PhD Fun & Malibu

Sitting across from me in his tiny office, my supervisor tells me,

-       “You should have fun! Your PhD should be fun!”

Is it appropriate to laugh, I wonder? I don’t really understand what part of being told “your writing is shit” in every meeting for three years, or “let’s throw it away and start again”, is supposed to be fun.

-       “Don’t you get it? You got to that stage where you know what you want to say and you should just have fun with it!”

Can I be honest? No, I don’t get it.  But I feel that even if I was to shout at him that I don’t get it, that my ego is not big enough to cope with constant criticism for three years, bounce back and start having fun, he would not understand it. I keep quiet and smile.  I do eventually break the awkward silence by saying something about my inability to write in English.

-       “Your writing has improved so much during the last three years. Can’t you see it?”

I tell him that I can see it, but that the improvement needed was so great that anything I did would have been considered a massive improvement.  He agrees. What I don’t tell him is that he never told me that my writing was any good.  Then again, as far as I am aware compliments have never been his forte. But isn’t the constant criticism meant to be character building? Maybe one day I will find myself thanking him for all the immensely hard supervisory meetings where he made me feel too foreign to every write a PhD in English.

Maybe I need hand holding, and that is not what supervisors are there for. Maybe I need positive re-enforcement, and that is childish. Maybe I just need to grow the fuck up. Eventually, as I stare at the blank page, trying to conjure up another chapter, it occurs to me…the solution to all “growing-up” problems? A bottle of Malibu. I wonder when this PhD is going to turn me into an alcoholic…