Passing the Annual Review

I passed! And I found my feet again…

I’ve passed my PhD annual review, and while that sentence looks neat and celebratory on the page, the reality behind it was anything but straightforward.

The timing couldn’t really have been worse. It landed at a bleak point in the calendar, when most sensible people are winding down for the year, plates piled high with mince pies and glasses topped up with sherry. At the same time, my colleague, the late, great Sharon Bryan, was in hospice care, and the months leading up to the review had been personally heavy in ways that don’t pause for a deadline.

On top of all that, I discovered just how little I knew about the doctoral journey itself. I was genuinely horrified to learn that I needed to convince two unknown assessors that I deserved to progress to Year 2. That realisation marked a low point for me. I felt overwhelmed, and a little resentful that while others were switching off for the holidays, I’d be beavering away at my laptop, trying to justify my own existence as a researcher.

But then something unexpected happened.

Once I actually got stuck into preparing for the review, I found myself… enjoying it. Not in a cheerful way, more a slightly morbid, grimly determined enjoyment, but enjoyment nonetheless. I suppose that’s the point of the process. It forced me to take stock of where I really was, to be honest with myself, and to give myself a much-needed kick up the bottom.

Somewhere in that process, I fell back in love with my research.

And on the day itself? I realised that I actually knew what I was talking about. Or, at the very least, I managed to convince the assessors that I did, because they passed me there and then.

So now I’m officially in Year 2.

It’s going to be the busiest year yet: ethics approval, finishing my literature review and methodology chapters, and finally starting to talk to people. It’s a lot. But this time, I feel ready. Energised. Eager.

And as I step into this next stage, I’m very aware that I’m not doing this alone. Sharon believed deeply in this work — in survivor voices, in integrity, in doing things properly even when it was hard. I carry her with me now, in the questions I ask and the standards I hold myself to.

So this next part of the journey is for both of us.

Hear us roar!