Perspectives on Starting a PhD in a Pandemic

By the Sussex Hive Scholars

Starting a PhD, at the best of times, is an overwhelming combination of literature reviews, training sessions, orienting oneself to the start of a long academic commitment and, if we're lucky, the excitement of finally pursuing a passion project. But starting a PhD in a pandemic offers a whole set of emotional, technological and logistical upheavals. We, the Sussex Research Hive, aim to foster a research community at Sussex across disciplines, and recently wrote about how we successfully moved our community building and engagement completely online due to Covid-19. 

The needs of the doctoral community have changed throughout the pandemic. For the most part, PhD students have settled into their virtual or blended routines. As time has gone on, there has been an acceptance of our new situation and most Doctoral Researchers have had the time to figure out what works best for them. Some of the community support has devolved into individual schools of study, and we have been thrilled to see different departments taking the lead in creating online communities for their students and groups of Doctoral Researchers creating smaller online support networks supported by our Doctoral School.

For PhD students who started in September, mid-pandemic, the experience is likely to be quite different. They are not adapting to a new way of working, but rather carving out their own PhD path within the confines of Covid-19 and the virtual, blended and physically distanced University environment.

This term, we asked some of our new researchers how starting a PhD during these odd circumstances has been for them:

Maryam Rajid writes, "I think my experience is fairly similar to other students. Trying to find continuous motivation has been difficult when every other aspect of life and relationships is enduring stress related to Covid-19. I think it feels much harder now to find motivation with news of Covid-19 spikes in rates and the uncertainty of another lockdown. Sometimes it feels I should be doing other things for my community to help during this hard time rather than focusing on my PhD. But then there is also the guilt of not doing enough for my PhD."

An anonymous first year PhD says, "Setting up online meetings with my supervisors has been a breeze!"

While the experience of starting a PhD has been both up and down, it was good to know there were at least some positives to the situation. The Hive, from the beginning of this term, has continued to offer an academic and a social community. Some of our events have included a weekly writing session with peers (called 'Breakfast Serial Writing'), a monthly Tea and Talk session, and we have a Halloween movie night coming up to destress from the first half of term! While some researchers are seeking the support of smaller groups, clustered around their disciplines, we believe it is important to continue to foster interdisciplinary and support connections across schools of study. One of our aims as a Scholar has been to promote interdisciplinary links in the Doctoral Community and our regular groups and Slack channel continue to facilitate this. 

In response to our community support groups online, Robert Dickinson, another PhD student, says:

“I think the biggest challenge is that PhDs are known to be isolating in the best of times, and Covid-19 really adds to that. The positive is all the ways that this has brought the PhD community together in response, and the virtual writing groups and remote support that has really been needed since long before the pandemic.”

We realise that Covid-19 has come with its set of hurdles, but we'd like to hope that the online presence of our events can prove to be more geographically inclusive and accessible for researchers with different needs! We've definitely seen a rise in the number of researchers who join us for these events and we hope to continue to offer old and new researchers a virtual community through this strange time.