So I couldn’t sleep earlier. Had a couple of things on my mind. I’ve just managed to get two tickets for the HSBC Rugby Sevens finals in Cape Town on the 10th… and good tickets at that, but I can’t go because I already have tickets for Majozi at Kirstenbosch. Also I’ve been to Sevens twice before so I’m feeling kinda meh about it anyway. While tossing and turning I decided to rather go to Majozi and donate the rugby tickets to my kids’ school to raffle off at their Food Fair happening on the 1st December.

Then I grappled with thoughts regarding one of my M students who is rather battling at the moment. She is making progress but very slowly. Her writing isn’t always coherent. I think the thoughts and ideas are in her head, but she battles to articulate them academically. That’s something I think all postgrad students – including myself, can relate to. So typically after reviewing just a few paragraphs, I’ll often send her work back to her to rewrite, after having made some changes myself but then eventually deciding it’s actually is her job – since she’s going to get awarded with the Masters Degree afterall.

I feel for her though. It’s an uncomfortable struggle because it’s been almost three years now and she still hasn’t hit the sweet spot. I think there is still hope. I firmly believe just a few more steps and it will come together for her, however I also think she is losing faith. The truth is, there is nothing I can do about that. It’s a fact of life, a philosophical stance I just started adopting but should have a long time ago actually…. sometimes things are just out of one’s control. It’s better to let it go. She has to decide to motivate herself. This is not my monkey to carry, so I am not going to try to hold on or control it.

So then I just tossed and turned thinking about nothing in particular for another few minutes before deciding bugger this, I might as well just get up and work for a bit. My own work has also been progressing – also slowly – but steadily. The end goal has increasingly been coming into focus. The past few weeks I’ve had really solid ideas, and this week it felt to me as if I made ‘first contact’ with what the final product of my work should look like.

I’ve been collecting all the bits and pieces, so tonight just before I attempted to go to bed the first time I printed a process flow of the pharmaceutical manfacturing process so that I could map my thoughts directly onto that printed page later. I’m glad I did, because as I sat down earlier I literally scribbled all the bits and pieces of information I had onto this page, and then used coloured pens to connect my thoughts. It was then that I started seeing what my model is going to look like 😍.

My supervisor will more than likely want to string me from my toes for openly blogging about my research findings, let alone posting this picture – but I’ll take my chances because I’m feeling rather stoked. And I’m pretty darn sure this makes very little sense to anyone but me in this very rudimentary format. I’m just so proud and happy it actually finally seems like ‘something’ that can work! Loads of work still ahead but let’s take this moment and say ‘Three cheers to perseverance’ Hip Hip hurray. Hip hip hurray ….and the last one Hurray! ☯️👏🏾🥂🍾

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.