Yeah me gots to laugh. If I don’t laugh then I’ll probably become depressed, and hay nah, that ain’t gonna happen.

So I’m in Durban for a few days consulting with my supervisor. Landed at the airport armed with two bags of books, laptop, tablet, bare minimum clothes, wearing jeans and red chucks – no stilettos even though I’m here for work! 😱🤔😔 Hmmmmn …something about my mood and this trip.

Gosh, this PhD journey is a tough one but thankfully now and then, I’m blessed to be able to see the funny side. Like today, supervisor asked me why haven’t I finalised Chapter 1. This confused me. See I wrote Chapter 1, sent it to her over a year ago. She looked at it, made a few comments and basically told me it was crap. I made a few changes and I agreed, it actually was crap. Very crap. So I parked it temporarily.

The work wasn’t focused. In my defence, who on earth actually really knows that they doing when they start anything? (This is why I feel for my own masters students. Being a student myself makes me a little bit more compassionate when I work with them).

Anyway, I went on with rest of the work, have drafts of the next few chapters. I figured I would go back to Chapter 1 once I knew what I was doing

Today she says there was nothing significantly wrong with Chapter 1… I is “like what?” (There is though – biggish crater sized issues with my Chapter 1 – which I can fix but only now that I am more focussed and have a better understanding of the problem). But I was certainly not going to correct her. ….Smile and wave Private… Just smile and wave. 🐧 🐧 🐧 🐧 👋🏾 👋🏾

Fellow students out there, keep your faith. Don’t lose heart. Academia is an upside down place. There is a reason we started this in the first place. Sometimes, most of the time on the journey we forget why we even started – well I do. It’s a comfort though knowing that besides being challenging, ‘learning’ is an interesting space to be in. Some days enjoyable and stimulating, some days sad and downright bitterly lonely – especially if you doing research. But every now and then a day pops up which is just so incredibly funny. Cheers to those days!!!

.***I actually realised as I wrote that, it probably sounds odd to people not so familiar with research. Generally, as is the nature with research, you learning all the time. So when you start whatever you write will look like rubbish by the time you finish your final chapter. This because you know more after actually doing some research! But you need to start somewhere. Sounds oxymoronic I know. My truth though there is no person that I know, who did not go back to make changes to their Chapter 1 after they finished writing the final chapter. It’s just the way it is.