Another of my hidden talents

In which I uncover yet another eternal life lesson

Last week a PhD student came to me for advice.

Usually I rebuff PhD students, especially my own, but Marcia was clearly extremely agitated. Also, she was semi-famous in the department. Marcia's supervisor Dr. Rancid had been bragging that she was far and away the best new PhD student we'd had for years, and I was curious to talk to her. Maybe I could convince her to work for me instead?

I directed her to my delightful discussion corner — a pleasant sofa, coffee table and two relaxing chairs. I sat in one of the chairs and kindly allowed her the full luxury of the sofa. I expected her to compliment me on my cozy arrangement, or ask me to tell the fascinating story of how I wrangled such excellent furniture for a lowly academic office, but she just sat on the very edge of the sofa and wrung her hands. That's how agitated she was.

“How can I help you?” I asked.

Her left leg started to vibrate, and she leaned hard on it to make it stop, and then looked desperately to the left and then to the right, and finally blurted out, “I don't think I can do this.”

I understand that many people feel that way when they start a conversation with me. I tried to think of something reassuring to say, but, well, I refer you to the previous sentence. I just stared at her blankly and waited. I wondered if that made her feel even more uncomfortable? Would it help if I took out my phone and did a bit of scrolling? I was about to give that a try when she spoke again.

“I think I should quit my PhD.”

“Oh no!” I said. I leaned towards her hopefully. “Is it your supervisor?”

She sat up straight so quickly that I leaped back in my chair in alarm and may also have yelped.

“No! No! He's fine! He's wonderful!” (I hope she was too distracted to notice my disappointment.) “It's me. I have no idea what I'm doing.”

I tried again. “Well, it really is the supervisor's job to provide guidance in the first six months...”

“No!” She was quite insistent. You almost had to wonder what the guy had done to brainwash her. “It's the other students.”

“Ah, jealousy...”

“Oh no, they're all lovely.”

I found that hard to believe. I had seen those students, although admittedly only from a safe distance. You would be waiting a long time indeed before you heard me describe them as “lovely”.

She continued, “They've all been very nice, but they're so stressed. They don't know what to do to be a good PhD student.”

“Seriously?” I scoffed. “Do a bunch of good research and write it up in some good papers. It's hardly a secret.”

Her face took on a stricken look. I recognised it well, because my dog used to do the same thing, for long minutes at a time, before my wife explained that I should scratch him behind the ears. Fortunately she also explained that I should not try the same thing with people.

“It's not that easy!” she cried. “Some people say that you need to work through text books and old research papers before you can do any new research.”

“Yes, definitely,” I said.

“But other people say that if you wait until you properly understand everything you'll never get started.”

“Oh yes, that's also true.” I was about to add, sagely, that it was a fine balance, but she interrupted me.

“My supervisor says that it's a fine balance.”

I allowed myself a hollow laugh. “What a stupid thing to say! That's hardly useful.”

“And other people say that you should ignore what your supervisor says, because otherwise you'll never get a reputation for being innovative. But how can I do that, when I don't know anything yet, and he's the expert?”

Aside from her childish faith in her supervisor, she made a lot of good points. I assume there were many more of them, but at that point I stopped listening. I had drifted into a reverie about my own PhD. After all, I had exactly the same anxieties when I started. How did I resolve them?

I remember my PhD entirely in contrast to all of the PhD students I have worked with since. In other words: I was disciplined and hard working. I had a clear focus on what I wanted to achieve, and excluded all else. I did not turn up late to any meetings with my supervisor, or cancel them at the last minute, or turn up just to say that I had been completely inactive since the last meeting because I just didn't feel in the mood. In particular, I didn't complain about how I was mis-treated or ignored or I deserved more attention from my supervisor, except when I was screwing everything up and then deserved less attention from my supervisor.

But as I sat there, floating away on Marcia's stream of anxious outpourings, specific memories rose up to the surface — painful memories. Like the five weeks I spent every waking moment playing Final Fantasy, until one of my supervisor's other students let me know that they had overheard him in the department office asking about the official procedures to expel a PhD student. Or the time I burst into my supervisor's office in a fit of rage and even though I couldn't look him in the eye and spent the next several minutes glaring resolutely at the floor, I nonetheless delivered a long breathless sobbing rant about how it was an extreme injustice that the completion of my PhD was contingent on my actually performing at least one correct calculation, until I finally did look up and realised that the office was empty. Two minutes later he came back from the bathroom, and I meekly asked, once again, why nothing I had tried worked.

I'm pretty sure that there were happier memories from later in my PhD, but I didn't get to those because Marcia had stopped.

Uh oh. Had she asked me something?

“What's wrong?” I said.

She didn't say anything. She just stood up from the sofa. I had no idea what to do, so I stood up as well. I was utterly bemused when she stepped over to me and gave me a hug, and then stepped back and said, “Thank you.” She smiled and said it again. “Thank you. For listening, and for your sympathy.”

Huh?

Then she left the room.

It was only then that I realised that while I was reminiscing, tears had been rolling down my face.

I wiped them away. At first I was embarrassed. Then I was proud. Would Marcia have walked out of any other professor’s office with her problem solved? No way! Not even her beloved supervisor, Dr Rancid.

Now it was clear how I had learned to be a good PhD student. It was the same way I had just learned to be a good mentor and confidante. It was the eternal lesson of life: if you've got what it takes, you'll work it out!

I wonder when the next distressed student will knock on my door?