Hello all,

I just got awarded a full scholarship/studentship to begin my PhD, and I needed to come somewhere and just talk about how hard I worked for this.  For context I’m studying in the uk & I’m a home student, psychology.  Tl;Dr at the end

Guys, I have struggled through life scraping average grades.  My career history is a mess of me getting bored - like depression levels of bored - and having to move on, never managing to break out of entry level/low skilled employment.  Late diagnosis of ADHD explained a lot (I’m sure many here can relate), but obviously that doesn’t mean a lucrative and satisfying career suddenly gets handed to you 🤣

I just turned 35 - I got told I’d won the scholarship the day after my birthday 🎂 - and it’s taken me just over 10 years to get here.  The first few years of that was me exploring my interest in human thriving, but it was around 5-6 years ago that I decided I wanted to pursue PhD, and it’s been a slog of having to work jobs that bring me no joy/satisfaction alongside trying to study in preparation for this application.

I have a wonderfully supportive supervisor-to-be, they saw my potential from day one and fought my corner against academics who, shall we say, are less open minded to a non-traditional psychology research background.

This scholarship had a 4% success rate, (for context, I think the success rate of getting into Oxford/Cambridge is 16%).

I was chosen over people with a history of publication, established research careers, and careers in government policy to get this scholarship (I won’t say details of the scholarship just incase I’m not supposed to share).  I have no publications, no relevant career history - except for the fact that my PhD is going to be on improving workplaces for people, and I have experience of miserable workplaces 😂 but they chose me on the strength of my research proposal, and the fact that I worked incredibly hard to fully explain why this was necessary and why I was the right person to do it.

I’ve worked retail and ran my own business in coaching while I worked away at my masters, and now I have a scholarship which means I will be able to focus on this 100% without having to work retail anymore - I can’t explain how much this means to me.

Guys, I have worked so hard, and it paid off.  I’ve never achieved anything like this before.  

And there is an element of luck here I’ll admit, but I had a hand in creating that, and my supervisor helped push me through - they took a chance on me and will now do some dam good research to pay them back, but I had to be good enough for them to see that and want to support me.  

And when I’m in a similar position I too will make sure to hold the door open for those with “less than traditional” routes into academia.

As this is the uk, I’ll be doing about 3 years full time, no taught aspects - though I’ll be auditing a few modules (that means going to the classes to get the info but not doing the assignment), I’ll just be doing the research project.  My future prospects after PhD I will wait and see, I feel it’s naive these days to just work on the research and assume that I’ll walk into a research/post-doc/lectureship, I’m open to that but I’ll also be developing connections, seeing what business I can build from this, because who knows what the world will look like in 3 years

Anyway, I had to share this somewhere, as the actual scholarship forum is full of people who didn’t win and I don’t want to rub it in their face, and I haven’t shared it publically with my personal network because I have a wedding to attend on the weekend and I don’t want to steal anyone’s thunder - I’ll announce it afterward.

Tl;Dr: I worked incredibly hard to get this scholarship, and I won it on purely the strength of my proposal & rationale, I have little of the experience they usually award this scholarship to, and I’ve never achieved sobering like this before.  Thank you for being a place I can share this ❤️❤️❤️❤️

I worked so so hard for this