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baratronThe Thing I was wittering about in my last post is an MPhil thesis. MPhil is the degree you can get if you haven't done enough original, high-level work for a PhD but have still done some. Essentially, it's the "I failed a PhD" qualification.
The reason it's an MPhil and not a PhD is because I was completely insane for vast amounts of the time from December 1997 until early 2003. I made one stupid decision which spiralled entirely out of control. Basically, I couldn't get a PhD place in the Chemistry department at Imperial because both of my potential supervisors were short of funding, so I had been going to do an MSc or MRes and then apply for a PhD the next year. But because my application went into a central pool, I got phoned up by a supervisor from the Space and Atmospheric Physics group who offered me "a chemistry project, really" to do with the modelling of soot aerosol pollution in aircraft contrails. My supervisors spoke to the guy and thought it was a good opportunity, and I thought "well, it's the same university I'm already at - what can go wrong?" and took it. Worst Mistake Of My Life.
Firstly, I was expected to teach myself all the relevant parts of a 4 year undergraduate physics degree in 2 months, with no help because the lectures wouldn't be until the spring term. Then I was expected to take a Met Office model with 50,000 lines of code and write new parts to add what we were trying to model (I am seriously not a programmer). I didn't fit into the research group socially, because everyone else went out for drinks most evenings to watch the football, and although I explained over and over again that I could not come to the bar because my asthma means I cannot breathe in a smoky environment, I was shunned. It was seen that if I had no interest in watching football with them, then I obviously did not want to be friends with them - when I'd have been happy to go to Starbucks with anyone, and even regularly brought back coffees for other people! No one wanted to talk about interesting things like books, music or science in free time, only bloody football and rugby and cricket. So none of the older postgrads or postdocs were willing to help with my problems.
I went to a conference in January 1998 and went down with glandular fever because I was stressed beyond belief. At the time I had no concept of spoon management (I don't think it had even been invented yet), and did not listen to the cues from my body. For some reason, I decided that it would look terrible on my CV if I dropped out after 3 months and went crawling back to Chemistry for a new project. I was already starting to spiral into depression and didn't even realise. Eventually, I got to the end of the first year and failed my Transfer Report (the thing needed to upgrade from an MPhil into a PhD). The head of department was horrified by the level I was working at, and I already felt like the most stupid person on the planet. Never mind that a person must be bloody clever to get 12 As at GCSE and 4 As at A-level and a 2:1 degree from Imperial College, I was convinced that I was a total fake, that I'd got onto the course under false pretenses. Of course, mental health provision at Imperial was nonexistant. (I'd already seen several doctors at the health centre during my undergraduate time, where I'd been told that if Prozac didn't help, I wasn't biochemically depressed, so it wasn't their problem. I went back because I was randomly falling asleep all over the place and putting on tons of weight, and instead of doing tests for illnesses that cause chronic fatigue they bitched at me about what I was eating - when I had no access to a kitchen to cook for myself!).
So yes, I was absolutely off my head with depression. I got dragged through the Transfer Report by doing everything my supervisor said even when I didn't understand it, and the rest of my time continued this badly. Also, I was suffering very badly from the expectation that I should be at college by 10am at the absolute latest (and didn't know about Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome at the time), which also caused me to randomly pass out with exhaustion on a regular basis. Between the depression and the lack of sleep I was finding it impossible to read books or papers about difficult physics stuff, because I'd keep falling asleep or losing concentration, so I'd read the same word over and over again and never get the whole sentence into my head at once. The more stressed I got, the worse my health got, and the worse my work got.
I should have taken a medical leave of absence, but I was certain by this point that I was permanently brain-damaged and would never regain my original level of intelligence. "Knowing" that my brain wasn't ever going to improve, I didn't see the point of taking time off because my brain would be as flabby and useless whenever I went back. The idea of talking to the college disabilities officer (who kicked major butt) did not occur to me until December 2002 when it was already almost too late.
By the time I left in 2001 at the end of the maximum four years, I had about two years worth of work and was supposed to be writing a thesis. I had no idea where to even start. Finally, I decided to try going to the doctor again, but this time went to one near my house instead of the college. I was extremely fortunate to get my current GP, but unmedicated depression for so many years meant it has taken a great deal of treatment from 2001 until now for my brain to be back to my original level of functioning.
I did not submit a PhD thesis because I couldn't. My supervisor came up with a "cunning" plan whereby I submitted my published papers in a bound format so that I'd fail on purpose and would get 12 months to write up and resubmit. This b0rked because he didn't adequately explain to the examiners what was "supposed" to be happening, and they were extremely offended by being asked to mark such incomplete & nonexistent work. So they failed me outright, I came out of the viva and tried to throw myself in front of buses. There were various options, but I decided to take whatever I could get.
Anyway. I finally went to the disabilities office and got sorted out, and was able to submit an MPhil thesis on 1st July 2003. I then waited an entire year before hearing anything back from the University of London, and the useless letter they sent said that I needed to submit a fully-bound copy of the thesis before they'd tell me the result from the examiners. I phoned up to ask if that meant I'd passed, and they said they couldn't tell me. So I have been procrastinating getting it done ever since, because I'm too afraid that I might have failed.
Completely fucked up, yes? Mmm.
The reason it's an MPhil and not a PhD is because I was completely insane for vast amounts of the time from December 1997 until early 2003. I made one stupid decision which spiralled entirely out of control. Basically, I couldn't get a PhD place in the Chemistry department at Imperial because both of my potential supervisors were short of funding, so I had been going to do an MSc or MRes and then apply for a PhD the next year. But because my application went into a central pool, I got phoned up by a supervisor from the Space and Atmospheric Physics group who offered me "a chemistry project, really" to do with the modelling of soot aerosol pollution in aircraft contrails. My supervisors spoke to the guy and thought it was a good opportunity, and I thought "well, it's the same university I'm already at - what can go wrong?" and took it. Worst Mistake Of My Life.
Firstly, I was expected to teach myself all the relevant parts of a 4 year undergraduate physics degree in 2 months, with no help because the lectures wouldn't be until the spring term. Then I was expected to take a Met Office model with 50,000 lines of code and write new parts to add what we were trying to model (I am seriously not a programmer). I didn't fit into the research group socially, because everyone else went out for drinks most evenings to watch the football, and although I explained over and over again that I could not come to the bar because my asthma means I cannot breathe in a smoky environment, I was shunned. It was seen that if I had no interest in watching football with them, then I obviously did not want to be friends with them - when I'd have been happy to go to Starbucks with anyone, and even regularly brought back coffees for other people! No one wanted to talk about interesting things like books, music or science in free time, only bloody football and rugby and cricket. So none of the older postgrads or postdocs were willing to help with my problems.
I went to a conference in January 1998 and went down with glandular fever because I was stressed beyond belief. At the time I had no concept of spoon management (I don't think it had even been invented yet), and did not listen to the cues from my body. For some reason, I decided that it would look terrible on my CV if I dropped out after 3 months and went crawling back to Chemistry for a new project. I was already starting to spiral into depression and didn't even realise. Eventually, I got to the end of the first year and failed my Transfer Report (the thing needed to upgrade from an MPhil into a PhD). The head of department was horrified by the level I was working at, and I already felt like the most stupid person on the planet. Never mind that a person must be bloody clever to get 12 As at GCSE and 4 As at A-level and a 2:1 degree from Imperial College, I was convinced that I was a total fake, that I'd got onto the course under false pretenses. Of course, mental health provision at Imperial was nonexistant. (I'd already seen several doctors at the health centre during my undergraduate time, where I'd been told that if Prozac didn't help, I wasn't biochemically depressed, so it wasn't their problem. I went back because I was randomly falling asleep all over the place and putting on tons of weight, and instead of doing tests for illnesses that cause chronic fatigue they bitched at me about what I was eating - when I had no access to a kitchen to cook for myself!).
So yes, I was absolutely off my head with depression. I got dragged through the Transfer Report by doing everything my supervisor said even when I didn't understand it, and the rest of my time continued this badly. Also, I was suffering very badly from the expectation that I should be at college by 10am at the absolute latest (and didn't know about Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome at the time), which also caused me to randomly pass out with exhaustion on a regular basis. Between the depression and the lack of sleep I was finding it impossible to read books or papers about difficult physics stuff, because I'd keep falling asleep or losing concentration, so I'd read the same word over and over again and never get the whole sentence into my head at once. The more stressed I got, the worse my health got, and the worse my work got.
I should have taken a medical leave of absence, but I was certain by this point that I was permanently brain-damaged and would never regain my original level of intelligence. "Knowing" that my brain wasn't ever going to improve, I didn't see the point of taking time off because my brain would be as flabby and useless whenever I went back. The idea of talking to the college disabilities officer (who kicked major butt) did not occur to me until December 2002 when it was already almost too late.
By the time I left in 2001 at the end of the maximum four years, I had about two years worth of work and was supposed to be writing a thesis. I had no idea where to even start. Finally, I decided to try going to the doctor again, but this time went to one near my house instead of the college. I was extremely fortunate to get my current GP, but unmedicated depression for so many years meant it has taken a great deal of treatment from 2001 until now for my brain to be back to my original level of functioning.
I did not submit a PhD thesis because I couldn't. My supervisor came up with a "cunning" plan whereby I submitted my published papers in a bound format so that I'd fail on purpose and would get 12 months to write up and resubmit. This b0rked because he didn't adequately explain to the examiners what was "supposed" to be happening, and they were extremely offended by being asked to mark such incomplete & nonexistent work. So they failed me outright, I came out of the viva and tried to throw myself in front of buses. There were various options, but I decided to take whatever I could get.
Anyway. I finally went to the disabilities office and got sorted out, and was able to submit an MPhil thesis on 1st July 2003. I then waited an entire year before hearing anything back from the University of London, and the useless letter they sent said that I needed to submit a fully-bound copy of the thesis before they'd tell me the result from the examiners. I phoned up to ask if that meant I'd passed, and they said they couldn't tell me. So I have been procrastinating getting it done ever since, because I'm too afraid that I might have failed.
Completely fucked up, yes? Mmm.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 06:39 pm (UTC)This is a really good post. Thank you! I'm going to eventually need to revisit similar sorts of issues myself, and it's good to have notes to compare.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-23 10:55 pm (UTC)I'm in a place of relative calm now, and it was... inspiring to see things I'd written in those older posts. On 11th December 2002 (http://baratron.livejournal.com/122475.html) I wrote: I am understanding stuff that I never understood in all the time I was officially at college, just because I have a (semi-) functioning brain now. [...] I said I was knackered at the start of this, but I'm only physically tired. Mentally, I'm supercharged. I feel passionate about what I'm doing. It makes sense: I can see why it's worth studying (something I never actually saw while I was a student). I am totally and utterly in love with chemistry in general and my branch of it in particular in a way I haven't been since the third year of my first degree (that would be 1997). I know for certain that even if I can't stay in research or if it proves to be genuinely bad for me to stay in research that I want to teach: I want to do a PGCE and teach chemistry in sixth-form or adult education. Illness of one sort of another has screwed up my life for too long - it's time to actually do something now. - and I did that. I didn't actually get the PGCE because teaching in schools was too incompatible with my health problems, but I've been tutoring chemistry for 20-40 hours a week for the past 4 years.
On 12th December 2002 (http://baratron.livejournal.com/129980.html) I wrote: I want closure from a difficult part of my life; I want to get things sorted out and move on. I am definitely not ruling out doing a PhD at some time later, but I want to get my career under way first. Perhaps I would be able to get my employer to fund or part-fund a PhD based on the work I go on to do. So, I don't have an employer to fund a PhD, but I'm now in a position to pay for it myself. And I'm pretty sure it's going to happen. Sure, even if I don't get ill again the absolute earliest it'll be finished is 2012, when I'll be 36 - but what does that matter?
Life is good. Mostly.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 04:40 pm (UTC)Also, *hug*, and you're wonderful to be getting through all this.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 08:31 pm (UTC)The one thing I wish is that I'd got from the person I was aged 21 to the person I am aged 31 without having gone through some of the intermediate shit. However, I am the person I am now because of having gone through it, so it's rather difficult to see how I could have got here without it.
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Date: 2008-05-24 08:07 am (UTC)I dont know anyone who had a good time doing their PhD at IC. I get the impression that it was far too hard on people and didnt support them enough.
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Date: 2008-05-25 07:33 pm (UTC)A lot of changes happened to me in 1997-8. I realised I was a) polyamorous and b) in love with my best friend (Richard). My ex dumped me while I had glandular fever and legally married someone else 3 months later. I found out by reading uk.people.gothic - instead of by my friends who'd been at the wedding telling me. I fell out with several of my previously very important friends due to this event, plus my increasing inability to sit in smoky bars. I was being President of the RCSU, which didn't help my relationship with my supervisor (who was very angry that I'd stood for election without consulting him - I'd been heavily involved with the Union for three years, and didn't know I was supposed to consult him!), and I fell out with some of my former friends at iCU due to various RCSU-related incidents, only some of which were my fault. Someone from my first degree committed suicide by jumping in front of a train at Putney Bridge (I got delayed by the "incident) and I realised I must have been one of the last people to speak to him - I'd no idea he was depressed. My parents' relationship degenerated to the point where my mother actually started divorce proceedings, before giving up because it would cost too much and she didn't like the solicitor (!).
It was a totally shitty year with the only highlight being the getting together with Richard. Had I been orders of magnitude less stubborn, I should have taken all the hints the universe was giving me. Sigh.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 07:38 pm (UTC)ha, I know I shouldnt say "me too", but "me too!".
It is a diabolical feeling to know that your ex doesnt even respect your feelings enough to tell you they are getitng married. It really does feel like a conspiracy against you.
hugs
no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 08:04 pm (UTC)Also, he sprung the wedding on our other friends - only one of them knew about it in advance. The rest just got invited because they'd gone to that particular Whitby gothic festival. I am sad that only one of them protested that he really hadn't any idea and that he would have told me if he'd realised it was going to be posted on a newsgroup - and then refused to go away even though I wasn't talking to him. That was
Is your ex still married? Mine's marriage lasted about 18 months, and I'm rather fond of his other ex now. He cheated on her just the same as he cheated on me, refused to consider ethical non-monogamy because he thought it was unethical (his "logic" for that broke both our brains), and we're both survivors of having been involved with him!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-26 06:08 pm (UTC)Also, I borrowed an interesting book about Asperger's and relationships for you from Ludy. Don't know if you've read it already. Seems relevant even without a formal diagnosis and even if you have some other autism spectrum thing going on. (A lot of the stuff would be directly applicable to pretty much any geek lacking in social skills - I know I would have loved for it to have existed, aged 18.)
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Date: 2008-05-25 08:24 pm (UTC)You get to Imperial, and suddenly you're not the brightest any more. Actually, you might not even be in the middle of the class, instead coasting around the bottom. You might need to work for the first time ever. It's not easy like school was, and you've never learned proper study skills because studying has always been so easy for you. You struggle and struggle - some people drop out after a few months, many after the first year. Some go to other universities to do the same subject, some to do something completely different, a few drop out completely. Some more drop out after the second year. A few make it all the way to the end without managing to graduate.
And many of the people who go to Imperial are geeks. They've never fitted in socially anywhere, and suddenly they're surrounded by people who are like them. But they still don't have any social skills, having had no opportunities to learn them. If you're a girl, suddenly you are inundated with offers, and you think the boys asking you are taking the piss (http://baratron.livejournal.com/331479.html). But not everyone at IC is a geek - there are all the sporty and trendy types too, like the girls who'd wear short skirts, makeup and high heels to lab and gave me odd looks all the time for dressing like an engineer. (In my book, lab clothing is safe, practical and comfortable. Short skirts and makeup are for nightclubs.) The geek to non-geek social hierarchy is possibly even worse than in the real world, unless you're studying one of the subjects that only appeals to the seriously nerdy.
Also, you're still a young adult most probably living away from home for the first time. So in addition to all those other problems, you have all the usual budgeting for yourself, cooking for yourself, keeping yourself clean and tidy, getting to the damn lectures problems common to all students. And those things can be serious issues even without feeling that you're the most stupid person in your year group (but you can't possibly admit to that because then "they"'ll throw you out).
So is it any wonder that so many Imperial students go crazy? And when the mental health support consists of the health centre (who only knew about Prozac, and said if it didn't work you weren't biochemically depressed), the counselling service (who were excellent at getting me to blame all my problems on my parents/upbringing, and appalling at getting me to grow up and sort my life out), and the disabilities office (which kicks ass - but if you don't already identify as disabled, nor realise that bad mental health is a disability, you won't ever go there!), you're completely screwed. So people drink and smoke too much, get into drugs, have ridiculous amounts of promiscuous sex, self-harm, slit their wrists in the bath and throw themselves off the top of Linstead Hall, or in front of trains on the Underground. Instead of getting help and getting through it :/
Yes, this makes me extremely angry - can you tell?!
no subject
Date: 2008-05-26 07:28 am (UTC)Luckily I didnt do any of that - but I looking back on it now, after being treated for depression I can recognise that during the second year of college I definitely was depressed. In fact the causes were probably most of what you describe above.
There was no one there who could have spotted that I was having problems and so no one suggested that I see a counsellor.
Luckily I only had that one problem - and could work through it.
It was the recent episode where - like yours - several life changing events happened at the same time!
"ridiculous amounts of promiscuous sex"? I should be so lucky.
Anyway, this was meant to be a collection of "I know something about how you feel" comments.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-26 06:16 pm (UTC)The boy was bisexual and gave lots of guys their first (and only) homosexual experience. Again, he got an awful reputation, got beaten up quite badly by a guy he flirted with (and possibly gave a blow job to - I never quite heard the full story on that one), and spent quite a lot of days in bed, by himself, crying. He dropped out at the end of the first year after a fairly major suicide attempt. I have no idea if he got himself sorted out, or even if he's still alive - but I miss him, because he was something of a kindred spirit.
It's just so sad and frustrating, because life skills lessons and "these are all the things that could go wrong" lessons, and personal tutors who were all experienced in mental health and could spot a student who was failing to come to college because they were depressed and couldn't cope, and a decent mental health support network would have saved these people's degrees. I was ridiculously lucky that I was already in touch with the disabled students' office for physical impairment reasons, otherwise I might not have graduated either - certainly not with the grade I ultimately got.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-27 10:44 am (UTC)If I knew then what I know now, I would have made a formal complaint.
Another thing (more general) that has occurred to me is how long it takes to deal with depression. I've found that workplaces can be pretty understanding, especially at first, but after a while they expect medication to be some kind of magic wand cure, which it really isn't. That's especially hard to deal with, if work is one of the problems you are dealing with (and that includes getting on with coworkers, which is really important I've found). But for it to take years (with peaks and troughs of coping) is not unusual, and during those times when coping is hardest, it's also usually hardest to see that there is a problem even.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-24 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-25 07:58 pm (UTC)The current version of me (4.0) is orders of magnitude saner than the version then (2.3 - no, these numbers have nothing to do with my ages at the time. I'm thinking that my childhood was version 0, teenage years version 1, university version 2, and utterly batshit version 3. Not sure when version 4 started, but I like it the best). I've done cognitive behavioural therapy, and am very aware of my thinking, so notice if I'm falling into negative thought patterns. I will always be an anxious person, but I can shut off the anxiety 95% of the time without any ill effects (especially if I'm being anxious about something completely trivial in the grand scheme of things). I have a much better sense of perspective, to realise which things in life are actually important. There will be no pointless student union politics in this version!
I have an extremely good support network of people. I have three partners who will support me to the best of their ability; two of whom have seen me at my worst so know what "batshit insane" looks like on me. I have a number of close local friends who are around me regularly, and a large number of non-local internet friends who I can vent to about stuff.
I have self-esteem. I know that people love and value me for who I am, and I rarely feel insecure about my personal relationships. I know that I am intelligent enough to contribute to the world. I know that I do not know everything, nor should I be expected to. I know when I am not coping, and how to ask for help.
I have learned a huge amount about "how people work". Really, it's not surprising that I wasn't good at that aged 21 - I had a small handful of friends who were kinda like me when I was a teenager, only one of whom has "survived" to still be a friend in adulthood. I only really started to make friends when I went to university. And my ex-supervisor R was, quite honestly, one of the first genuinely difficult relationships I'd ever had. I was used to teachers thinking I was wonderful, and having really great conversations with them about all sorts of things tangentially related to what we were studying. R made me feel stupid because everything he'd say went over my head, and I didn't realise I was supposed to ask him to explain. I thought that if I did, he'd think I was stupid for not knowing that already, and I'd be thrown off the course. Instead, I almost got thrown off the course for not asking. Argh!
I don't think I'd adequately realised that in a PhD, you're basically supposed to be teaching yourself. I think I'd thought it was like an undergraduate degree but with more research - not that there was one 15 lecture course for the whole thing. I was completely unprepared mentally for what would be happening. We didn't have any "how to do a PhD" lessons, so I just muddled along, making a lot of mistakes.
Now I realise that I have a poor estimate of my own abilities, due to bad past experiences combined with having been so depressed. (The depression I had made my brain totally seize up to the point where my IQ was effectively halved - and as a person whose brain was always her best feature, I spent years panicking.) I want to do something relatively easy to prove to myself that I can. I also know that I need more support than I'd get from going straight into a PhD, so I'm applying for a Masters even though I technically already have one. This is because I want to do more taught courses to get back into working at that level, and also retrain myself in a different specialism. I've realised also that while I love environmental chemistry, it makes me ill - because I can't stand the thought that I'm doing something that could save the world but the governments don't care. (I've seen the dates from first peer-reviewed research to scientific consensus to presentation of information to the government/s to legislation to the law actually coming into effect - and it's too damn long considering.) I want to work on something where I don't think that I'm going to change the world, just do some good work that'll be useful to others in the field. I know where my limitations are.