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Asked by anon-215932 to Laura, Kathryn, Ian, Chris, Bogdana, Alex on 10 Jun 2019.
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Ian Cookson answered on 10 Jun 2019:
There’s been a couple. My mum and Dad divorced when I was about 2, which had an impact on my behaviour for a long time before I realised and had counselling. When I was 25 I tore my cruciate ligament playing football around the same time my stepfather died, so that was pretty tough. I would say though, that while we all have those dips, we all have great parts as well.
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Kathryn Atherton answered on 10 Jun 2019:
The community of one of the schools in which I have worked suffered a terrible tragedy while I was there, in which lives were lost. That was a difficult time.
I recognise how phenomenally lucky I am in general, though!
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Laura Fisk answered on 10 Jun 2019:
Probably the most annoying answer I could give to this question is that different parts of my life have been hard for different reasons at different times. But it’s true! If you’ll bear with me (thank you!!) I’ll give you a few examples
When I was at senior school, I was very shy. I did not know how to interact with many people – I hadn’t had much practice (I went to a teeny primary school and didn’t see people outside of school because they didn’t live near me). So, when I had to go to a big youth camp I was soooooo scared (I cried myself to sleep a lot). If you’d have asked me then what was hardest – it was that. But now if you’d ask me if that would be hard for me now – nope: I would love it. The difference between then and now is that I have had practice dealing with people and I know I can do it.
When I was in sixth form, I liked to work hard but I didn’t believe I was good enough because of varuous things like my background etc. So I tried to ‘fix this’ by working harder and harder to ‘do better’. But I couldn’t ‘fix’ something that wasn’t actually broken (I, like you, *am* good enough), and this meant I got really ill, working myself to the bone. If you’d have asked me at the time if that was hard, I would have said ‘no’, because I thought it was the only and right way to be. If you ask me now, I would say it was one of the hardest parts of my life – because I can now see that I was ill and needed to work out how to let go of those unhelpful attitudes (even though they had some benefits) and develop more balanced ideas about work (so that I wouldn’t end up in hospital). That was ‘hard’ in a different way.
My last example is when I had trouble at work. I had a clash with colleagues and I was worried I would lose my job. It didn’t happen, but for that time it was soooooo hard. I worried about what I would do to get money, continue my career, where I would live, how I would deal with feeling like I had let people down… Now it’s a long time in the past, I can see how it made me strong and I have lots of skills in managing conflict because of it (and an attitude of “I will survive!”) – so it was hard, but it was also really positive.
So ‘hard’ to me means lots of things – some good, some bad. Mostly, I want to say experiencing challenges is ok: it might not be pleasant, but it’s ok to find things hard. The trick is to work out what you can do (with the help of others) to work it out and get through it. -
Bogdana Huma answered on 11 Jun 2019:
I found the past year quite hard as I transitioned from being a PhD student into my first lecturing job. I had to move to a new city and a new university. I left all my friends behind. The job was at first particularly demanding because there was so much to do. I ended up working 10+ hours a day and didn’t have any weekends off during the teaching period. This affected my physical and mental health because I didn’t have any time to exercise, or to catch up with my friends. There were weeks when I didn’t even have time to speak to my parents on the phone. One morning, I had to choose between taking a shower or finishing some lecture slides for a class I was teaching that morning (I chose the latter, but am not proud of it).
From this experience, I realised how important it is to take breaks from work and to take care of oneself. Since then, I’ve been advising all my tutees and dissertation supervisees to take regular breaks from studying. -
Alex Lloyd answered on 11 Jun 2019:
I have had a few difficult times in my life. One that I experienced recently is the death of my dog (I’d had him since I was 10). Coping with that loss was very difficult, but I was lucky to have a good support network around me which helped me remember the good times and move forward with those positive memories.
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Chris Fullwood answered on 11 Jun 2019:
It depends on what you mean by hard I suppose. Two of very good friends died quite close together when I was much younger and that was obviously a very emotionally difficult time for me. The last year of my PhD was probably the most intellectually difficult time I’ve ever experienced, but that was mainly my own fault because I didn’t work hard enough in the first few years and left myself far too much work to do. There’s a lesson in there somewhere I’m sure!
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