I'm technically past the halfway mark of my three-year PhD, but primate PhDs are generally accepted to take four years. Honestly, it's terrifying. Everyone tells me that most students don't have much data at this stage, and I either don't believe them or don't care. My project has gone slower than expected, its scope has gotten much narrower than I'd planned, and my productivity feels like a fraction of what I want it to be. I genuinely love my job, and I'm very capable of rolling with the punches, but most days it truly doesn't feel like I'm on the path to a PhD. The timelines in non-human primate research are an entirely different beast. Marmosets are cute, but they're frustrating me. They're not learning the way or at the speed I expected, but they're not exceptionally dumb (I don't think). I miss the pace of human and rodent research. I didn't think it went fast at the time, but compared to this, it was lightspeed.
I complain to people that I'm not producing enough, and they tell me I'm still on track. It's incredibly nice of them, but it feels like they're either just being kind or, more often, they have no idea how much work I actually do, so when they say I'm doing enough, it doesn't feel like it means anything. I don't want someone to tell me I'm doing well. I almost want them to grab me by the shoulders, shake me, and tell me to put my nose to the grindstone. I don't know if someone yelling at me would actually help, and I don't really feel like it would, but it's what feels right.
That's a weird thing for me to want, because historically I've been very good at motivating myself. I'm a happy-go-lucky guy: go with the flow, low stress, type B. My parents' highest aspiration for me was just to graduate high school and be happy. My bosses have always appreciated that I didn't need much guidance; I knew what needed to be done, and I wanted to get it done. I still feel motivated, but that sense of knowing what needs doing and just doing it is fading. It feels like every skill I've ever developed is sloughing off.
Part of this is probably the American in me clashing with a healthier European work culture. I've always believed there's no point in a PhD or a career in academia unless you've got an engine that can't be turned off, something that would keep you doing the work whether you got paid or not. Germany seems built on the opposite idea: nobody wants you to have a heart attack at work, and honestly, that's not what I'm after either. I'm pretty good at work/life balance. During my master's, I worked from home several evenings a week, but by my RA job afterward, I'd learned to get as much done as I could at work and then leave it there. Sometimes I stay late, like everyone does, but for the most part, work stays at work. I don't think I need to be in the lab 65 hours a week, but I also feel like I shouldn't be getting praise on the weeks when life gets in the way and the lab gets less of me. I'm blessed with an extremely kind supervisor who is always telling me what good work I've done, which makes it hard to tell whether I'm actually doing well or whether the bar here is just set differently than I'm used to. And I have 30 days of vacation a year, which feels completely appropriate yet deeply appalling to my American sensibilities, considering most of my jobs before this PhD came with a slowly accruing 12 days a year, if any.
And it's not just at work. The ease I used to have everywhere is sloughing off too. I miss home. I miss Southern hospitality and friendliness. I miss Mexican food. I miss gas station malt liquor. I miss not needing to stress about translating bottles, boxes, and phone calls. I miss not feeling like an immigrant. I miss the comfort of being comfortable easily.
When my wife and I first left Texas, we both agreed I would do a PhD anywhere but there. When we arrived in Germany, I thought there was a 50% chance we'd stick around for a post-doc here or somewhere else abroad. After a year, that dropped to 40%. Now, I'd be willing to take the worst academic job just to live back home. I'd be happy in Florida, where I lived before and loved it, or almost anywhere in the US.
And it's not because Germany is bad. The people are incredibly nice, the healthcare is fine, the food isn't gross, the weather could be worse, and I have lots of friends here. It's a good life. But it's not home, and I miss home.
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