I need to know I'm not alone in this particular circle of hell. 
I'm a part-time PhD student in education policy. I work full-time during the day as a high school teacher. My schedule is: wake up at 6, teach teenagers all day (which is its own form of chaos), come home exhausted, eat something quick, and then try to muster the brainpower to analyze interview transcripts or write literature reviews from 8 PM to midnight.
It's been four years of this. FOUR. My non-PhD friends go out on weeknights. They watch TV. They have hobbies. I stare at NVivo and try to code qualitative data while my eyes blur and my back hurts from sitting in the same chair for hours.
The worst part is that my research is actually important to me. I care about teacher retention. I want to finish. But the mental fog is real. I'll read the same paragraph three times and retain nothing. I'll write a page and then delete it the next day because it's gibberish. My brain feels like a computer with too many tabs open, and one of them is playing music I can't find.
Weekends aren't weekends. They're just "longer writing days with better coffee." I haven't had a real break in years. My advisor is supportive but doesn't really get the part-time struggle. She's always like, "Just carve out dedicated writing time!" Like, where, Linda? In the 25th hour of the day I don't have?
Fellow part-timers, how do you keep going? How do you protect your sanity AND make progress? I'm running on fumes and caffeine and I'm only halfway through Chapter 4.
I'm a part-time PhD student in education policy. I work full-time during the day as a high school teacher. My schedule is: wake up at 6, teach teenagers all day (which is its own form of chaos), come home exhausted, eat something quick, and then try to muster the brainpower to analyze interview transcripts or write literature reviews from 8 PM to midnight.
It's been four years of this. FOUR. My non-PhD friends go out on weeknights. They watch TV. They have hobbies. I stare at NVivo and try to code qualitative data while my eyes blur and my back hurts from sitting in the same chair for hours.
The worst part is that my research is actually important to me. I care about teacher retention. I want to finish. But the mental fog is real. I'll read the same paragraph three times and retain nothing. I'll write a page and then delete it the next day because it's gibberish. My brain feels like a computer with too many tabs open, and one of them is playing music I can't find.
Weekends aren't weekends. They're just "longer writing days with better coffee." I haven't had a real break in years. My advisor is supportive but doesn't really get the part-time struggle. She's always like, "Just carve out dedicated writing time!" Like, where, Linda? In the 25th hour of the day I don't have?
Fellow part-timers, how do you keep going? How do you protect your sanity AND make progress? I'm running on fumes and caffeine and I'm only halfway through Chapter 4.