationship where I could speak honestly with them about what was going on. I think if that had been a natural part of the structure, that would have been really helpful. And I had an experience towards the end where I didn’t feel supported by my supervisors and I just had to carry on regardless. And that’s when I really dug into my support from friends.

Overall, I would say it’s been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It’s a positive experience, despite all the blips. I think that’s part of life and part of the journey is overcoming whatever comes your way. I think, generally, I would recommend it to somebody else, but I think the main thing is that people don’t realise what they’re taking on when they start. So many people dropped out at the beginning because they didn’t realise how much of a challenge it would be.