Simply typing the title to this post has gotten me nervous, eeek! By the time this blog post has gone up, I will be weeks away from officially starting the final year of my PhD (or days away from that, depending on when exactly you consider the start of the academic year to be). 

The fact that this is my final year of PhD research has very much been on the forefront of my mind and honestly, the thought of it has been stressing me out for much longer. I found out that I actually need to submit my thesis 6 weeks before I originally thought I needed to in order to ensure submission before starting my fourth year of the MBChB in early September. FYI, I only found out about this a few months into my second year of the PhD. As you can imagine, that didn’t go down very well with me because that meant I would have to finish my lab work 6 weeks earlier than originally planned if I wanted to give myself ample time to write up my thesis. In wet lab research, losing 6 weeks of research time is very significant. This change is on top of the fact that my PhD is for 3 years, which is already a time crunch in the first place. 

Despite my efforts to contest this as the MBPhD programme rep, the decision had been made prior to wider communication with students and there wasn’t much wiggle room with this. For the lack of better words, it sucked. I think it made the past year more stressful than it needed to be, and it was already very stressful with everything else I had going on with my health and personal life.  

I have really enjoyed immersing myself in full-time research and thankfully my supervisor/lab have been very supportive in the process of getting me ready to submit my thesis in August 2025. I’m very lucky that I have the capacity to be openly stressed about all this so I can get the support I need, and that has helped me bring the stress down to a more manageable level. In fact, I’m really looking forward to the final 8-9 months of research I have left because I will be focussing on one specific area and it will be very interesting to see what I can learn. 

The year ahead will be tough – I am running my first ever marathon in November so I am balancing all the work required in marathon training like the runs, strength training, rehab and so on while continuing my karate training, getting back into writing on my website and working on my PhD project. However, I will try and channel this pressure into a drive to try my best in these areas, and doing different things will allow me to come back to my PhD work each day with a fresh mind. 

If you’re in a similar position to me, I hope you’re holding up okay and that you have the support system you need to make the most of the remaining time on your PhD. If you can, my advice is to find something to focus your energy on besides your PhD e.g. a sport/hobby to help you recharge and stay sane! 

Sending you all the best wishes, 

Jean