Look what came in the mail! This is a proud proud moment for me. I am finally 100% done with Napier. I am done being a traditional student. I am now an adult.

The first thing I did was buy a very fancy frame. I’m out of wall space in my flat, so I am still working out where it will go, but I am quite chuffed with my achievement.

I am hoping that means that I will find my writing motivation and turn that 176 pages into a 10 page article that can be published for the rest of the academic world to read. One of the worst parts of working in academia is the need to publish in order for people to see you as an expert. To be of worth to a university as a member of staff you need to publish cutting edge research in top rated journals and bring in a lot of money through grants that can then be written up in top rated journals. This goes against all of my natural instincts. All I want to do is help staff and students feel more confident about assessment and feedback (although being famous in academia for doing it wouldn’t be all bad).

The problem is, the PhD has killed my soul. The process breaks you down and makes you feel like shite about yourself and when you are done, you feel like a shell of yourself who can’t write to save your life….and then you enter a job that expects you to write high quality research articles like they are tweets. On top of that, my research was completely ground breaking, but now people are starting to publish in the area, which means I am no longer unique, or have a real chance to make a name for myself in the field.

This job sucks sometimes.

I’m hoping that my diploma sitting in front of me can remind me that I have something worth publishing, and get me motivated to start writing again. I could also do with a few more sunny days so I could possibly go and write outside without the internet and bad reality TV to distract me.