How I experienced the Five Stages of Grief while completing my PhD Dissertation

When I was nearing the end of my dissertation data collection in April of 2012, I felt like I had been running a marathon that just wouldn’t end.  To add a layer of complexity to the situation, I was also 9 months pregnant with my second daughter and my older daughter was just shy of 3 years old.  Needless to say, home life and PhD life were something else indeed! 

But getting back to the marathon analogy, I remember that my dissertation experience, particularly the data collection phase, left me feeling like I was constantly hitting “the wall.”  There came the point where I knew I had just a few more subjects from whom to collect data, but I was so mentally, physically, intellectually, and emotionally tired.  My dissertation data collection was very time intensive, both with regard to the time it took to collect data from the subjects themselves, but also the time I had to spend afterwards processing blood samples, running biomarker assays, and analyzing the results of those assays.  Because of the nature of some of the biomarker analyses that I was doing, I would often have to do some of these procedures late at night in the lab and on the weekends.  I had also come to the realization that I probably wasn’t going to finish my data collection before the baby arrived, and so I was going to have to pause my data collection for a few weeks before resuming.  There was a part of me that felt very guilty about that, even though it wasn’t my fault.  That’s just the nature of human subjects research and pregnancy.  If I remember correctly, I resumed my data collection about 5-6 weeks after giving birth.  The sleep deprivation was very real for a very long time. 

As I trudged through the dissertation process, I came to realize that the dissertation process made me feel a lot of things, including the 5 stages of grief.  Thus, here is how I specifically experienced the 5 stages of grief while completing my PhD dissertation, nearly a decade ago. 

DENIAL
For me, this stage occurred right around my baby’s due date. Specifically, I was in denial that her arrival was likely going to happen any day.  I kept thinking to myself, "Oh I have lots of time before she comes," but in reality it could have been the next day or 3 weeks after that. 

BARGAINING
I did spent a bit of time in this stage.  It usually went something like, "Okay, if so-and-so helps me out here, and maybe if I can get all 6 of these subjects scheduled in the next 2 weeks, and if the baby wouldn't mind staying in utero for 2 weeks past her due date, then I can finish my data collection by Mother's Day."  Although now that I think about it, this line of thinking probably overlapped with the Denial stage.

ANGER
I will be very honest, I spent a lot of time in this stage.  This usually happened when I perceived that the people who were supposed to be helping me out with my data collection sessions weren’t stepping up, or when I would put in an order for data collection supplies and the order got lost.  Or worse, when someone would tell me that they would help me out in any way they could, and then they ended up not being true to their word. Or sometimes I would get angry at myself for choosing a project with a data collection that was so time intensive.  But then I also felt angry (and jealous) when I would think about other people from my PhD program who did their dissertations before me, and how some of them didn’t have to do a real-time data collection because they used archived data. 

(Note:  I am going to write a future post about why I am now very glad that I did a dissertation project that involved time intensive difficult data collection and biomarker analysis procedures.)

DEPRESSION
I spent a lot of time in this stage too.  It usually took the form of, "I feel like I am never going to finish this stinking degree, and I'm not sure my committee really cares if or when I finish either."  Or also, "What I am going to do if I can't find those last 3 subjects that I need to complete my data collection?" Or also, "This immune cell activity assay keeps messing up.  If I can't get this data to look right, I don't know what I'm going to do."

ACCEPTANCE
There were a few occasions when I would have some waves of clarity about the whole PhD dissertation process.  Intellectually, I knew that this chapter of my life would come to a close, and that everything would work out the way it was supposed to.  I also knew there are certain things about the process that were not in my control, but as long as the ball was in my court, my job was to keep plugging away to the best of my ability. 

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Nine years later, I can confidently say that it all worked out.  The baby came 6 days before her due date, beautiful and healthy, I finished my data collection, wrote the rest of my dissertation, defended it in November of 2012, and graduated with my PhD in December of 2012.  Things took about a semester longer than originally planned, but it might have happened that way anyway. 

 If you are reading this and you are in a similar situation, know that it is totally okay to experience the stages of grief as it relates to your hardship.  There is no order in which you are “supposed” to experience them, or required amount of time that you “should” spend in them.  I know that I experienced these feelings multiple times, in various orders, and for various lengths of time during my dissertation process.  Acknowledging my feelings, and then making a plan for how to work through my feelings so that I didn’t get stuck, was certainly an important part of getting through that experience. And of course, talking to trusted friends and family was also a major source of comfort, motivation, and comic relief during that time.

 How have you experienced the 5 stages of grief during your thesis or dissertation phase of graduate school?  What would you add to this?