The PhD journey: Navigating the pressures and expectations from family and loved ones. A reflection by Eric Ndeh, PhD

In this thought piece, Dr. Eric Ndeh reflects on the demands of doctoral study on personal relationships and shares some guidance on how to manage them.

Original post date: 17 September 2023

I have been thinking about how to share my PhD experience regarding the substantive (content) of what I did and the procedural (process) experiences of the four-year journey. Sharing bits of these can motivate and ramp up the interest of anyone keen on embarking on an academic journey at whatever level. I know many friends out there who are taking too long to decide to embark on this journey.

I completed my PhD at the Birmingham Law School in August 2022 with the support of a Global Challenges PhD Scholarship from the University of Birmingham and an Early Career Researcher Grant from the National Geographic Society. I focus on how policy and law-making on climate change have developed in post-colonial states as a tool for empowering or disempowering individuals and groups impacted. Specifically. how the development of overarching climate change laws enhances or constrains the incorporation of local indigenous knowledge and practice of indigenous and local communities. Local and indigenous communities are not just victims of climate change. They are agents of transformative change who have, over many generations, developed and used their knowledge systems to adapt/address environmental challenges, including climate change. However, these vital policy actors are always sidelined from decision-making and processes by those who focus on second-guessing law and policy-making. In addition to contributing to the body of knowledge in the novel area of law-making on climate change, my PhD had a policy-influencing role. I developed the Actor-Knowledge-Institutional (AKI) framework. I tested this in a post-doctoral impact project funded with a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) post-doctorate fellowship. This framework can guide the development of overarching and sector-specific laws and policies or evaluate existing ones for their incorporation of all available knowledge systems in response to Article 7.5 of the Paris Agreement. This is just the tip of what I did in four years! I would return to give a deep dive into another post's substantive content ([climate change law-making in postcolonial states] https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2023/eric-ngang-policy-and-law-making-on-climate-change-in-post-colonial-states

For this post, I want to share with you how, as a PhD scholar, you will constantly be navigating significant pressures, which are the demands and expectations of family and friends. This is one of many other pressures you will have to deal with at this stage. As an African, our family and social networks are pretty extensive. Your wife, children, siblings, parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, grannies, god-children, mentees, friends, in-laws, etc., would expect a lot from you during this process, especially when you are suitable to be overseas.

So, in addition to managing the herculean PhD expectations, including dealing with supervisors who could sometimes be tricky, you have to work extra hard to deal with these pressures. In my case, I had all these people to deal with. Sadly, choosing to pursue an academic pathway is a considerable investment and commitment in time and effort for many years. The hope is that you could transform your academic passion into something valuable with the perfect grounding—a service or an asset that attracts rent from users, benefiting you and others. Often, the family does not understand this. Their expectations increase as you progress from undergraduate to master's, PhD, post-doctorate, etc. I did my utmost best to contribute to each of these relatives’ expectations to the best of my ability. However, I had a number of interesting encounters as I navigated through the different stages of my PhD academic journey, and I share some with you.

Encounter 1

Two years into my PhD I returned home for to visit relatives. I had a cousin who drank a little bit too much. He bumped into me at his parent’s home and told me in the face that all he did was book after book and couldn’t give him a dime. His sisters and brothers did everything to stop him from spilling this out. However, I learned you can never stop drunk who was determined to say what had been conceived when sober. It was a well-crafted message that ensued from a family discussion about my case and my interest in books and studying. I was determined to finish the books to meet these cousins' expectations quickly.

Encounter 2

While studying for a master's degree in Australia, although I was on an Australian Government Scholarship. This was quite demanding intellectually, and being abroad meant additional pressures from family and friends. I had to do extra work not involving computers nor reading or writing, which was part of the routine in the academically demanding master's course.  I searched and found myself two essential jobs. My first job was as a car detailer, “car washman or washing point man” described locally in Cameroon. I was a painter in my second job. I loved taking pictures of myself in action doing these jobs because that is when I became alive. I am getting my hands on things, meeting all these incredible people during our chats while doing my work. I am not used to the pictures with perfumed jackets and ties in hotel lobbies and beside cars. Besides, I do not frequent those places, nor have I ever owned one of those cars. So I shared these my pictures in action, washing cars and painting beautiful walls. I got a message from very close family members asking if, with all my schooling, all I ended up with was washing cars and painting walls. This was a big joke; I laughed over it each time I thought of it. I owed no explanation, though, and just kept on as being real defined who I was. |Washing cars and painting walls were some of the most rewarding experiences because I met wonderful people, and we shared wonderful stories and have remained friends to date.

Encounter 3

Lastly, in the context where I come from, we celebrate death more than those alive. We will pull resources to get trucks of drinks and loads of food at the burial of a loved one, but we will drag our feet when these very loved ones are sick and in need of help. Or if a child needs a pen, pencil, or school fees, we will do nothing about it until they drop out of school. I do chip in when someone meets their demise in the family. On one occasion, amongst many, a distant uncle I had never known nor met passed away just when I was writing up the PhD. I received a call from home from a close relative with orders for the amount of money I had to send and instructions to who was gathering these sums for this uncle's burial and death celebration. Mark you, at the same time, we had an orphan in the family who was doing a professional nursing course at a higher institute back home. She was struggling with fees paid, getting books, and feeding, which had been my concern. While we supported her, this was in silos and not coordinated like gathering the resources to celebrate the dead uncle. When I received the call, in a very polite way, I indicated that I was at a stage of my PhD and could not do any additional work to raise funds to support that particular course. In a furious tone, this close family relative reminded me of a cousin of hers who was somewhere in Europe just like me, who had backed several PhDs and was unable even to feed himself and talk less of the next person and that I was paving that path for myself and that I should stop the schooling immediately. Well, this was just normal as this mother had repeatedly asked me when the books I was reading would  bring any benefits. Well, this did not deter me in any way from continuing on my course.

Is the PhD full-time work or not?

Remember, the PhD is a full-time job; any other work done alongside this is just a side hustle. This is why, as a PhD student in the UK and many other places, you can work 15-20 hours per week. Going beyond this, you risk spending additional years and making it a more expensive and time-consuming venture. One way to work extra hours to meet the mounting expectations was getting authorised absences for two months, which were official vacation time to do additional work. When the pressures of the PhD became huge, especially when I got to the writing-up stage, I had to reduce chasing work to concentrate on this task or risk getting an extension with my funding ending and bringing me a huge fee burden. This is when I knew those close to me did not understand that the PhD was a full-time job. Some close people told me I was sitting around and not doing any work. This was traumatising despite several attempts I made to make them understand the intellectually, physically, and emotionally demanding job I was involved in. These were moments when I needed their support and words of encouragement. However, I had to use part of my time to get my loved ones to understand that the PhD was one of the biggest full-time and highly demanding jobs I had ever held. Believe me, my answers were not convincing to these people who expected me to meet their needs and expectations.

I lacked answers to these many questions or could not respond to all the comments. However, they only strengthened my resolve to hang on to the end. Believe me, it paid off in the future, and I can better meet these expectations. Again, I stayed on because I had promised my late mother, who unfortunately died on the eve of my starting my undergraduate degree, that I was going to get to the end of the academic ladder and then look after her. After all, I understood her struggles as a single mother. Yes! I did get to the end!

I hope this encourages anyone doing a PhD or about to embark on one. Many scholars have shared their arduous experiences on this journey, including my friend, Titilope, who likens it to navigating crocodile-infested ponds or skipping over erupting volcanoes. Yes! In addition to all these, I had additional hoops to jump through, placed by family.

Happy PhD journey.