I am standing on the pavement, wondering what to do next. I was supposed to be getting the Outer line back to my hotel in the city centre, but it’s closed – a signalling problem, or something. Lots of people seem to be wondering what to do. Someone from the station is talking to a group of frustrated looking commuters (I’m not the only one) trying to explain when the line will open again. I haven’t got time to wait for that though. I’m already late leaving the library this evening and I have to be up at 5am to catch my flight home. I don’t like flying and I’m starting to feel tense about that too. But the plane will have to do, for now, until I’m more settled in my new routine and have time to think things through better. I ask a passerby where I can get a bus to the city centre and she tells me that the nearest stop for that is on Dumbarton Road. I need the number 2, and she points me in the right direction. It’s raining heavily, but I’m prepared for the Glasgow rain now, as this is my fourth trip up to campus since I started here, back in October. I head off in the direction of the bus stop, and my mind wanders back to the journey home, and then on to the kids. I’ll see them again tomorrow. The thought comforts me, but then I remember I haven’t bought them gifts! Oh no! I always buy gifts. Nothing big, just a little something so they know I’m thinking of them while I’m away. But I have forgotten. I’ve been so busy with my studies.

I can’t go home empty handed.

Last time I gave them Glasgow pencils and fridge magnets, and they were really pleased with them, surprisingly so for teenagers. The time before that it was shortbread, from the motorway services. The coach I was travelling home on stopped for a comfort break – I was certainly glad of a break on the 15 hour journey back to Southampton (I was trying out the bus on that trip). But I was also glad because I’d forgotten to buy gifts that time too. I look around, but I can’t see much. Maybe they won’t mind if I don’t get them anything this time. It’s not as if they’re little anymore. Maybe they don’t need gifts every time. And it’s late. And now I have to find my way back to the hotel by bus. I need to eat, I have to pack. I’m cold and wet and tired. Probably they won’t mind. But what if they do? I miss them. I mind. I look around again and there’s an Iceland nearby. Ok, that’ll do, I can get shortbread, and I head towards the shop…

About me

I am a mature student and I live in Southampton with my husband and two teenage children. When I tell people I am doing a full time PhD and that I commute to Glasgow for a week every month for my studies, I receive mixed responses. Some positive, some not so. The most common responses are something along the lines of, ‘How on Earth are you managing to do that, with your family situation? It sounds so stressful’, and, ‘Why would you want to do that, you must be mad!’ My answer is this. Yes, it is stressful, and I probably am mad, but having spent many years at home as a full time stay-at-home mum and primary carer to our two children, I am used to stress and I was probably already slightly mad when I started this journey anyway! It’s true though, doing a PhD, full time, 430 miles away from campus, with a family, can be challenging. But I didn’t plan it.

In 2018, when our eldest was 12 and our youngest 9, I finally took the plunge and headed back to university, 25 years after completing my French Studies degree. Wanting to retrain as a translator, with a view to specialising in medical translation and setting up as a freelancer, a job I thought would be compatible with family life, I enrolled on a part-time MA in Translation Studies at the University of Portsmouth, a city less than an hour’s commute away from our home. The course involved one day a week of in-person classes on campus. The rest was online, so it was doable. I was able to juggle that with domestic commitments, and my husband did the drop offs and pick-ups for the one day a week I was on campus. It was a big change for me, having been away from academia, and indeed the workplace too, for such a long time. But I was ready for it by then.

I completed my MA in 2020. But things did not go to plan. Instead of setting up as a freelance translator, I decided to do a PhD. This wasn’t something I had even considered doing at the outset, but I had really enjoyed researching and writing my dissertation – despite the difficulties of doing this during the Covid-19 pandemic while also locked down and homeschooling the children – and by the end I was not ready to stop. In fact, it felt like just the beginning. The whole MA experience had challenged me in so many new ways, and I wanted to carry on with what I had started. Only by the time I decided to apply for funding (which turned out to be very challenging in itself), my supervisor was working in Glasgow. So, if I was serious about doing a PhD, which I was, by then, it looked like I would have to do it in Scotland. Only living hundreds of miles away and having two kids, it did not look promising on paper…

But here I am, three years later, at the end of my first year doing a practice-focused PhD on the translation of autism narrative. On a journey that has turned our lives upside down.

My Routine

For three weeks of every month I work on my project at home, reading, writing, thinking, training. I’ve not started translating yet. I spend two days a week working in my local university libraries, thanks to my SCONUL membership, and the other three days I work in my home office, a purpose built shed half way down the garden. Then for one week every month I come up to Glasgow, to meet with fellow PGRs, collect materials from the library and have in-person meetings with my supervisors. And to experience another PGR life for a week. I live in a hotel, usually in the city centre, and mostly these days I travel up and down by train. This seems to work best for me. I prefer being on the ground, and the 8 hour train journey is much more comfortable than 15 hours on the bus. I use the travelling time to read, or clear my email inbox. Or sleep.

Adjusting and Adapting

It has been a most unusual year for us, adjusting to new routines, finding out what works best, what doesn’t work at all (commuting into the uni from a hotel at the bottom of the M77 slip road in Kilmarnock, or half an hour’s walk from the station in Dumbarton, for example, are not things I plan on doing again). It’s a new way of life for us. There is the juggling, and the usual issues, not unfamiliar to other parents in academia (I have done the Parenting and Academia training), or in any other field for that matter. The squabbles about domestic chores, childcare, who is busier, who is more exhausted, now we are both working full time outside of the home. It’s not easy for any of us, but on the whole we are all adjusting. The kids seem proud of their mum, except when they can’t find clean pants or matching socks where they expect to find them, or when they want a lift and I am ‘at work’. I wear a smart shirt every day, and a lanyard with my Glasgow ID card on it, from 9-5 – visual clues that mum’s taxi is ‘unavailable’, unless booked in advance. And it’s fair to say they are enjoying dad’s taxi much more now too! I miss my family when I’m in Glasgow, but I also relish the time to focus solely on my studies. And they probably benefit from the break from me as well, when I’m away, but that’s not my story to tell. It’s not easy, no, but no one ever said doing a PhD would be. But it does feel good (most of the time). And as long as I remember to buy gifts, everyone is happy!

Donna Wilson is a first year PhD researcher in Translation Studies at the University of Glasgow (based in Southampton) and mother of two teenagers. Her research looks at how the practice of translating autism life writing can lead to greater understanding of autism and neurodiversity.