Hello and Happy World CP Day 2025! This year marks probably my momentous World CP Day as I start my PhD in a few days. What, I know, didn’t see that one coming? Me neither! Let’s walk through the past year almost shall we…
As you know just over a year ago I finished the PGCert in Health Professional Education and for a while, I was loving life, no assignments, no book, for the first time in years I came home from work and could just chill out!! But, I got bored, no, I didn’t, well kind of. I knew that I needed to do more studying to progress further in my role, therefore I had a plan to do a master’s by research with a topic in mind. Yes, I may have done it so soon after my PGCert because I was a bit bored and ready for the next challenge but also I really want to progress further in my role, at this point I’d been in my role for just over 2 years and was ready for the next thing.
Therefore, I floated the idea to my line manager of doing the MSc things were heading in the right direction it was now March and I had 4 months to find my supervisors and write my proposal. Great, plenty of time!
The topic I am doing my then MSc on is a topic that I have talked about a lot and in a nutshell is about disability disclosure (there are many layers to this which we’ll discuss in another blog otherwise this blog would be long enough to be a thesis itself). But, having a very strong passionate connection to this research I got stuck straight in and within a few weeks I had many documents full of ideas and research. Therefore, I decided to stop researching for now and focus on finding supervisors.
The first supervisor I found and fairly quickly and was so privileged they wanted to be on board, my second supervisor soon followed and was a colleague within my team so that was it job done – what a great team. I still had 3 months to do my proposal everything was falling into place. I met one of my supervisors and showed them my multiple documents full of ideas and we were chatting about my ideas.
After about half an hour into this meeting, my supervisor seemed impressed by my ideas, resulting in them asking me why I was doing this as an MSc and why I had not considered doing this as a PhD. Not the question I was expecting! I thought about it a lot. I mean, I’ve only done part MSc never mind skipping straight to PhD? However, the thought of going straight to a PhD was appealing, it would enable me to progress in my role too (perhaps a bit quicker) which as I say was appealing. But most importantly my proposed topic is something that I am hugely passionate about therefore to do a bigger piece of research on this was the dream!
I asked colleagues’ thoughts and opinions and yeah, I went for it! This also meant I had to find another second supervisor as my current one was working towards their PhD also and therefore needed someone who had already attained doctoral status. However, this turned out perfect I now have two fabulous supervisors and my fabulous OT colleague on my team to help with the occupational science focus I want to have throughout my PhD. Perfect!
It certainly was stressful writing the proposal as even though the proposal wasn’t that much different between MSc by research and PhD I was still getting my head around that I was doing a PhD and it made me feel nervous! I was stressed for weeks and that came through in my proposal and I almost put too much into this and needed to strip this back a lot. But after a few drafts, we got there and I finally submitted the proposal that got accepted! I start my PhD induction this week, it’s real, it’s happening ahh!
I say this and don’t get me wrong I have enjoyed and made the most of this summer! But oh my word, I am excited, I am so passionate about creating a safe space for disability disclosure, and to have the space to do some academic research on this is such a brilliant opportunity. I am definitely going to relish every moment of this!!
How am I feeling now? Nervous and not prepared for these 6 years of stress I have just signed up for but my most predominant feeling is just immense privilege!
Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me to get here I am nervous but I am honestly thrilled and already cannot wait for my ethics to get approved and get cracking (getting ahead I know). Let’s do this!!
Thank you for reading and for getting me here as I genuinely believe I wouldn’t be on this journey without my blog! So, it’s a big happy World CP Day from me this year!
I sign this off with so much love and joy,
Georgia x
