Hey folks,
In defended my thesis a while ago and I thought it would be a feeling of accomplishment.
To be honest I feel so blaaah about it. Anybody else get this?
Hey folks,
In defended my thesis a while ago and I thought it would be a feeling of accomplishment.
To be honest I feel so blaaah about it. Anybody else get this?
Comments
First of all, congratulations. Well done. What you’re experiencing is normal. It’s very anticlimactic, to be honest, because you’ve worked so hard to get to that point, and then it’s just…done.
Celebrate your achievement with your friends. Let them make you feel how amazing you are for what you’ve accomplished. Do something special for yourself. Give yourself permission to feel good about being finished with this part of your education. Do things you really enjoy that you haven’t had time to do for a long time, and be really intentional about it. You deserve to pamper yourself right now, and if you think about it as a reward for all your hard work, you’ll start to feel better.
Pretty common. I warn all of my grad students about this anti-climatic feeling. Actually I felt it after every big build up in life including graduations and my wedding. Getting tenure was probably best/worst, ha! Post tenure review and advancing to full professor does keep us on our toes so I think that’s one good thing about it.
Haha, yes, that is very common.
That’s why I celebrate submitting papers/theses, not the final thing. Submitting is when you said “ok, it’s good enough”, which is the hardest part.
But yes, the post-defense blues is very common. Have you done the relevant rituals? As in, celebration? Usually when we’re at this point we’re so burned out from everything and so full of self-doubt (because you KNOW you could have done better, and the trick is to understand that this is ALWAYS true, no matter how good you did :P). You need the ritual of congratulating yourself, as in, make it very explicit that you ALLOW yourself to feel good, because you did good.
You fucking defended, you fucking graduated! That’s HUGE! You’re in this academic bubble, where you see so many people having their PhDs, so it feels like not too much of a big deal, and so the emotions lag behind that rational understanding, and so we need rituals (e.g. a party), usually involving other people who convince our perfectionist self that we did AWESOMELY.
What you can also do is meditate on it. Sit in silence for 5, 10, 30 minutes (whatever you can stomach) and let this giddy feeling rise. It’s there somewhere, along with all the other confusing emotions, it takes silence to find it sometimes.
Normal.
It’s underwhelming.
OTOH what did you expect, a parade?
Have fun at your postdoc. Have you published 9 papers yet?…
Yep, it was “just” the removal of a stressor for me.
(Although to be fair, with hindsight and distance, it was a memorable event, more than I realised at the time maybe.)
go get some more sleep!! go take a vacation!! it’s ok to need (a lot and a long time) of rest after this.. your body needs to adjust
The intent is to provide students with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different titles.
Yes. It blows.
Same here, but after the final turn-in and university seal moment. Thought: It’s a beautiful day, but I need an oil change.
In general, barring extremes (e.g. substance use), dopamine peaks during the “drive” and “action” phases of the motivation cycle. The plateau ends shortly after “achievement” and remains low until “need.” Eat well, sleep well, do some self-reflection and process your life transitions. Another high-stakes accomplishment will come along to pursue, but until then your system will have to readjust to normal motivators like food, sleep, and really good stretches.
Give yourself 4-6 weeks before you are interested in doing things again