When I started my PhD, I decided to create an ongoing note on my phone to document my reflections on navigating academic life and things I've learned. Here they are.
Notes from the first year of my PhD
It’s behind you
Spice up your relationship with your previous achievements, give them some TLC, tell them you’re thinking of them. Sometimes your greatest success is behind you.
You’re only doing a PhD so you can be a student forever
If you get comments from people doing "real" 9-5 office jobs in "The City" about how you're "putting off life" by doing a PhD, you're not alone.
It’s okay to have nothing to say
After I started my PhD, I realised that it’s okay to admit you haven’t heard of X concept or X canonical text. This may sound obvious, but it wasn’t to me until I sat in my first PhD working group.
A blog on blog writing
A blog about my fear of blogging and the crippling anxiety I face as I convince myself, three sentences in, that nobody cares what I have to say.
The Unapologetic Academic 