Hello everybody. I am new to this forum, stumbled upon it while googling on PhD's who have a loss of motivation.

Doing my PhD was a dream for me! When I finished my bachelors I send in my thesis to a research institute who were willing to fund and host my MPhil in history. After a couple of days I got a skype from my contact at the institute telling me that they wanted to offer me a PhD instead of a masters. They were amazed by my bachelors thesis. All the work I did for the thesis was more than necessary and I loved doing it. It got rewarded with a PhD position. I was so happy and felt acknowledged in my efforts.

After a one and a half month in my PhD, 10.000 kilo's away from home, my girlfriend cheated on me and told me she wasn't coming to visit me, 2 days prior to her arrival here. And to make matters worse, two weeks after that somebody close to me tried to commit suicide. So in those two months, trying to adapt to life in this rather boring academic town, I got so depressed. My research prof offered me to go back home for a while but I rejected his kind offer. After a month of being homesick I passed that point so I didn't want to relive that.

But now (month 4 of my PhD) I have a complete lack of motivation. I can't even focus on reading, ah hell, if I don't have any appointments I just lay in bed till 1pm. I want to get out of this downwards spiral, but the 3 months that I didn't do any significant stuff, are pressuring me now so hard to do even more, which eventually leads to looking up to an enormous mountain of work/responsibilities, which stresses me out so much I'll drop everything and be idle.

Anybody of you have experience with such situations and how did you get out? Thanks, for reading my 2 cents

Hi,

I think you might consider taking the offer to go home for a while. It doesn't help when you are in the same place and doing the same thing without progress. I have also been doing PhD and I believe your concentration can only comes when you have peace of mind. Changing scenario or even meet new people can help. At least you have nothing to lose.

If this is too hard, you might also wanna consider working at your home town. As you said your subject is history, I assume you could do some part at home. It was sad about your gf, but you have a very rare oppurtunity and a high chance of success.

For your work, I think you might wanna start by doing it a little bit. When sth gets done, you will feel less pressure and can continue bit by bit. I hope this helps

hi phdiddy, well done on being offered a chance to do your PhD -- and also for your very good bachelors thesis! What a fantastic opportunity!

I am sorry that your gf cheated on you, it is best that you know about it, so you can process it and move on with your life.

I can see how you wanted to continue with the phd, and just get on with it.

The truth is everyone needs a break, even holidays can be difficult for some of us -- why because we simply can't switch off (I am one of them!), I would really recommend that you take up your research prof's offer, say to him, yes thank you I do need a short break.

Go away from the phd, recover and rejuvenate yourself, come back refreshed and ready to go again.

As for the gf, as painful as it is, believe me, things will get better and you WILL get over this experience.

love satchi

Go home for the summer if I was you. I'm inclined to say that it is not your PhD that is causing you this blip in your mental health, but the two issues of your gf and attempted suicide have probably affected you more seriously than you thought.

It's August. In Europe, at least, universities practically shut down. Get some rest time. Even if it's 2 weeks, do something different. If you can afford to go home, I would. Family and friends make a monumental difference when you're feeling down. Do something goofy with old friends from home. Spend a day shopping with your parent(s). Anything like that will restore you to a bit of normality and context.

Having the two aforementioned things happening at home would be tough, but 10,000km away will intensify that. Go home, get some context and rest, and go back to it refreshed a couple of weeks later.

I agree with the other posts. You definitely need a break but I would suggest when you come back to it, try not to overwhelm yourself with how much you haven't done or how much you need to do.

Organise your work space so you haven't got a 101 things piled up on your desk that need your attention. Prioritise what needs doing first and make a daily to-do list. Even adding things like contact supervisor, read 1 important paper, etc that way you can be ticking things off the list throughout the day and you will feel a sense of achievement which will make you keep going. Just be careful not to add too many things onto each day because that can lead to you not getting through the whole list and make you feel just as unmotivated as when you started.

Good luck

In addition to the advice you've had about taking a break, one thing I found really helpful in my first year was to attend some PhD workshops at the university (general skills development workshops on things like academic writing, critical thinking and so on) - is there anything like this for PhD students at your university? I found it good to attend these and talk to other students who were at the same stage - it helped motivate me.

I agree with others here too - you've had two big shocks right at the start of your PhD and you probably need to deal with the emotional side of that. You haven't lost too much time, so don't beat yourself up about the things you haven't done - you can get it on track from here.

I have been away from this town and forbid myself to think about the PhD and research, for a week. That really helped to ease the tension. Now I've started to work again, small steps and I found somebody to work with. I guess the PhD-life can be quite lonely if you don't buddy-up. Now, in every block of 4 hours, we set goals for the 4 hours and after we evaluate what we've done and how we achieved it. Works quite well.

I've decided not to go back home. The costs that are involved in going back are 'too damn high', I get paid in the local currency and after conversion to euro's that'll give me fuck all to live on, lol. And if my prof is going to pay it, it will be deducted from my research budget, and I'd rather spend that money on actual research. But as I said, I've been away for a couple of days, it really helped, left my smartphone back home so I couldn't check my mail, FB, and other distractions (old nokia's come in handy sometimes).

I sat down with my prof and made a planning for the next couple of months. He encouraged me not to take off to fast and soon as it might backfire, basically what you guys said as well. Hopefully nothing else happens, and I will stay on this track... Getting out of bed at least before 11 am nowadays ;-). Thanks so much for the advice and the nice words.

As my prof told me: The pain of a cheating partner will only last for a couple of months, your doctorate will be for the rest of your life.

Take a break and clear your head. Look into a possible leave of absence so that the clock is not ticking.