After five years (almost to the day) ... my PhD has been submitted. It still hasn't fully dawned on me but the weight being lifted is certainly a blessing. Five years is a long time and a little self-reflection may relieve some of the remaining burden. Between two separate secondments (one with Unilever, one with WRAP), becoming Doctoral President at Loughborough University just before COVID, and having worked full time for ~8 months I cannot say it was a smooth and continuous process. In a sense I miss it. Having almost complete autonomy, managing multiple workflows and projects on multiple fronts kept me busy but fulfilled, tired but invigorated.
I entered the PhD with lofty expectations of changing the world for the better though it quickly dawned on me that my work would be but a single new drop in the ocean of collective human knowledge. That realisation certainly knocked me down a few pegs. Nonetheless, my motiviation held true and was fueled by my incessant need to ask "but why?" Something my mother was once told at a parents evening in Primary School "interrupted the other childrens learning". Not in a demeaning way, but that all should share in learning and I cannot just hog it. The questioning never stopped, the PhD just focused it.
My degree (Materials Engineering) really opened up this door deeper and more broadly. The mind-bogglingly large number of materials that we interact with almost daily that are predominantly seen as means to an end and not the absolute wonder that they are.
The PhD focused on just a few select materials. Primarily cellulose and waste cocoa pod husk, polylactic acid (PLA), and polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT). The specifics on what these mean are not important here, but for context they combine to make industrially compostable composites where I studied the thermal, mechanical, morphological, and, of course, industrial composting properties.
I became interested in such materials during completion of studies during my degree as a new 'frontier' in the future of plastics; requiring new production and disposal methods but aiming to meet the requirements of living in 21st society. Considering the nigh incomprehensible volumes of waste humanity produces I couldn't in good conscience undertake research into such materials without studying a disposal route. This is something I would like to see more of in materials research as disposal costs and responsibility are almost always external and shifted downwards.
Anyway, back to the point. Something I still cannot shake from the process is the dreaded imposter syndrome (the doubt of one's own abilities, that one is a fraud). This fed my anxiety dementor relentlessly such that I became my own worst enemy. I doubt it's something that can be overcome, more something to wrestle into acceptance - to become comfortable being uncomfortable, accepting the feeling of stupidity and recognising that when you put yourself into a position of the unknown you will inevitably doubt your own abilities. An incredibly useful piece on this, that is applicable in more than just research, is the article: The importance of stupidity in scientific research. The final line being:
The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.
I am now having to accept that I really have opened the "stupid door". That very little of what I will do in the future will be something I have already done. Experience will be built, but it'll be new and compound on the old. As much as it shakes me feeling stupid, I have opened this door myself and wouldn't have it any other way. I'm not going to bang on about it, but realisation was the first step and in that sense I cannot see where I am going, only where I have been, without being too whimsical about it.
Alas, onwards into the journery of plastics, waste, and circularity. New opportunities, new challenges, new discoveries, new insights, and new stupidity.
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