Reflecting on the First Year of my Pandemic PhD

It’s nearly a year on from when I first started my four-year PhD and I wanted to take this time to reflect on my journey so far. Starting a PhD is daunting and difficult at the best of times.

After all, you are finding your way, learning about your topic, searching for the knowledge gaps, and working out how to answer those important research questions. At the same time, you’re also getting to grips with a new university, new people, new techniques, and a whole new environment that you’ve not experienced before. Throw a pandemic into the mix and you’ve got another big challenge, learning all the above without leaving your home!

Approaching second year

As I approach the start of my second year and as restrictions ease up around the UK, it’s only now that I can look back on my experience so far and appreciate the difficulties. Last September when I first started my PhD, COVID-19 restricted us to our homes and I could only work at my computer all day every day. I was reading up on my PhD topic, writing literature reviews and configuring some hypotheses to answer the gaps I had highlighted from the literature.

I was unable to visit campus, meet fellow new students, technicians, other colleagues and importantly, my supervisors. Despite this, Microsoft Teams proved a very useful resource to connect with them regularly and start to form a relationship. In fact, I still haven’t met them all in person, but I feel very supported and that good relationships have been made.

“You are not alone”

Not being able to meet students in person or speak to technicians about certain techniques and practices was a difficult challenge that could only really get better once restrictions eased. Don’t get me wrong, there are tasks at the start of a PhD that would be the same, pandemic or not, such as the literature review. But the lack of face-to-face contact really slowed things down and highlighted feelings of isolation – so, if you’re reading this and you too have started (or are starting) a PhD during a time when the pandemic is still not quite over, you are not alone. These feelings are real, and they are valid.

Looking forward to the present moment, there are many things that have changed. Firstly, I can go onto campus and meet other students, speak to the right people for help with my project, and generally get more involved in campus life – like joining an exercise club!

The time that I spent at home reading and writing for months on end really isn’t how a PhD should start and I can see that now. Of course, I made sure to be as productive as I could in that time by planning the stages of my PhD research, keeping on top of literature write ups, and planning individual experiments with enough detail of day-to-day tasks so that I could hit the ground running when access to campus could be approved as restrictions eased.

Making the most of campus life

Currently, my schedule is much more varied. Some weeks I’ll be carrying out practical work and experiments, while other weeks I’ll be analysing results, reading and writing up, which is everything that I had wanted and envisaged from a PhD.

Despite the challenges I have faced with starting my PhD in a pandemic, I am still so thrilled to be studying in this field, I love my research and what route it is taking (which is so much clearer to me now, a year in), and I can’t wait to continue working on this for the next few years.

If there was one thing that I would recommend from my experience, it would be to get involved as much as you can with different groups and clubs, to make the most of campus life now that this is possible again, even if this is out of your comfort zone after a very difficult 18 months or so.