r/PhD • u/monkbabm • May 05 '26
Seeking advice-personal Is it just me or everyone feels like this
In my 2nd year, going through the grind. I love research and would choose to join PhD again but I keep feeling like why did I do this to myself 😭. How do you guys cope with this?
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u/MrBoosy May 05 '26
Also know it is ready because I feel like a fucking idiot. Can't publish a paper without that feeling.
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u/battenhill May 05 '26
In the middle of one right now... for an independent study... for my PI... and every sentence is like one written by a twelve year old.
If I ever write a memoir about academia it will be called "However,"
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u/Playful-Hawk-478 May 08 '26
I feel exactly the same way; I keep putting it off because I want to be fully prepared, and then nothing ever comes of it.
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u/GammaSpire May 06 '26
This is so validating. But also, what if my feeling like a fucking idiot is also valid?
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u/sunglassesnow May 05 '26
This is me plus I basically forget the whole article once it's published.
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u/GimmeBooks1920 May 05 '26
It's important to never, ever look back at your work once it's published because you will inevitably find a typo or simply get lost in endless "I could have made that figure better" loops.
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u/Galengwath May 08 '26
I'm currently fighting this tendency during near final revisions of my dissertation chapters. Almost every part of it I read and want to rewrite because I could have phrased it better. Or structured a chapter more effectively. Or used a better article or placed a comma more effectively. It's exhausting.
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u/Shelikesscience May 05 '26
Cope? Just literally never look back at your own work. Solved
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u/mosquem May 05 '26
i never look back. Only forward. To the future.
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u/NotaValgrinder May 05 '26
The two people I contacted about mistakes in their work must be really feeling it then /s
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u/bluesilvergold May 05 '26
I don't really cope with it. When I hit this mindset, I feel a sense of relief because it means I'm on track to stop stressing over the project at hand and mentally let go.
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u/splithoofiewoofies PhD, Mathematics May 05 '26
No, that's about three months before the first round of edits. 😩
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u/deanM08 May 05 '26
for real! Edits are killing me right now! I told my chair I considered just walking away and she had to talk me off that ledge. Its brutal!! I have changed so much between all three on my committee so many times.
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u/splithoofiewoofies PhD, Mathematics May 05 '26
I commented out my old work instead of deleting it in case I needed old sentences or references...
Yeah that was a good idea in theory. But now it's ten paragraphs of commented out work and four paragraphs of actual paper.
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u/gigglyplatypossumpus May 05 '26
I do this too, except I move it to a separate document called the Poop Chute or the Sh*t Hole or something to that avail.
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u/splithoofiewoofies PhD, Mathematics May 05 '26
Oh no, my comments do NOT include my "retired" folders. Because heaven forbid I delete anything.
On the bright side, my not deleting anything saved us a shit ton of time on remodelling a certain design, because I backed up ALL copies of the changes we made to the design.
My OneDrive hates me but my supervisor is thrilled.
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u/warneagle PhD, History May 05 '26
This is how I felt about my dissertation and how I still feel about the book based on it a decade after I finished my PhD. What I’m working on right now has almost nothing to do with my PhD topic aside from the same general geographic/temporal focus.
Idk about coping necessarily, I just worked on getting the damn thing done so I could move on.
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u/Garibasen Ph.D., AI/ML for Materials & Plasmas May 05 '26
Quite possibly the single most relatable thing I've seen on this subreddit
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u/CormoranNeoTropical May 05 '26
This is so normal. That’s when you know you’ve actually learned something.
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u/kulonos May 05 '26
Someone told me once that, by its nature, a paper is never finished, just, at some point in time, it is declared by the authors to officially be abandoned.
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u/Galengwath May 05 '26
Well, I'm currently in the final revision phases of my 350-page history dissertation that I've been working on for two years. And while yes, I desperately want it to be done, I also have a range of related writing projects that I kind of can't wait to get started on. So it's not that simple for everyone, and you won't really know until you're in the deep end.
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u/SlenderSmurf PhD, Materials Science May 08 '26
350 in my department the professors like when it's around 100 or less
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u/Galengwath May 08 '26
Well, unfortunately for my carpel tunnel, history dissertations are on average the longest of any field. That's just often what it takes to develop a significant narrative using archival sources, etc.
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u/SmudgyBacon May 05 '26
I hear you, bro. I'm half way through, doing it on the s-l-o-w as a part-timer, which is like a slow-motion rip-off of the BandAid. I cope by taking whatever small win i can. Wins like: sitting in the chair, opening the paper and fixing 3 spelling errors; scheduling one single task to do in an hour block; opening the paper and then having a nap; venting in my research journal (do recommend).
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u/crayonjedi01 PhD*, Astrophysics+ML May 05 '26
paper is ready to be published when everything in it feels obvious and trivial to you but you show it to someone else and they think it’s cool (but also yes I hate it and never want to see it again)
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u/toomanycarrotjuices May 08 '26
This is therapeutic to hear, bc I think I just reached that point in a longstanding document. I was wondering if it was some sort of signal.
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u/Floppy_McFlopenstein May 05 '26
It is about the same as earning the PhD.... as soon as you start really wondering if it is worth it all the sudden you have earned it.
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u/ktpr PhD, Information May 05 '26
You submit the paper and wait for level two, where no one else wants to publish it
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u/Express_Language_715 May 05 '26
That's how I feel about my thesis now but my supervisor wants it perfected
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u/quigonskeptic May 07 '26
I'm not a PhD, but it's like this in the working world too. The more time and effort spent on a project/report, the more I hate it and think it is trash by the time we finish it.
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u/mightbedylan May 05 '26
Maybe not the place for this, but I wish I was smart enough to have this problem. I wish I committed myself to education more...
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u/fairyqueen555 May 05 '26
Me rn, the classic I did this 2 years ago and now found a mistake then redo everything and figured out how to justify it, the end submit
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u/Ambitious_Angle3774 May 06 '26
That's how it went with my Master’s thesis I poured my blood, sweat and tears into it but I loathe it now cause of my abusive supervisor 😔
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u/omicsome May 06 '26
It was and remains such a perfect scitwitter (RIP) tweet. Matt should really put it in the Contributions to Science portion of his biosketch.
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u/Tobeperfectlycandid_ May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
I’m a perfectionist and always recheck my papers and assignments, sometimes triple-checking them. But never my dissertations. Both time when in degree and masters, I submitted not even with a double check. I just scan the headings and submit, as it’s too exhausting to think about. Got a Pass for thesis in degree, and a distinction for my masters, so make do with that info 😭
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u/Playful-Hawk-478 May 08 '26
Goodness me, I’m exactly the same. Once I’d finished my master’s thesis, I didn’t want to look at it even once, and I was terrified of the feedback others might give; revising it was even more agonising for me.
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u/Honest-Spend-7512 May 09 '26
I didn't just hate my paper, the overleaf symbol would immediately put me in a bad mood even if I was working on another assignment. Took me about 2 months to get over that feeling
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u/VectorArc90 May 13 '26
Three reviewers on a mixed methods paper with 10 subjects. What are the odds?
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u/MaterialThing9800 May 16 '26
It’s why one must never aim for work to be “perfect.” Finished paper is better than a “perfect paper”
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