In the second part of this two-part podcast, which is a continuation of last week’s episode on PhD students’ wellbeing, Sibyl Adam, student wellbeing adviser at the Student wellbeing service and Lorna street, a lecturer at the School of Geosciences discuss some of the practical difficulties in PhD life, such as isolation, cost of living crisis and the pandemic effect and how that can impact student well-being. This episode belongs to Podcast series: Student Wellbeing↗️.
‘going into an academic job is not for the faint hearted’
Sibyl suggests PhD students may be put off by going into academia by the stressful environment and may be prioritising their wellbeing in their career choices. They discuss the relationship between morale in the collective environment and personal wellbeing. The cost of living has also affected this – Sibyl reflects on a graph she saw that chartered the skyrocketing cost of living alongside the much smaller increase in PhD stipends.
They go on to discuss why PhD students struggle so much with isolation and loneliness. Lorna describes the long-lasting impact Covid has had on working cultures – issues with space and people getting into the habit of working from home.
Lorna also discusses PhDs being isolating experiences by their nature because of the individual aspect of research. Community and comradery are important for offsetting the impact of this isolation.
The doctoral training centre model also means there’s less connections between individual research. This differs from prior models of PhDs being associated with larger research projects. They discuss the significance of PhD students being seen as fellow members of staff as opposed to students, and how that relates to this feeling of isolation.
‘people are talking a lot about work from home culture, and to offset that, people being forced back into the office which doesn’t necessarily seem to be the answer’
Lorna highlights the importance of a nice office environment to foster connections between PhD students, as well as building up the informal research culture again after Covid.
‘You can’t separate off student wellbeing from what’s going on in the background’
Finally they close by highlighting the importance of people continuing to talk about wellbeing and having these conversations.
Timestamps:
(0:44) ‘going into an academic job is not for the faint hearted’
(03:48) impact of disruptions, cost of living, isolation, pandemic
(10:43) Implications of transition to Doctoral training centre model from prior models of PhDs being associated with larger research projects
(14:26) Going forward what can be done to offset PhD student isolation
Sibyl Adam is a Student Wellbeing adviser at the Student Wellbeing Service. Lorna Street is a lecturer at the School of Geosciences.
Episode produced and edited by:
Sylvia Joshua Western
Sylvia is currently doing her PhD in Clinical Education at The University of Edinburgh and has a Master’s degree in Clinical Education. Her PhD research explores test-wise behaviours in Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) context. Coming from a dental background, she enjoys learning about and researching clinical assessments. She works part-time as a PhD intern at Teaching Matters, the University’s largest blog and podcast platform through Employ.ed scheme at the Institute of Academic Development.
Twitter/X: @sylviawestern↗️
