I have spent a lot of the last year complaining about my finances as a PhD student, but not much time talking about actual life as a PhD student  – so today’s post is a review of what my first year as a theatre/drama PhD student has been like.

It’s been a fairly strange journey. There are times when I feel like nothing is really happening, but as I’m reflecting on the last year, I have actually done a fair amount.

To graduate, my school has two requirements – successful completion and defence of a thesis and successful completion of the Strands. The Strands make more sense a year in than they did in week one, but they are still sort of mysterious.

With that in mind, let’s review the last year.

February 2022

I was working remotely from the United States while I awaited my visa. The majority of my time the first two weeks was spent sorting out administrative issues, signing paperwork and arranging meetings. I was also still finalizing my visa paperwork at this stage.

I spent a large portion of this time reading and recording what I was reading.

I saw a great Twitter post on academic twitter about a PhD student complaining that they keep on having to fix the work some idiot wrote in their thesis and that some idiot was them in their first year.

This seems right.

In retrospect, I didn’t really know how to take notes or write correctly. I had (and to some extent still have) a habit of reporting what I’ve found rather than weaving together a net of support from existing literature and then laying my own comments and observations on top of that net.

But I’m getting better.

And I had to start somewhere.

I found it incredibly helpful to engage with my Strand requirements as much as I could through February and March. The first three Strands are very concrete things you just have to do.

To graduate, five Strands have to be completed. I think this is just my university’s way of meeting the higher education requirements for the UK, so if you chose to attend a school here, you might never encounter something called a Strand, but you would likely find that there are some additional requirements you have to complete besides just writing a thesis.

Strand 1 is largely orientation activities. It’s two online courses in data protection and internet security and several orientation workshops. These are offered several times a year and you sign up for one that fits in your schedule. These workshops included things like orientations to library services, what the school expects for a successful completion of a doctorate, further explanations of what the Strands are, and good study and research tips.

Strand 2 is a 6 week teaching course. It covered topics like lesson planning, how to present, student evaluation techniques, and teaching different types of students. In theory, a lot of folks getting their PhDs are doing it to teach at universities, so this is designed both to prepare students for that career and also to allow us to TA. Strand 2 must be completed before it’s possible to apply to TA.

A classmate and I also submitted a proposal to convene the University’s PhD symposium at the end of the term. We did not really expect it to get chosen. I barely had any idea what was even going on when we did it. I thought my supervisor was kidding when he suggested we do it.

I started working on my official research proposal which was due in April.

I bought some tickets to immersive theatre productions in London to see later in the spring and over the summer.

March 2022

I had my first full supervisor meeting and discussed my research proposal form, which needed to be submitted within two months of starting my doctorate. Some of the activities related to this form were inevitably going to be late due to my visa delay – as part of the proposal also included submitting an orientation checklist completed on campus.

I continued with all the Strand 1 and Strand 2 workshops and classes while continuing my reading.

Strand 3 is two workshops. One workshop must be completed before your transfer viva and the other after transfer but before your thesis submission. So I signed up to do the first workshop and while I was there, someone told me I was taking it way too early.

I have to say, as I begin to prepare for my transfer a year later, I don’t think so. I have appreciated having a good understanding of what the transfer entails. I didn’t even know it involved its own viva voce and I think I would’ve had a heart attack if that was sprung on me close to the transfer. So my recommendation is that you actually do requirements like these as soon as possible rather than dragging your feet.

I also crammed in as much work as possible before moving to the U.K. and dealing with visa work restrictions. If I’m completely honest, I probably wasn’t quite hitting 35 hours every week, but this seems to not really be an issue a year later.

This is also because I was trying to cram in as much family and friend time before moving away too.

Highly recommend.

I received my visa and figured out where I was going to live. I chose to stay in a shared AirBnB for two months so I could learn more about the area and then look for an apartment. I was also able to cover a lot of that cost with credit card rewards. I booked my flight to England for April 1^st.

The proposal my classmate and I submitted to host the PhD symposium for our school was accepted, which was kind of insane and a massive amount of work in the following months.

April 2022

I moved to London on April 1^st. I had planned to work about part time the first week while I settled in, but moving into an AirBnB is way easier than moving into a flat. Everything was already setup. I pretty much just went to the grocery store and was sorted.

I had my first in person supervisor meeting and was able to complete the rest of my orientation activities that I needed to be on campus for. I submitted my research proposal for approval.

My classmate and I came up with the callout for papers and practice-as-research applicants for our symposium and distributed it.

I attended the Event Safety Access Summit online just as an audience member. It caused me to develop very strong feelings regarding hybrid events and what makes a true hybrid event versus just pointing a camera at a stage to pick up presentations and what’s happening in a room and calling it hybrid.

I started making a spreadsheet of potential theatre companies to work with during my case studies.

I continued reading. I started the discussion on my Strand 4 possible projects. Strand 4 consists of two large scale projects that are somehow related to my research and my supervisors and I agree would be useful to complete. All suggestions provided by the school were related to STEM topics, so that was pretty lame but it suggested taking a course in a subject that is a current knowledge gap, working on a side research project, or learning how to use an important tool like a fancy microscope or something.

At the time we had two ideas – a potential research project with my supervisor’s theatre company involving audience engagement that was about to begin and obtaining some sort of British health and safety certification equivalents to what I already held in the U.S.

On the weekends, I would explore London. I attended a few immersive theatre events. I went to a lot of parks. I also had Covid for about 10 days, the first few days of which I was nearly narcoleptic and definitely lost a few days of studying.

I started working a few hours a week for my supervisor’s theatre company doing Relationship Management – which was essentially tracking VIP invites and comp tickets and reaching out to producers and festivals who might be interested in booking the company in the future.

I also signed up to take roller skating classes once a week starting in June. My first real hobby in a very long time.

May 2022

I did a lot of administrative work for the Symposium. My classmate and I formed a selection committee with two students from a partner institution to select which applicants would be included in the Symposium.

My research plan was approved after a brief administrative hang up with obtaining all of my supervisor’s signatures – including the one who was on sabbatical for the year.

I attended several additional workshops to improve my academic writing and studying habits. I have to admit that I really loved the workshop system. It was very flexible and there are a lot of offerings, though I have covered most of the offered workshops by the end of year one. These workshops also provided some extra structure to my weeks, since so much of this whole thing is self-directed.

I prepared my 15 minute presentation for inclusion in the school PhD symposium.

I agreed to go to Edinburgh Fringe in August for about a week as a staff supervisor for the undergraduate students who were taking a show there.

I continued working for my supervisor’s theatre company and picked up a second job working for an immersive theatre company as a front of house steward on the weekends, which maxed out my allowed work hours weekly.

I went back to America for Memorial Day weekend to go on the annual family camping trip with my family. Credit card rewards from paying my tuition paid for that plane ticket.

I attended my monthly supervisor meeting. I applied for a summer program called Spaces of Joy for creating better accessibility techniques in performance. I was not accepted. I applied for the 2022 ActorsFCU scholarship. I did not get it.

I also found an apartment and moved into it. This took the time I suspected it was going to take in April, especially sorting out an internet connection. Fortunately, I had a week of overlap between the AirBnB and moving into my flat which made lack of internet less stressful.   

June 2022

The first 10 days of the month were completely subsumed by preparations for the Symposium and then the Symposium and its immediate administrative aftermath. And a glorious afternoon of playing hooky, staying in bed, ordering takeout and watching TV that day after the Symposium.

I continued reading, writing, and attending a few workshops to improve my writing and research skills. I wrote up a rough draft of my introduction chapter.

I applied to present a paper in a working group based on my research for my presentation at the Symposium at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) conference in New Orleans in November.

I continued working for my supervisor and stewarding on the weekends. I attended the ABTT trade show in London and joined the British Stage Management Association. I went up to York for a weekend to see their medieval Mystery Play cycle, which I’ve wanted to do for 11 years and it did not disappoint.

I attended my monthly supervisor meeting. At a meeting of the Dance, Theatre and Performance research group, one of the professors mentioned doing a research project around intimacy coordination culminating in the development of a workshop, which is one of the required outcomes of my thesis, so I asked if I could help. He said I could, so this tentatively became a potential Strand 4 project as well.

Roller skating started.

July 2022

I was accepted to present my paper at the ASTR conference and started applying for funds to go.

I got feedback from one of my supervisor’s on that first draft of my introduction.

I continued reading and started working on writing up a rough draft of my literature review and methodology. My supervisors and I agreed I would turn these in at the end of the summer.

This felt kind of frantic and insane and I genuinely believe my supervisors all forgot I started in February rather than September of the previous year.

I attended a few more school sponsored workshops over the summer, including one on how to do better conference presentations. I went to several more immersive theatre shows.

I kept working for my supervisor’s theatre company and stewarding on the weekends. I also started working on a side project for fun with two friends from college building a role playing game.

My best friend came to visit for the last week of July and first week of September and I really only worked part time while she was in town. We went on sightseeing adventures on the weekends and visited the Harry Potter Studios, which was very exciting. We had high tea on my birthday and played Monopoly Lifesize.

Roller skating continued.

August 2022

I played a lot of hooky the first week while my friend was still in town and we went to Luxembourg and Germany during the second weekend because we looked at cheap flights to places we’d never been and that won.

When she left, I went back to working on my chapter drafts. I did some follow up administrative work from the Symposium chasing some payments, but universities really do close down in August. Everyone is on vacation.

I spent most of the week in Edinburgh with the undergrads, babysitting their show in the evening, studying and hiking during the mornings and then seeing any immersive shows I could find. I saw The Gods, The Gods, The Gods and it was my standout hit of Fringe. If it comes to your town, it’s a good time.

I caught a cold that really took forever to get better. This was my first suspicion that my fairly minor brush with Covid was maybe going to have some unpleasant long lasting effects.

I kept working for my supervisor’s theatre company and stewarding on the weekends. Work on the role playing game continued.

My first level of roller skating classes finished and I signed up for the second level in the fall.

September 2022

I had a near nervous breakdown going into this month’s supervisor meeting when I turned in the drafts of all my chapters and felt like they were a hot mess and I must clearly be super behind in school somehow due to having a largely enjoyably summer and also potentially far too stupid to succeed at this endeavour overall.

Instead they were all approved and I’m going to need to edit them 8 million times before this is all done but everyone was very happy. Reading and writing continued as a main focus.

I did my first poster presentation at my school’s Diversity Interest Group annual conference.

I signed up to sit in on an MA level course called Research Methods in a Cultural Context once a week.

We turned in paperwork to change my supervisory team. This was always the plan as a member of my intended team did not graduate until June 2022. This paperwork took a long time to be fully approved.

I paid a pile of money for my 2022-23 tuition but thanks to Liz Truss that was probably the best exchange rate I will ever get in my life.

I won a £500 bursary toward my 2023-24 tuition, since it came through right after paying my tuition.

I worked on my Ethics committee paperwork for my research project. This was a fairly large project.

I kept working for my supervisor’s theatre company and stewarding on the weekends. Work on the role playing game continued.

October 2022

My funding to attend the ASTR conference was approved.

My classmate and I worked to create the archival publication related to the Symposium that we were required to create. I continued to chase outstanding payments to our speakers. I learned how to apply for ISBNs.

I submitted the final version of my paper to my working group for ASTR and read several of the other submitted paper’s from the working group to prepare for the conference.

I revised one chapter of my thesis.

I submitted my ethics committee paperwork.

I continued attending Research Methods in a Cultural Context. I also attended a few more writing and reading critically workshops hosted by the school.

I signed up for a reader’s card at the British Library and learned it’s pretty much the best place in the world to get large bits of concentrated writing time done.

I flew home for a weekend for a wedding.

I kept working for my supervisor’s theatre company and stewarding on the weekends. Because my supervisor’s company lost funding, everyone’s job turned into doing funding applications. The stress of this on top of everything else was really too much for me and I had to quit that job. Work on the role playing game continued. We were hoping to launch an IndieGoGo for it by Valentine’s Day.

Did the second level of the roller skating class.

November 2022

I attended the ASTR conference and presented my paper. My working group was lovely. The vibe of the conference as a whole though was a little stuffy. Several people I met suggested joining ATHE the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. However, I think my goal is largely to stick to one American society and one European so it will probably remain ASTR for the duration of grad school.

In particular I got to know two women from the working group and we have stayed in touch and discussed some possible collaborations for the future, which would be nice.

At the end of the month, my ethics application was accepted by the committee pending minor changes.

I worked on revising another chapter of my thesis while the other one was under review with my supervisors for notes.

My classmate and I had the Symposium proceedings from June published and mailed out to everyone who participated. A copy now exists in the British Library, which is kind of cool.

I finished attending Research Methods in a Cultural Context. I attended a few immersive theatre productions.

I started talking with one of my supervisor’s about TAing one of his classes in the Spring.

I continued stewarding on the weekends and working on the role playing game with my friends.

Finished the second level of the roller skating class.

December 2022

December was actually a pretty calm month because I think it’s sort of chaos for all the supervisors dealing with all their classwork and grading commitments. So that was sort of nice.

I didn’t quite finish the revisions I wanted to have done of my chapter before that supervisor meeting but we just agreed to bump feedback from that to the following month.

My ethics proposal was fully accepted and I was approved to start my fieldwork.

The ethics proposal for my Strand 4 intimacy workshop project was submitted by the professor in charge of the project.

I attended one of the Re-Imagining Intimacy conference events at another university in London.

I went home for two weeks. I continued reading a bit while home for the holidays, but honestly I did really minimal work while I was home. And it was delightful. Breaks are lovely things.

I worked all the weekends I was in London stewarding and we finished the beta version of our role playing game and started testing it.

January 2023

Honestly, the first week of the year was kind of a wash because a good friend stayed with me and then another friend turned up in town and so I mostly hung out with friends. Also a lovely time.

When I got back to work, it was really more revising than reading this month.

At the end of the month, I started a 6 week certification class for British health and safety that is part of Strand 4 goals.

I started sitting in a class that I TAed later in the term, just to get a feel for what British undergraduate classes are like.

My change of supervisor team was finalized. I applied for several scholarships. I probably won’t win any of them.

I reached out to one of the companies that I intended to be my pilot study and thought I would have a good chance working with them, but they wouldn’t let me survey their audiences, so they said no.

I contacted two other theatre groups doing performances during this time frame who either said no or were not large enough companies to have a separation between their performance makers and production staff. I reviewed my list of potential theatre groups to work with and none of the others were currently doing productions.

I took a training course in NVivo in the hope that someday I will actually have data to input into it. I also attended another impactful writing workshop.

I continued stewarding on weekends. My friends and I launched our role playing game IndieGoGo.

February 2023

I applied for a few more funding opportunities.

I submitted my latest chapter drafts to my newest supervisors, one of whom is the dean of the school, so that’s never intimidating.

I finished the first level of health and safety training course with Distinction (a good thing here).

I started this delightful cycle of looking for theatre companies that meet the parameters of my case study which feels an awful lot like looking for a job. I check all the main places that advertise immersive performances. I write to new companies that appear. They say “no thank you stranger, you can’t talk to our audiences.” I sigh. The cycle continues.

I continued sitting in on the undergraduate course whenever I’m free on Fridays that I will TA in the upcoming months.

I presented at the school’s Postgraduate Sharing Party with a 15 minute demonstration of my workshop opening activity and a brief recap of the Symposium with the classmate I co-convened it with.

I attended a Wednesday night lecture series at the local theatre that was hosted by various professors from the School of Stage & Screen at Greenwich as they interviewed successful artists from the industry.

I also realized at the end of the month that I was probably supposed to do the cryptically named RDA4a, which is an annual review report, so I started working on that.

Raised $400 for our game on IndieGoGo and started creating the final copy to sell online (for now – proper table top game to follow someday).

And that is one year of a PhD.

Academia moves kind of slow. You just keep slogging along and, personally, it doesn’t always feel like I’m getting much done. But in retrospect, after one year I have:

• Submitted a full research proposal that was approved.
• Written multiple drafts of the first three chapters of my thesis.
• Presented at the university’s PhD Symposium.
• Co-convened that Symposium (which was an organizational beast to put together).
• Published Symposium proceedings.
• Did a poster presentation for a different conference.
• Presented a paper in a working group at an international conference.
• Submitted an ethics proposal that was approved.
• Finished a health and safety certification class.
• Sat in on a full semester MA class.
• Attended a few dozen academic workshops.
• Attended a few dozen immersive theatre performances.
• Worked part time all year.

And to me that actually does seem like I did something. I’m two months into year two as I’m writing this and I’ll save some of these updates for next year’s post, but if a few things that are currently in the works pan out, I could have some cool updates for this time next year too.

I also mentioned there are five Strands and proceeded to ignore Strand 5 in these updates. Strand 5 is this very wonky thing that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me or my supervisors but it’s that you do at least two things a year that keep you involved in your field as a whole. So every time I presented a paper or a poster or technically even just attended a conference seems to count.

I am perpetually suspicious that I’m not more stressed or burnt out, though there have been a few seasons of high stress over the last year. Overall, I have significantly more free time than I ever did stage managing.

I was also influenced to move to England because Europe as a whole champions a far better work/life balance than the US (though England is certainly picking up a lot of our workaholic habits, they still aren’t as bad yet). This may be part of why I always feel like I’m in a bit of an “am-I-slacking-off-too-much?” panic even though I am meeting my deadlines and agreed upon checkpoints.

Going into year two, I do feel a strong amount of why am I doing this? And will it ever end? And what possessed me to give up 3-4 years of my life doing this? But lots of folks told me year two is the worst, so I’m just gonna keep on going and eventually it will be year three. To be honest, year one went pretty fast.

If you’re considering a PhD in the liberal arts, below are a few other posts I’ve written on this doctoral journey so far:

• My First Week as a Theatre/Drama PhD Student
• What I Did in the Year Leading Up to Getting Accepted Into My Theatre PhD Program