My journey from full-time worker to full-time PhD researcher
Siobhan Melay
PhD Researcher, School of Education and Professional Development
Hello, my name is Siobhan and I am currently a second year PhD candidate in the school of Education and Professional Development. This blog is for those who are pursuing their own postgraduate goals or are perhaps deliberating over whether they are ready to begin a Master’s degree or even a doctorate. Whatever your situation, I hope that you find what I have to say useful and interesting.
Are you ready to change?
My journey from working full-time in a secondary school to becoming a full-time doctoral researcher began in the summer of 2019. As the summer passed, I knew with absolute certainty that September’s staff training sessions would be my last. I also knew that if I left, I had to do something that would excite and challenge me. It was only after a long and heartfelt conversation with my partner that I was able to give voice to something that I’d wanted for a long time; to return to education and study for a Master’s degree.
I started to examine my options and found that the government had introduced loans for students undertaking their first Master’s. As a full-time student I would be eligible for the full loan amount, enough for my fees with some left over to go towards living costs. My partner and I discussed what the impact on our joint finances would be if I were to leave my job and we discussed different scenarios, including me finding part-time work. For someone who’d worked for eleven years to build a comfortable life complete with mortgage and frequent holidays, it wasn’t an easy decision to leave paid employment.
I found it helpful to consider what a Master’s could do for my employment prospects in the long term. Both the Reed and Prospects advice pages identify career progression and increased earning potential as benefits of a Master’s degree. These are certainly compelling reasons for applying, but they’re not the only ones. For me, postgraduate study offered an opportunity to immerse myself fully in a world of research. The prospect of returning to academia was ultimately more important to me than money.
When it came to exploring different Master’s degrees and deciding which one was right for me, I knew that I wanted to study somewhere with a reputation for teaching excellence and producing world-leading research. Having worked for so long in education, it was important to me that wherever I studied had a legacy of focusing on solutions to ‘real world’ issues. I’d heard positive things about the University of Huddersfield’s initial teacher training courses so I decided to look at what the School of Education and Professional Development could offer in other areas of postgraduate study. In total, I researched ten different institutions but the SEND Master’s course at Huddersfield stood out as the perfect fit for me.
I began the process of drafting my application to Huddersfield in the Autumn of 2019 for September 2020 entry. The following year would be spent saving money in readiness for leaving work. My application was approved in December and everything was set. At that point, there was no way of knowing what was brewing on the horizon or how it would impact the whole planet…
(After such an ominous cliff hanger it’s probably fair to add a spoiler alert in case you, the reader, are feeling anxious about me – my application was accepted and everything from that point went smoothly. More details in my next blog. Now you can relax.)
All your life long
As an undergraduate, I’d always imagined myself continuing with my studies beyond my first degree. Of course, the reality is that life sometimes gets in the way of us being able to pursue those things that we might want. In my case, I saw my opportunity and took it a few years later than planned. Sometimes I find myself dwelling on the thought that I should have done it sooner, but the important thing is that I seized the opportunity at all.
I’m writing this now as a second year full-time doctoral candidate reflecting back on my journey from Master’s to PhD. I intend to use subsequent blogs to describe the different stages of that journey in more detail. I hope that you, the reader, will find this interesting when considering your own journey, whatever stage you may be at.
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