Finding Meaning and Purpose in Research - Revisited

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Danielle Fatzinger is almost at the end of her PhD journey in Celtic & Gaelic, working through her corrections and reflecting on the PhD process. She works part-time as Digital Curator for the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) and a Research Policy & Engagement Officer, working on communications for the Lab for Academic Culture. In her free time, you can find her knitting, baking, crocheting, and playing the Sims. You can contact her on Twitter @bonniecelt, LinkedIn, or via email.

Last year, somewhat soon after the beginning of lockdowns, I wrote a blog about struggling to find meaning and purpose in my research. It was something that was on my mind a lot at the time: what is the point of studying seventeenth-century manuscripts during a pandemic? It’s something I still ask myself, sometimes. But with a different perspective and the progress of the last year behind me, I want to revisit the question of meaning and purpose in research. As can be expected from someone who spends much of their life thinking, my mind has shifted.

What is ‘Meaning’ and ‘Purpose’, Anyway?

Last year, my focus was a lot on my own reasons: things like my family and the pursuit of knowledge, things that felt a little selfish in the chaos. I thought that sure, people may find some entertainment or connection to my work, but that’s not as important as the people literally saving lives. Some things are meaningful, and my research isn’t.

But I was wrong. 

I realise I wasn’t looking for meaning and purpose in my research itself last year. I was looking for meaning and purpose to the life I was living, to the changes, to not knowing how to go about work, to disrupted plans and delayed reunions. I think many of us were. It was easy to focus on the meaning of the research because that was something I needed to spend my time on, and I kept focused on it because working on my thesis was so difficult and I needed to get it done.

It wasn’t until I took a step back and stopped searching my research for meaning that the research started to have meaning again. Because the life I was living made sense again. How could I find the meaning in my research if I was ignoring that I couldn’t find adequate meaning elsewhere?

Seeking Meaning

While many scientists and others were saving those who needed it, seeking and cultivating meaning and purpose (through virtual connections, entertainment, books, etc) was helping us through long nights, and another weekend in, and a day of Zoom calls, and looking at the same walls day after day, night after night. Not finding it was ruining our mental health, as it hid at the pub, and the in-person seminars, and the conferences, and all the other places we were missing.

We seek and make the meaning of our research, but it’s difficult to do that when those activities are disrupted, especially when our lives are disrupted as well, especially in ways that fill us with mental, emotional, physical, financial, relationship, and time-related stressors. The meaning of the research may have helped some people make it through: for me, I had to emotionally let go of the research in order to start to adjust and recover.

Getting to a place where I started to truly find the meaning and joy in my research again was a long journey full of mental health troubles that led to physical troubles I’m still working on, in part because it took me half a year to realise how much of a problem I was having. I was getting things done, after all. 

Insomnia and difficulty sleeping. Indulging too much in comfort foods while losing any semblance of a routine of physical activity. Engaging less in hobbies. Struggling to work and then feeling guilty as weeks went by without getting my full-time hours in, when I spent hours in front of my computer forcing myself to read and write and make progress. 

I’m grateful I noticed the problem in time for reprioritising to help. Work less hours on purpose, to avoid the guilty hours. Read and work through a recommended book on sleeping. Get out of my flat for walks. Knit more, crochet more, or bake more. Work to address larger concerns, and call more on my support system to help get me through.

It didn’t help that I’m still not used to the long nights of Scottish winter (aka, ‘The Dark Times’), but I started to feel better. A true break for the winter holiday helped. I was honest with myself, even if it didn’t always feel good. And now, after months of progress, I feel so much better. I’m still working on things (building habits and routines is harder than breaking them), but my support system came through, both external support from friends, family, and colleagues, and internal support of myself. 

And the better I felt, the more I found meaning in my research, and the more I enjoyed the opportunities I got to share it. I still hated my thesis by the time I submitted it (so much editing), and it’s a bit of a chore to edit it yet again as I do my corrections, but I feel the meaning in it again. I don’t need to argue with myself anymore about whether or not it’s there (although whether I need to argue with others about it is a different story).

Our research is meaningful because we make it so, because we see the meaning in it, and then feel compelled to tell others about it so they can see the meaning, too. 

It doesn’t matter if it’s developing new technology...

Or influencing policy...

Or revealing historical or contemporary cultural, social, and political connections...

Or creating connections and giving someone the satisfaction of a bit of their family history…

Or improving medical care…

Or developing ways to address climate change...

Or any of the thousands of things big and small our research does. 

It all has meaning when we make it so. 

And it’s okay and perfectly understandable that when life is unstable, when we ourselves are frazzled and struggling, we lose sight of that. 

Steady On, PGRs

I ended my post last year with ‘Steady on, PGRs’. ‘Steady on’ was my motto for 2020. When I chose it in 2019, I thought I would need it to finish my thesis and give conference presentations, to plan events and gain leadership skills, to look for jobs and wrestle with red tape. I never imagined I would need it for a pandemic...plus all those other things, and more.

‘Steady on, PGRs’ was how I ended the post because I thought we all needed it. To keep going, steadily, getting things done but not peaking too high or too low. To know that we could keep going, and do it.

I know now that staying steady requires sometimes taking breaks, and sometimes working overtime, and always, always knowing if you are steady. And balancing yourself if you’re not, rather than trusting that it will work itself out. I’m a huge fan of taking care of yourself, so I don’t like that it took me so long to realise I hadn’t thought my own motto through enough before using it, but I got there.

When I started writing this post, I wasn’t expecting to get to mental health and work-life balance, but so many things circle back there naturally. Our research and mental health can be closely connected, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. The important thing is to manage that...to give yourself the room you need to rebalance yourself when needed, in a way that works for you.

So, in the end, I stand by my send-off, although with a little more nuance this time.

Steady on, PGRs.