PhD blog: 45
Graham Foster
- March 2010.
The story so far… Having completed two years of unfunded PhD studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, Graham is at last in receipt of finance for his research into 'evidence of a literary fin de siècle in the millennial fictions of David Foster Wallace and Douglas Coupland'.
Why doing a PhD requires additional effort to get off one’s behind:
I’m a skinny bugger. At least that’s how I used to describe myself. Since beginning a PhD I have noticed the distressing plumpification of my body, a worrying addition of shadowed jowls around my face and an unhealthy lack of any physical vitality. That’s why, at the tail end of last year, I did something I swore never ever to do and used a small portion of my funding to join a gym (at a reasonable student rate, of course).
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve not turned into one of those creepy, boorish men who talk about deltoids and radials and ‘guns’, smother their distended chests with bronzing lotion and wear those vests that have such low scoop necks that nipples are permanently visible. No, I am a staunch gym-hater, an anti-jock if you will. But necessity is a cruel mistress and I have been driven to a place where spandex is deemed not just appropriate, but normal.
Solitary and sedentary
A PhD, you see, is solitary and sedentary work. When not sitting at a computer, you are sitting reading, or sitting making notes, or maybe lying on a bed reading, or eating chocolate biscuits while reading. Basically, doing a PhD is being a couch potato, albeit one that is slightly more respected than the other sort of couch potato (i.e. the actual couch potato). It’s also bad that most of the things I enjoy in my ‘down time’ (watching films, playing video games, non-PhD reading, listening to music and so on) also happen to be sedentary activities.
Around November last year, I reached a point where I was finding it difficult to concentrate, I had no energy, I wasn’t sleeping, and I generally felt jolly upset with myself. Exercise, mainly on those elliptical training machines and on the squash court, has turned me into a different person. I have lost weight, my face has been de-jowled and I generally have more pep than my pre-gym self. It’s also a massive psychological boost to actually formulate some sort of non-PhD routine, to actually have somewhere far removed from the borders of my desk that I have to go to.
Refreshed and ready
This brings me to another thing I’ve realised: weekends are an important time for the PhD student. I have tried to organise something to do every weekend to get away from screens, work and the general weight of academia. I’ve taken up photography (badly) and have started to take trips to places in order to take photos and generally be out in the world.
Last week it was Llandudno, the coming weekend Bristol, after that who knows. But after coming back from these expeditions I feel much more refreshed and more ready to continue work. Getting fat while slavishly operating your computer may seem like the only way to do a PhD, but I’ve found otherwise.
Please note: this has been quite the epiphany for me, but in all likelihood you’re reading it and thinking, ‘Duh, I could have told you that!’ I’m slower on the uptake than the average person.
Read my previous blogs
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