My PhD certificate finally arrived this week and to my surprise, I felt a bit sad! No champagne popping, no leaping around the room, just a quiet anticlimax that made me stop and think: this piece of paper doesn’t really capture the true story. Impressive as it looks, it can’t convey the whirlwind of self-exploration, resilience, and moments of triumph, frustration, and growth that make up the journey.
I tried to treat the PhD like ‘just a job,’ juggling it alongside clinic work, running a business, and raising a family. But the truth is, you can’t switch off the emotions. You invest too much, care too much, and waves of excitement, fear, exhaustion, and even boredom roll over you again and again. It gets intense, messy, and very challenging but that’s exactly what makes it meaningful.
It’s been a whole year from submitting my thesis to finally holding the certificate, and I hadn’t realised how long it would take to truly reach the end. Perhaps that’s why, instead of triumph, I felt a kind of celebration fatigue. Each milestone (handing in the thesis, passing the viva, submitting revisions) looked like the finish line to everyone else, but for me the sense of completion kept slipping further away. By the time the certificate arrived, I’d already moved on in my head.
The sadness, really, is a sense of loss because I loved the process. The rare privilege of deep focus on a single project, the clarity of purpose in a world full of distractions, and the ready-made excuse to say no to other commitments. For me, the real milestones weren’t the official ones, but the small, unglamorous, unexpected moments: my first ethics approval, welcoming my first participant, a late-night curry after finishing data collection, the thrill of my first paper being accepted, the generosity of supportive colleagues, and even the comedy of my daughter asking, ‘What’s for tea, Mum?’ the moment I submitted my thesis! These were the markers that truly kept me moving forward.
The PhD isn’t a straight line, it’s a maze of detours, dead ends, and moments of uncertainty. I watched others around me drop out, not from lack of ability, but because life made it impossible to continue. That sense of jeopardy was always there, but so was the reward if you could learn to embrace it.
It took me eight years to finish! I carry a strange mix of pride and embarrassment about that timeline. For years, I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it, I wanted to avoid the constant “how’s it going?” questions and quietly chip away at the work. And yet, comparison creeps in when I see others finishing more quickly and sharing their work so confidently.
That’s why the certificate alone feels insufficient. On the surface, it’s a neat full stop, the perfect “ta-da” moment. But my reality has always been a little more chaotic juggling work, research, and family, fuelled by late nights, caffeine, and chocolate buttons! And that’s exactly what I’ve come to love: the imperfect process of equal parts chaos, persistence, and the quiet satisfaction of keeping going.
The real reward wasn’t the certificate. It was becoming the kind of person who can hold their nerve, stay curious, and enjoying the complexity rather than just enduring it.
Katherine McNabb (PhD)
Department of Physiotherapy, Manchester Metropolitan University
