Families
When we talk about a postgraduate community, we often focus solely on the university. For many of us this will be a primary place of interaction during our research journey. But it’s by no means the only place that we gain support. Family can, in many ways, be just as important in maintaining a healthy work-life balance during the stressful periods of research.
We have already spoken about how isolating postgraduate research can be and, for me, maintaining a connection with my family has been an important part of countering that. I’m originally from Yorkshire, which is still where my parents and siblings are based. As many who have studied in Aberystwyth will know it is not the most commutable place in the world (!!), and this is doubly so in relation to my own hometown. Getting back there is a day’s long journey from Aber and so isn’t something I can just do on a whim. This isn’t my first time living away from home; but my previous experience of being away from Yorkshire had been almost five years ago by the time I started my PhD – and over that time, Covid had locked me into my family home.
This wasn’t unpleasant and, certainly, it was better than the alternative of living alone in a studio flat. But it had got me used to living in a space where I always had people around me. Leaving that again was a scary prospect – but it was also just an inevitable part of moving on with my life. Still, I know that, personally, I need to maintain connection with my family. Regular calls with my parents help to keep me grounded and mandate actually talking to people on a regular basis. I find that these conversations, more than any other, help me to gain perspective on where I’m at. It can be very easy to lose sight of progress when you’re knee-deep in research with no end in sight. It’s also easy to lose sight of how much you’ve already achieved when you’re surrounded by people who have either long since passed where you are or who are on the exact same journey.
Maintaining my family relationships really helps me with two things: putting where I am in my PhD journey in a wider context, and seeing beyond the sometimes-myopic perspectives that being knee-deep in academia can generate.