0-100: Reflecting on the first 6 months of a PhD

Day 1: a blank piece of paper, a mind full of ideas and a dream.

Day 168: a scribbled on piece of paper, a mind focused on ideas and a dream.

In comparison to the last few years of my life, 2019 has flown by. I think a lot of it has to do with being busy, particularly in the last months or so but I also think a lot of it has been things falling into place – slowly but surely.

I’ve been seeing my counselor since 2015 and he made an irrefutable point last time I saw him: for so long, my life has been like a set of scales. They’ve been weighed down on the side of negativity and for so long, I kept picking things up and putting them on the positive side but the scales were still favoured poorly. Until this year. This year, I finally pulled so many negative things and put them on the positive side that the scales have tipped. Ever since I got back from Africa, I’ve felt the need to return to get back to that point in my life where I was so happy and content and now I am, without having to be there. Home is certainly where the heart is, and I can’t wait to go back but finding peace in Canberra has been a long slog.

I’m now officially 6 months into my PhD, and I have quite a bit to show for it. I have a full literature review (which needs some edits) and the beginnings of a paper. I have all the data to start a GIS analysis. I feel behind at the moment, as I haven’t worked much in the last month except for preparing for the semester. On that note, I’m now teaching and I gave my first lecture. It was thrilling and I loved every moment of it – and I think the audience enjoyed it too. I surprised myself with how well I did in terms of remembering everything and actually being engaging. I haven’t had nerves like that in a long time – I was tapping my leg before I went in which is an anxious tick I haven’t had since I started my medication.

I now also give tutorial and demonstrate practical workshops. The best part? I demonstrate for the two courses that absolutely made up my mind about being in conservation. And I get to get out into the field. And I get paid for it all! How did I even get here? I’m glad I somehow made it.

Since starting this PhD, I’ve achieved a lot. I’ve made wonderful new friends, I’ve found a new respect for myself, I’ve renewed my love of elephants and of Africa, I’ve starting accepting myself.

I’ve also narrowed down my research, while expanding it at the same time. I have the first chapter of it drafted, and I have a plan for the remaining 4 chapters. I have three incredible supervisors and willing collaborators across Africa. There is still so much work to do, and feeling behind makes me anxious but I’m moving forward, I’m not stagnant anymore. I’m slowly reintroducing things into my life – I now work several hours a week (I somehow have 5 jobs – not including my PhD), I’m rejoining the gym, I’m cooking again. Things are positive.

My whole life, I’ve felt a weight on my shoulders of the universe. Like if I have too many good things, or too much positivity – it will balance out by knocking me back, hard with bad things. And up until now, that’s been the case. I know it’s because I project, but it’s honestly terrifying being this happy and positive but I’m working on trying to enjoy it. The fact is that if something bad happens, I’ve never been in a better place to tackle it. There’s been a shift in my scales, but also in my perception and I owe a lot of that to my PhD. Being surrounded by like minded people, being challenged everyday and being revered and treated as an equal by peers and professors alike, and having students learn from me is a feeling I never thought I could have. I’ve never been happier to be single, I’ve never been happier to live alone, and I’ve never been happier to tackle problems that have been plaguing my for my entire life. I finally have room and spoons to tackle my issues with my brother and father, and to address my rape – I finally have room to become a powerful fucking woman.

From where I was a year ago, 5 years ago…10 years ago – look at me now? I’m starting to love myself and once I can do that – I am unstoppable, just like every woman (@Lizzo = you absolute queen).

Yesterday on my way to class, I was coming up the stairs and someone stopped and said “hey, Rachael” – I didn’t recognise him, I assumed he knew me from my lecture earlier this week but then it hit me – it was someone from high school. He never played a big role in anything that happened there, actually he was reasonably nice to me but he wasn’t great to other people I knew. He’s come to ANU to do a masters, and I’m his teacher – I’ve gone full circle. It threw me around a bit, it was completely unexpected but it gave me the confidence to see how far I have come and how far behind I have left toxic people and things.

It might not be forever, but I’m glad it is now. I don’t know if it can get better, maybe it will but I’m content. My life is at 100 right now – I’m writing a thesis/paper, running 2 tutorials a week, usually a practical per week and also working at Questacon one night a week. It’s a lot, but I wouldn’t have been able to do this a year ago, I was at zero and unable to pick up any traction.

In conclusion, PhDs work for some and they don’t for others. For me, so far, it’s working and I’m very grateful for it. Stick around for a blog on my real research soon.

Lessons from a quarter century

I went to the doctor yesterday to renew my prescription of Mirtazapine (and also got my flu shot – please do this if you haven’t already). There’s a really damaging stigma around taking medication, especially for mental health, but no one would hesitate in popping pills if it was for a physical ailment like back pain or nausea. In actual fact, my anxiety is a physical ailment. The neurotransmitters in my brain are not balanced, primarily serotonin. Paired with an inability to produce enough dopamine and oxytocin, it is disabling. Therefore, I am unapologetic and unashamed about needing medication to help.

Anyway, he asked me how long I had been on it now and I realised that it has been a year which is hard to believe. The place I was in a year ago, I see now, was very dark and scary if I’m being honest. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t going out, I wasn’t talking to anyone and I was on auto-pilot. It was around this time last year that I had the worst breakdown that I’ve ever had. I literally fell to my knees and cried in the pedestrian strip of the main street of Canberra, definitely not my best moment. Even after I started taking the medication, my life felt beige for months.

In the last few weeks, I’ve come to realise how very far I have come. I have come across a feeling of fulfillment that I didn’t even think I was craving until I got it. The only way I can put it is the feeling of coming out of a cocoon as a butterfly, truly. The last few years have been so difficult and while there are still tests and things will never be 100%, at the moment they feel better than ever. I have people in my life who fulfill me – with their strength, with their boldness, with their care and unconditional love and with themselves as a whole. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel the need to be seeking a partner. I feel like I am enough for myself and in fact, a partner may be a hindrance. For the first time, I’m beginning to see that I am enough and I have worth to myself and to people around me. Suddenly my body image isn’t holding me back, my mental health isn’t holding me back and neither is my past trauma – they’re actually paving the way to confidence. I spent so long trying to get on this road and now I’m here, I barely even noticed.

This week, I turned 25. When I was younger, I thought I’d be partnered up, maybe with a flat or house and most importantly, a dog. While I still desperately want a dog, the others are negligible. I thought I’d be working, building a career – I never in a thousand worlds thought I would be studying to become a Doctor, let alone a Doctor of Elephants. It wasn’t the plan but I’m grateful for what it has become. At 25, I have a string of impressive achievements but most importantly I survived when, for so long, it didn’t seem like I would be to be honest I didn’t want to.

At 25, I’m on medication to help my anxiety and depression and it’s taken a year but I’ve stabilised so now I can grow. At 25, I am doing a Doctor of Philosophy on elephants at the top university in Australia. At 25, I’m finding happiness in myself. So, whether it’s 1 year or 25 – growth is perpetual. Fulfillment is a matter of perspective and what society tells you is happiness probably isn’t right because you define what makes you happy. At 25, I’m in my prime and unabashedly proud of it:

Know thy enemy – even if it’s yourself

I’ve really struggled to come up with a coherent blog post this week. A lot has happened and it’s been a bit of a roller coaster. I’ve wanted to write about self acceptance, about facing your demons, about being self reflective and growth, about being kind to yourself, about millennial burnout and about elephants. I’ve written drafts and deleted them, and I’ve had this title saved for two weeks – and I couldn’t work out why it was so difficult. I finally had a “eureka” moment on my walk from work to the office. In the middle of the Venn Diagram of everything I’ve mentioned is self awareness.

Self awareness is something I have truly struggled with in all aspects of my life. Not in a physical way, having anxiety means that I am always aware of every aspect of my physical body. But mentally, that’s a whole different story. It truly has been an arduous journey for me to try and painstakingly pick apart my behaviour and compartmentalise it as depression, anxiety, exhaustion, stress, physical health or a genuine response that requires addressing. I joke about it a lot but when I’m tired (often), I play a game called “is it depression, iron deficiency or lack of sleep?” and I’ve become the reigning champion. When your symptoms are things like being tired, it can be hard to tell apart why. Normally it’s no/little sleep = tired but when you tie your mental and physical health together, it’s not black and white.

Trying to work out why you’re angry or upset is also not straight forward. I’m a very sensitive person, I generally take a lot to heart that I shouldn’t. I am aware that I also value peoples opinion of me too highly, and I struggle to stand up to my friends in circumstances where I should. It’s something that I’ve worked on a lot and now, I will actively force myself to take time to think about what I’m feeling before I commit to responding or posting or whatever. It takes a lot of energy.

I also have to be self aware in the way I view myself. Where I see my friends and family as idols and can exhibit the highest level of body positivity and sex positivity towards them. When I turn the mirror on myself I am cruel, I am harsh and I hold myself to impossible standards imposed by patriarchal society which I so quickly dismiss for the people, especially women, around me but not myself. This one has been hard to circumnavigate, and I’m still trying to find an easy route around those thoughts but I’m getting better. This year; I dyed my hair back to it’s natural colour, I got a tattoo, I’ve stopped wearing makeup unless I want to, I’ve been wearing bolder colours, I’ve kept my hair short and accepted the curls in all their unruly glory. They’re little steps but they’re important. A big part of this has also been pushing myself to realise that I have issues with men stemming from all kinds of trauma, but that I genuinely no not need a man to be complete. I do not want children, I want career that takes me all over the world and I savour my independence – a partner does not fit into that equation right now, and may never. If that makes me selfish, then so be it – I’ve earned it.

I have been seeing my counsellor, Andrew, since 2015 when my Dad was first diagnosed with lung cancer. I never thought I would still be seeing him, and I only saw him out of desperation. He is a) a man, and b) a man. I don’t trust men, I don’t open up to them but we work very well together. I didn’t see Andrew for a year last year as I wasn’t a student but when we caught up, I had to reflect on the year and I have come a damn far way from when I started. He said it, he told me how well I’m doing and he told me I’m being hard on myself. He has always been a pusher for quashing negative thoughts and not using humour as a defense mechanism (another thing I’m working on). He pushes me to face my demons instead of letting them swirl around me.

I think the overarching theme for me now is resolving trauma but also not getting pulled down by the world around. Whether it’s prohibited abortions in America, climate change, violence, hate – I find it gets to me a lot but I need to push on. For the elephants, I need to push on. No matter how well I’m doing personally, the world feels like it’s weighing down my back burner. This is something that I absolutely need to work on.

At the end of the day, you are often your own enemy. And I find that when I’m in a dark place, I think I’ve been buried and there’s no way out but what if I’ve actually been planted? What if instead, I should grow and blossom? Plants can grow anywhere (except my Chain of Pearls, what the fuck do u want from me p l s) – concrete, cliff sides, underwater. So it shouldn’t really matter what I’ve been buried in; depression, anxiety, burnout, stress – I can still bloom. It might take longer for some things, and the flowers might just be little dandelions but if I grow, then I’ve still overcome whatever has buried me.

So, what has the last fortnight been? A little bit of everything. A little bit of depression – from exhaustion and because my brain doesn’t do the serotonin. A little bit of anxiety – because it’s with me, always. A little bit of burnout – I’ve lost a lot of sleep and I’ve been working/studying a lot. But; a little bit of happiness – I pat 3 dogs this week. A little bit of strength – I got through a grueling counselling session trying to unpack my traumatic relationship with my brother. A little bit of excitement – I got the go ahead to start writing my first paper and going back to Africa is on the cards for next year. And a little bit of growth – a lot of my plants have loved the cooler weather and have all started having growth spurts and I think I’ve learned to balance my love for them, but also I realise that I have grown from a scared, timid, self-conscious youngen to a strong, sassy, outspoken, driven, passionate woman. There will always be room to keep growing from a crack in concrete to a pot to a garden bed to a garden and then into a forest (with elephants in it, obviously). There is no limit to growth but there is only one way forward, whether it’s a slow process, an almost stagnant process or if it’s at the speed of an obnoxious weed – we’re all growing at our own pace. Know thy enemy and fight with your strongest weapon – growth.

All’s well in love and war

Just a short post this week, it’s been a bit of a roller coaster and it’s not likely to slow down soon. I think it’s probably time to address my mental health in a more public forum.

At the beginning of last week, I watched in horror as my facebook was flooded with tributes to an incredible young woman that I knew growing up. Belinda and I played soccer together and I was very close to her boyfriend at the time. Belinda had MS, and I will not say she suffered MS because she strode tall and powerful in the face of a debilitating disease. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t be able to tell. I haven’t spoken to Belinda in many years, since high school really but her death came as a shock. The whole accident was the visceral definition of “bad things happen to good people”, and she left behind a life she built for herself from the ground up.

Watching people around her mourning so deeply and writing commemorations and tributes that attest to the incredible person she was had me crying and laughing and overall, sobering up. The message at the end of all the messages was that life is short, and it is. Just a few days before, I was in a mild depressive episode as I remembered my Dad on the third anniversary of his death. I’m not willing to talk about him yet, I have a lot to work through before I can even get my head around it. But he was only 62 years old. Life is short and anything can happen and I know that I feel invincible, like it couldn’t happen to me. I guess it’s a deflective mechanism. It’s hard to say as a scientist, but I really truly believe in guardian angels. I was brought up in a Jewish household where there is no hell but there is heaven and I can feel it in me that my grandmother, grandfather and great uncle and aunt watch over me. They keep me safe and I think I have to have faith in that to stay sane, otherwise anxiety could honestly take over my life and I won’t let it.

I also had to cancel a date this week because of a combination of this depressive slump I’m in but also because my weight has got the better of my self confidence. I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life, it has always been my weakness. I did manage to lose 20kg across 2016/2017 but then I hit rock bottom and got put on wonderful medication that make my life a lot easier but has caused me to gain it all back and more. In recent times, I’ve been a big pusher of anti-fat shaming and fat-phobia, I pride myself on body positivity and I truly believe that all bodies deserve love. But I still can’t apply it to myself. Being in this mindset is depressing and it takes all my spoons but sometimes it’s inevitable. When you’ve been told your whole like that the worst thing you can be is fat, having fat-phobic slurs slung at you, when you’ve been conditioned to associate fat with bad – it can be hard to move past.

The state of the world right now is dark and scary, everything is on fire and no one is safe and millennial burnout is overwhelming me right now as well.

And finally, I saw Avengers Endgame. I had so much riding on this movie that I was anxious about seeing it, for the first time in my life I was anxious about seeing a movie. I have a feeling my anxiety is getting worse but I don’t have the spoons to consider that. I cried a lot in Avengers, as I’m sure many did. But I think I cried for a plethora of reasons – not just the plot. When I was a kid, I used to read comic books. I was fat, I had glasses, I had braces and I was going through some top shelf shit both at school and at home. I remember one day, I was reading a Captain America comic alone at lunch and a boy and his gang came up, ripped it from my hands and tore it to shreds and told me I had to read comics to make up friends because I didn’t have any. When I got home, I threw out all my comics in tears. It wasn’t until I finished high school and was convinced to go and see the first Avengers in 2012 with two friends in my gap year that I got back on that ship. I fly that fan flag high and full of pride now, but it’s been a journey. A lot has happened to me in the last 7 years – births, deaths, highs, lows and only now has it seemed to have turned into a positive light. It has officially been a year since I self harmed, and a year since I considered ending my own life. Through all the ups and downs, all the highs and lows – the Avengers were always a high. The feeling of redemption, character development, the happy endings were always something to look forward to. When my Dad first got diagnosed with lung cancer and was given 24 hours to 2 months to live (he lasted 12 months), my friend got me a life sized cut out of Captain America because I absolutely adore Chris Evans and he’s come with me through a lot since 2015. Now I have Captain America paraphernalia everywhere and I love it. So, seeing the last 7 years come to an end was also retrospective for me to see how far I’ve come from watching the Avengers on opening night in a tiny cinema in a tiny town to being a PhD student studying elephant conservation in Australia’s capital city. Having it all rehashed and having the memories flood back was a bit too much for me. Ultimately – no spoilers – I think that despite a few flaws, they did exceedingly well. And honestly, I will never get over Chris Evans. If he’s reading this – please, I just wanna touch your butt.

Ok, a little longer than intended. But, it goes to show that even if your life is in tip top shape (which I feel lucky enough to say mine is close to being), it’s a delicate balance. As a result of everything, I feel behind on my PhD but actually I have two papers ready to write which is pretty advanced for 3 months in! And I’m going to Melbourne next week. Things will look up. There has been a lot of love recently, but also what feels like a lot of war. I’ve come an awful long way from the angry, broken puzzle of a girl who threw all her comics out. I’m literally surrounded by friends, goodness knows why, and so much love and so much support. Another person who has helped me through a lot over the last 7 years has been Passenger, and I have too much to say about him but this has been my song for the last fortnight so I recommend giving it a listen.

Here’s a little photo of my happiest, safest and most peaceful place on this earth that’s kept me anchored as well.

After all, if we all light up we can scare away the dark.

Do you still like elephants? Then you should do a PhD.

This week I’m giving a presentation to some young undergraduate students about honours and the transition to a PhD and have had to have been very self reflective about my journey.

Honours was not easy for me in any sense. I had extreme difficulty with my primary supervisor (sexism, lack of responsibility, inexperience, outright rudeness, unnecessary and non-constructive criticism, no respect – the list goes on), I lost my Dad to cancer the year that I started organising it, my project was initially rejected while I was backpacking in Europe alone, I was left to process enormous sets of data on my own and also try and deal with life as well. My mental health really took a toll on me. BUT from honours – I gained some of my closest friends, I got to live my dream in Africa and I got to think about elephants every second of every day and I knew that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

When I finished honours, I didn’t have it in me anymore – the motivation, the strength or the will to continue with academia. My once bright dream of doing a PhD was irreparably tarnished by my experience of honours and I decided to take time off to try and get a job in conservation in Africa instead. In what ended up being a fortuitous chance – I was instead offered a job at my university in science recruitment and outreach. I say fortuitous because I was close to my secondary supervisor who truly was a Knight in Shining Armour during my research. When I reached out to catch up with him, we sat in his office where I had spent so many hours crying, pacing in exasperation and brainstorming about how to save the elephants. He is no regular man – he is patient, he is humble, he is a brilliant scientist and above all else he is empathetic and compassionate. He has always known how to reel me in, how to calm me down and how to support me. In fact, an opinion piece in Nature encapsulates it well. Above all else though, we share a passion for Africa. He made it clear at the end of honours that he wanted me to do a PhD on elephants, which I brushed off. Now, having started a PhD, I’m glad he not only pushed me to do it but offered to Chair it. He is the sole reason I stayed at ANU and in Australia.

What I will never forget is after we’d caught up on our personal lives he stared me dead in the eyes and said “Rachael, after everything that happened during honours – do you still love elephants?”, and I laughed…”Of course I do, they are how I got through honours” to which he bluntly replied “well then, you should do a PhD. People don’t go through what you went through and still love their research topic at the end. You have what it takes and you should do it.” I went away from that meeting with those words bouncing around the corners of my mind for months. I had time to heal from what happened and knew I could go into it trusting him and trusting myself and so I signed up for a PhD.

Already, the PhD journey has been so vastly different to honours that I’m surprised at how I perceived them to be in any way similar. I have two supervisors that are both brilliant experts in their field but who still have the time to guide and help me while teaching, researching, managing teams and have a life. I have freedom that I’ve never had – in the hours I work, in the topics I research, in the direction I take and I’m surrounded by like-minded people. I get to think about elephants and Africa all day, and my conversations with my panel have transitioned from being told what to do and what I’ve done wrong to discussing what to do and where we go next in a group. Turns out a respect-based power dynamic suits me much better than having a benevolent dictator – who’d have thunk it? Suddenly the world doesn’t seem so bad, and the idea of a PhD has lost the black cloud hanging over it in my mind.

And at the end of the day – I still like elephants.