I have not posted much recently because I have been rather busy! The 8 weeks I was given to do the “minor” revisions on my confirmation report was stressful. I have been struggling to wrap my head around some of the things I need to do. I have sent emails telling people I wont be able to do one thing or another that I had previously said I could. I spent longer than I would like staring at my calendar and wondering what I could possibly skip or ignore. It’s been a little over 2 weeks and my constant self-reflection has had me looking at all I have to do in 8 weeks and the stress levels rose a little higher.

Then I got some news about a surgery I have to have, 1 day before a PhD meeting and about a week before my 8 weeks revision time is up. At that point stress hit the level high enough for me to ask if it was possible to get that time extended. Yep, it got to the point where I knew I just wasn’t going to get it done in time. So I sucked up my pride and sent that email request.

Within 24 hours I had the official email from the university re-assigning my due date for confirmation revisions from Oct 13th to December 7th. That’s right folks 8 mroe weeks! Why? Well because that 8 weeks is for full time students and I am in fact part time.

Happy! Joy! Relief! Yey! Happy dance! Mostly relief! Then…

Are you freaking kidding me? I jsut rearranged my whole life for the next 6 weeks! I spent 2 weeks of very high stress attempting to do so! For no reason! Well actually the reason is pretty jolly obvious. I assumed the date they gave me was correct and no-one, I mean NO ONE picked up on it, at least not when they should have – which is the day I was given that date. I would say my happy and joyous feelings are well and truly tainted by feelings of frustration.

Well all make mistakes. I skim read emails thinking I know what’s going on, then later realise I was wrong. I skip over things I think are unimportant when I should not. I make typos that I don’t pick up on. Heck read this blog there’s probably hundreds of them! But I don’t manage other staff. I have in the past and I can promise you that every single time I knew a task would affect my staff I paid careful attention. It’s simple to me – the higher the stakes the more attention something gets.

Surely everyone involved knew that confirmation of candidature is about as high stakes as it gets for a PhD student. There are not really any other significant milestones until completion. They know that! It’s not a stretch of the imagination for them to understand how this one oversight has caused a lot of stress. I thanked the person who worked it out – I acutally emailed them and told them they were my favorite person in the entire world. But no-one apologiesed for the mistake. Nothing even close to an apology, although all comunication so far has been via email. I may get an apology when we meet via Zoom/Teams next.

Don’t misunderstand – I don’t mind either way if there is an apology or not. It would just be nice for my supervisors to acknowledge that along with this glorious news there is some understandable frustration as well. Mixed feelings for sure!