Motivation!

Hello! My name is Lianne Stennett and I am the new Researcher Development Support Officer in the Researcher Environment Team at the University of Huddersfield.

One of my goals for Academic Writing Month is to write several blog posts and for the first one, I wanted to discuss motivation. Do you remember what your motivation was to undertake a PhD? Do you still have the same motivation, or has it changed? Do you ever stop to think about your motivation when everything is running smoothly? What about when you hit a bump in the road? (See the PhD Comic below by Jorge Cham).  For me, the motivation I had to undertake my PhD was always there in the background, but more often than not came to my aid when I hit a bump in the PhD road.

In my case, the desire started when I was 5 years old. I was watching a documentary with my parents and the presenter introduced a doctor to speak about the subject. I asked my parents why they would ask doctor to speak, mainly because my 5 year old self had only ever encountered medical doctors before and no one appeared to be sick on this TV show. My parents told me that this kind of doctor was like an expert. I didn’t ask any more about it but I remember thinking that I would like to be an expert. When I was about 9 years old, I remember asking my Mum about an acquaintance of hers who had recently passed away. She told me that the man had been a doctor of music. I was intrigued! I remembered the time 4 years previous when my parents had told me about these experts. As I was a bit older by this point, my Mum told me that I could be a doctor of any subject, but that would mean many years of university study. I was immediately hooked. I wasn’t quite sure at that age what I wanted to study, but the idea of being an expert (rather than appearing on TV) had definitely caught my attention.

Undertaking a PhD can be intense at the best of times, so why you may ask were these childhood fascinations important? For me, when I was having trouble analysing some data, or when a meeting with my supervisor didn’t go the way I wanted, or even when I was sobbing with anxiety and pressure near my submission date, I stopped, took a deep breath and asked myself why I wanted to do this. There were plenty of times along the way that I wanted to give up. Sometimes my motivations seemed so far removed and so irrelevant, but I couldn’t deny that I still had the desire to learn more and have a useful expertise that I could share.

As well as examining why I wanted to continue, other things I found helpful were envisioning the end result (calling myself Dr!), writing my goals and my vision down so I could refer to them when I needed to, breaking my larger goals down into smaller ones and using them to create plans (these included longer-term plans, weekly and sometimes daily to do lists), celebrating small victories like finishing a section or writing a certain number of words, and being kind to myself (spending time with friends, going for a walk in the fresh air, watching a film etc), even when there were setbacks.

Whatever your motivations are, whether they be recent or not, or even if they have changed along way, revisiting them can help you to clarify your sense of purpose, strengthen your resolve and give you the push you need to help you achieve your final goal.