• Question: Have you had to suffer bigger things to get where you are?

    Asked by anon-235997 to Tom, Rachel, Priya, Jessica, Dan, Beatrice on 9 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Priya Silverstein

      Priya Silverstein answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      I wouldn’t say I’ve had to suffer big things, but I’ve had to suffer a lot of disappointments and rejections (for example not getting funded PhD positions and jobs that I applied for). But I think that helped build my resilience, and made me feel even more proud when I did eventually get those things.

    • Photo: Beatrice Hayes

      Beatrice Hayes answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      Definitely. For a while, I didn’t know if I was on the PhD programme or not. I couldn’t tell the headteacher at my school whether I would need a job the following September or not and they could only hold my job for me until June. Luckily, I found out that I’d gotten on at the end of the May (2017) so I knew what I was doing! That was a very stressful time.

    • Photo: Jessica Pope

      Jessica Pope answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      I’ve had to suffer things but they pushed me to get to where I am. The reason I wanted to do a PhD in cancer studies is because I lost my dad very suddenly when I was 22 and it completely rocked my world. I wanted to understand how people deal with having cancer and surviving it, when I struggled so much and I wasn’t even the one who had cancer. There have been a few other things that I had to battle through to get where I am, like mental health problems, but these things made me stronger and more determined to do the best I can.

    • Photo: Tom Gallagher-Mitchell

      Tom Gallagher-Mitchell answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      So my response has synergies with Beatrice and Jess, I originally applied for ed psych doctorate, but back when i did in 2008 the funding model was different so there was a lot more moving around, and I wanted some stability in career path so switched this to study a research phd and teaching position. During this process my dad died of cancer so i had a break in my studies, this was hard emotionally, but as below built my resilience and I know that my dad would have wanted me to continue with my studies.

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