The Mad Adventures of a Newly-Minted Doctor: Making the Most of your PhD and Navigating the Wilderness

What does it feel like to actually finish a PhD? What happens next? And how can you prepare for it during your doctorate? Dr Adam James Smith is an early career researcher working at The University of Sheffield and York St John University. He's also fought off professional wrestlers during a poetry reading in Soho. In this blog Adam shares some of his adventures - and offers advice to new PhD students.

It was as I thrown, hard, onto the sticky beer-soaked floor of a cellar bar in Soho, clutching to my breast a new edition of eighteenth-century radical poetry as baying crowds of London’s customarily affable liberal intelligentsia watched the near-naked wrestler begin his slow advance towards me, that I wondered why it is that I do the what I do, and perhaps more pressingly, what it is that I actually do.

I finished my PhD in August 2014, besting a Viva that I’d felt at times over the preceding few years may never come.

My examiners (each of them firm, interrogative, but above all else friendly and encouraging) asked me to step out of the room whilst they made their decision. I returned a few minutes later, sweaty-palmed and empty; physically, emotionally and intellectually exhausted.

Feeling hollow, like I was dispassionately watching events from across the corridor, I stepped into the office. My internal examiner took me by the hand, shook it, and beaming said ‘Welcome to the club, Dr Smith.’

I’d done it. Finally, I’d done it. But what had I done?

Still dazed and drained I later that evening found myself sat in a pub not far from the department, surrounded by friends who all seemed to have lots more energy I did. All I wanted to do was sleep, forever.

I vividly remember someone that night patting me on the back and laughing: ‘You’ve made it’, they said ‘Welcome to the wilderness years.’

I’d known the wilderness was on the horizon: that period for many Early Career Scholars during which there are far more applicants that there are academic positions and you still don’t have the publications or experience to land such a position even if post gets advertised.

I was ready, I had irons in the fire. And, actually, two years on I think my time in the wilderness has gone a lot smoother than it could have done.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have secured a steady flow of part-time teaching across two-institutions, I’ve been employed to carry out scoping projects at different archives on behalf of the University of Sheffield, I’ve been involved in designing and delivered three iterations of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and this past year I’ve been a Cultural Engagement Fellow on an AHRC project very close to my own areas of research.

I’ve enjoyed pretty much continuous employment, I’ve met some fascinating people, I’ve found myself in some crazy situations and, although I’ve had to work very hard to pull it all off, I’ve had a great time along the way.

How did I manage to weave such a rich tapestry during my time in the wilderness? Well, I honestly think it has a lot to do with what I got up to during my PhD.

In fact, it probably goes back further than that, to my undergraduate degree. I know I sound like a prospectus when I say this, but I really enjoyed my degree.

Prior to going to University I don’t think I’d really met many people who shared my interests, and suddenly I was surrounded by 20,000 of them. What is more, I’d grown up in a village where the closest cinema was 12 miles away. Suddenly there were things happening all of the time; activities, projects, volunteering, research. I loved it and I couldn’t get enough.

Returning for the MA was a big decision for me, aged 21, spending all the money I’d saved working part-time throughout the degree in one lump sum on my tuition fees. But I was happy to do it because I didn’t want the story to end. I felt tremendously privileged to have the time and opportunity to spend another year in this environment and I had no idea whether or not I would get to come back again to do the PhD.

In fact, a recurring feature of my time in higher education, both as a student and an employee, is the feeling that every semester could be my last. What if I can’t get to the next stage? What if they don’t accept me? What if I fail? What if there aren’t any jobs?

As a result, I tried to do absolutely everything. I went to every research seminar, signed up for every extra session, went to every event or performance on the calendar.

When I did eventually return for the PhD, though I toned it down a little, I had a similar philosophy. And I found that every time I did something that thing led to further things. You have to be careful because you don’t want to drift too far from the task at hand, the business of writing 80,000-words of original research, but sometimes it pays to follow things up.

I also don’t necessarily think research and writing need be distinct from public engagement and collaboration. Certainly, I genuinely believe that there is nothing better than a second opinion or someway of viewing your own ideas critically from a different perspective. That, I suspect, is what real public engagement is really all about.

For instance, in the final month of my PhD Arts Enterprise at the University of Sheffield held a competition for postgraduates to pitch an idea for a short film. The winners would have the opportunity to work with film-maker Gemma Thorpe to develop the idea into a real film.

I was twiddling my thumbs, halfway between submission and viva, and I’ve always wanted to learn more about film-making. I pitched an idea for a short film that would juxtapose the 18th-century coffee house (the setting for much of the primary material I worked on during my PhD) with those found on the 21st-century high street.

I was amazed when it was picked up and passed onto Gemma. Over the following weeks we made the film.

When I was told that I could post the finished film wherever I liked I decided to write an accompanying blog-post for my own website to flesh out the ideas behind the film which is, actually, fairly abstract.

Accompanied by the film the post was quickly disseminated on social media and within a few months versions of it had appeared in The Guardian, The Conversation and Sheffield’s own Now Then magazine. It was also incorporated into the Literature of the English Country House MOOC.

Suddenly, what I’d always considered to be a relatively obscure piece of eighteenth-century literary research was being discussed by hundreds of people, all coming at it from different angles (not to mention the profoundly helpful conversations I had with Gemma as we developed the film).

Eventually I was even contacted by a social enterprise from Sheffield called Twin Café who hoped to organise a charity event around a screening of the film. That event, titled ‘Coffee, Culture and Conversation in the Eighteenth-Century’, went onto sell out and raise over £1000 for local charities.

And all that happened just because I took a punt and entered that conversation. There is nothing more gratifying than seeing how far an idea can go.

In fact, the ideas behind the recent AHRC Cultural Engagement Project I’ve been working on recently with Dr Hamish Mathison took me all the way to that scuffle with a wrestler below a bar in Soho.

The project itself was investigating poetry printed in Sheffield’s radical press at the end of the eighteenth century.

As part of this we created digital and physical anthologies of these poems, attributed to Sheffield residents writing in the 1790s. The print anthology,Poetry, Conspiracy and Radicalism in Sheffield, was designed and published by a new press called Spirit Duplicator.

This was their fourth book. Other books in their range cover such topics as the lost city of Atlantis, how to survive a zombie attack, and the history of wrestling in 20th-century Britain.

As the Press’s first year in print was drawing to a close they decided to hold a celebration in a bar in Soho. And the director of the Press, Matthew Cheeseman, hoped to put together a show that would represent all aspects of their eclectic range of titles.

I was invited to give a brief talk about the poems in our collection, only to be interrupted as I began to read one of the poems by young wrestling legend Ryvasious Ryan Lee.

Ryan emerged from the cellar wearing only his wrestling pants, demanding that he be allowed to read a poem instead of me. A brief scuffle ensued, he took the book from me and began reading a poem, only for two more wrestlers to step out of the crowd, beat him to a pulp, and read a poem themselves. You can view a poor-quality video of the smack-down here.

Afterwards someone approached me and said they’d had a lovely evening, stressing that they had ‘never seen an academic do anything like that before.’ No, I thought, neither have I. But during that evening I had more conversations about Sheffield’s eighteenth-century radical press than I had since the project began, with a lively and enthusiastic audience.

So, some light bruising aside, I felt it had been worthwhile. I did, however, stagger back to my accommodation wondering: Why do I do it, and what do I do?

When my friend told me the night after my Viva that I was entering the wilderness I’d assumed we were talking about a wilderness of financial insecurity or of poorly defined employment status.

I worked really hard to make sure those things didn’t stop me in the short-term. But now, two years later, I realised the wilderness is an existential one. The wilderness is the world outside. Two years after being a student: what am I for? What am I working for if not another certificate?

Well, for me, public engagement is a large part of it.

I want to make a lasting contribution to my chosen field of academic research and I want to continue to deliver a high standard of teaching and make a mark on the next generation, but I also want to share my findings with as many people as possible; for my benefit as much as theirs. I don’t trust myself to remain objective, for that I need a second opinion. For that, I need a conversation.