Writing (and finishing!) a PhD: A Personal Story

When I was 21, I started a doctoral programme at Oxford in classical Greek literature. I had graduated from Cambridge with a BA in classics only three months earlier and had scarcely had time to think about what I wanted to research. I intended to write a thesis about ancient comedy and tragedy, but had no much more specific design than that. It took the best part of a year for the outlines of my project to take shape and a further six months for the entire structure to be satisfactorily defined. The money from my British Academy studentship ran out 18 months later. I then started work as a casual lecturer and tutor for several colleges in the university, and for two years juggled a heavy workload, my doctoral research and a precarious income. Somewhat disillusioned, I drifted out of university and began a career in the civil service. The thesis was about two-thirds done. 

In my teenage years, I had wanted only two things: to be a priest and an academic, and preferably both together. My aspiration to become a priest had dropped away. But even after leaving Oxford, I remained determined to finish my DPhil. In the early nineties, the new British Library had not yet opened. After a day in the department, I often hurried across town to the British Museum, where the old reading room offered a uniquely tranquil, uniquely cerebral atmosphere for study. The Institute of Classical Studies on Gordon Square was another haunt. But when I was posted to Brussels in 1998, my research habits lapsed. Several years would pass before I had the time and motive to look again at my uncompleted thesis. But by then, other researchers and scholars had occupied the field, making my own project unviable.

I guess many people would have given up at that point. But by 2007, I had acquired an MA in modern Greek and a passion for the poetry and novels of Yannis Ritsos. I determined to embark on my second PhD, applying the lessons of my professional career and correcting for the mistakes I had made twenty years earlier. This time, the project was conceived from the outset as part-time research, and I knew more or less exactly what I wanted to do before the clock started. King’s College London gave me six years to do the research with a further two to complete the writing-up. I had a good plan and the will to implement it.

When I set off in January 2008, I was now a senior civil servant: the success of my studies would, therefore, depend on my ability to weave the research into the complex and demanding pattern of my working days. In the first five years, I held difficult jobs at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs: first, I ran the exotic disease programme; then the private office of the Secretary of State; and finally, the project to transfer the canals and rivers of British Waterways into a new charity. But throughout all this period, I was also working hard on my thesis. 

My working pattern became a fixed habit: on most days of the working-week, I was up at 4.30 in the morning, to do two hours’ research before getting myself ready to cycle into work. This was particularly hard in the dark winter months and I often recalled the psalmist’s words: ‘It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep’. I was usually too tired to do more than half an hour or so in the evenings, so the weekends were crucial. But this habitual dedication of time worked well, and the thesis steadily grew. 

Submitting the thesis for exam: January 2019

From January 2013, the Foreign Office posted me to Athens. For four years, the university suspended my status as a student. This was a mark of faith on the university’s part: I guess that some there will have feared that I would never return to my studies. But my time in Athens strengthened my convictions about the value of my project and deepened my pool of knowledge about Ritsos. In December 2016, back once more in London, I picked up the threads. This time, however, my full-time job and my studies proved incompatible. I parted company with the diplomatic service in August 2017, with the intention of finding some sort of part-time employment alongside my studies. 

Within a few months, I had a first draft of the entire thesis, a contract with a Greek shipping company as a member of its board of directors, and an unpaid role as chair of a small charity, the Anglo-Hellenic League. My gamble had paid off. It took me some eight further months to revise and present the thesis, which I did in January of this year. In May, I defended it successfully in front of my examiners, and I was awarded the PhD on 1 June. Job done.

Successful defence of the thesis: 15 May 2019
with my examiners, Dr Philokyprou and Prof Tziovas 

All in all, it took me just over 30 years to acquire a doctorate: much more than half my life so far. And the PhD was eventually awarded in a different discipline from the one I envisaged in 1988 and by a different university, after a 25-year career that I had never originally intended (but which proved astonishingly rich and varied in its opportunities). Along the way, I have acquired a full repertoire of life lessons and an astonishing range of debts: to academics, work-colleagues, friends and family. My husband has throughout been supremely understanding, tolerant and supportive. My two academic supervisors, Prof. Ricks and Prof. Beaton have been pillars of strength, great counsel, constant sources of inspiration.

The thesis as deposited - June 2019

My path has been a circuitous and at times uncertain one. But the determination I had at the age of 21, while subjected to many stresses, challenges and set-backs over the years, remained fundamentally strong. Coming to believe in myself and developing the resilience and flexibility to find a way around my own weaknesses and failures have been key to completion of my second doctoral project. One should never give up. But appropriate tactics have to be evolved and mastered, to prevent determination from sliding into mere stubbornness. Ultimately, the patient accumulation of expertise and knowledge pays off.

Of course, a completed PhD is only the start of projects to come, and I have several in mind. In the years ahead, I plan to be writing and publishing about Ritsos in particular, and Greece more generally. These are my passions, and I hope that what I have to say will be of interest!

John

Job done