Student Neglect and Trauma in Higher Academia
Working hard isn’t enough when support is lacking
This part of a series of articles that I am writing to explore my recently diagnosed PTSD. The experience has been bizarre, but I know I’m not the only one. I want to speak up, as I’ve hidden my depression for as long as I am able, and it has been tiring. By working through my life, my therapy, and associated literature, I hope to heal through writing and create work that connects with other survivors while giving everyone a window into some trials and tribulations.
Content warning: Due to the topics I cover in this series, the articles contain frank discussions of physical and sexual violence, abuse, self-harm, and addiction.
Iwas already planning to write this article on educational neglect, then I came across Devon Price’s Laziness Does Not Exist. To paraphrase: Students are there because they want to be. Underachieving tends to be due to barriers caused by the individual’s context, be it neuroatypicality, trauma, etc or due to unclear objectives. I felt this on many levels, having just withdrawn from a PhD programme due to questionable project management and being diagnosed with PTSD. It spurred me on further to write my experience from a student perspective.
My trauma stems from neglect and abuse by family members during a period of physical and social isolation. This was later compounded my a couple of relationships which went on for much too long where my needs weren’t considered, and I was heavily manipulated. In this article, I will discuss how my experiences have made it challenging to keep momentum on my educational journey.
Early Education
My neglect in education actually began in school, which I’m only just coming to realise. I’ve always been tall, and I was quite fat as a child and teen. I was probably imposing, especially to teachers who didn’t know me. I have never been violent, but some members of faculty took it upon themselves to preempt that by using their power as a weapon. If I got visibly irritated, frustrated, or angry, some people would look palpably concerned. If I was messing around with classmates as kids tend to, I might get a “let’s not have bullying in here!” My ‘friends’ would play along with because it was hilarious. This is not guilt. Guilt is feeling bad about something you’ve done. I hadn’t done anything bad though, so the only conclusion I could draw was that I was bad. That is cold, hard shame. That was one of many things that set me up with a negative perception of my own body, which took me years to unpack.
I used to dread summer. When it got hot, we could use the school playing fields. I enjoyed the grass, fresh air, and open space, but I was never allowed to enjoy it. My size made me easily identifiable. A certain group of guys could spot me whenever I stood up, and that gave them license to play their favourite summer sport: Take down the giant. They’d jump on my shoulders, my back, and limbs. With my size and breadth comes a natural strength. I was already strong then and could often throw off the first few if I was fast. As soon as I saw them running, my only goal was to escape the playing fields. If enough of them got hold of me, they’d overwhelm me. Others would join in, and pile on. Eventually, I’d struggle to breathe; this would be worse if I’d been floored by surprise and winded. The few times I reported this, it was brushed off as a bit of fun. A summer lark for young boys.
Eventually, I stopped fighting. If they wanted to take me down, fine. I’d ragdoll when the first person jumped at me. They’d pile on then crush me, a temporary pain, then they’d leave me. This might happen multiple times every lunchtime. The last few years of school, I stayed in a cool classroom reading all lunch when summer came. I came across my old burgundy school blazer in my parents’ attic a few months ago while looking for some books. There is a huge tear in the lining between the right arm and the torso. The spongy salmon-pink padding poking through the straggly frayed edges. Looking at that tear gave me a feeling of breathless helplessness as the old neuronal connection fired.
Master’s Troubles
I was pretty well-supported during my BSc studies, barring a horrendous study exchange year in Oklahoma. Then I entered my MSc. The taught component went pretty well. The first project had a lovely, supportive supervisor, and my team were excellent. From the second project onwards, things went south.
My second project supervisor gave me little guidance, putting me under the guidance of a new postdoctoral student who couldn’t speak much English, and struggled to communicate ideas to me. There was no space near my supervisor available to me, so I was in a building the other end of campus. Many times, I arranged a meeting, went downstairs, crossed the campus, went up several floors, through several corridors, and spoke with the postdoc. At this point, machine learning was a whole new world to me, and this guide made it only more confusing, no matter how I’d phrase my questions. I stopped seeing him. It felt like a waste of time, and I was getting further by googling and trial and error. The three of us met every couple of weeks, where I’d get little more than a ‘yeah, that’s ok’ despite any questions I’d ask. Then he kept cancelling meetings. Eventually, he postponed the meeting so many times that I didn’t see him for half of my project, where a large amount of work was expected in a short turnover time.
My final project wasn’t much better. The topic was incredibly interesting to me, and I put so much effort and work into it. It started off really well; this supervisor was kind, and gave me some papers to get started with. They sat with me and we went through an outline for how my project could go. Then one day, she left. It turns out they were attending conferences and seeing family. However again, this was half the project where I could barely speak to my supervisor.
I collapsed the day I handed in my final thesis. I was so physically and emotionally drained; unable to focus on what my body needed the entire time. I thought a little rest would get me back to health. Then came the time to defend my thesis. I knew one of my judges. they came from a neighbouring university, where I’d been rightfully turned down for a PhD, as at that time, I wasn’t knowledgeable enough. The first judge introduced themself as “Hi I’m Dr X from the university of Y and I specialise in Z”. The judge I know decided to make it clear we’d met before. “And I’m… well, you know who I am.” they began. I was already nervous; only select people on the course had been called for vivas. That completely threw me off. I eventually found out that I was on the borderline of a Distinction (the highest grade for a Master’s degree in the UK), and that viva led to the decision to instead award me a Merit.
Doctoral Struggles
I arrived in the institute where I attempted my PhD perhaps a little cagey and resistant to asking for help. I wrote about my experience, feeling that I was mostly at fault. This didn’t change that I was set up to work in an unsafe environment. When I made this clear, I was given nowhere else to work and had little option but to find space in a very isolated part of the building. Eventually, I was moved to a different site. I was still nowhere near anyone I could talk to or get help from; it was near my secondary supervisor’s office, but they were often not there. Both of my supervisors were often off somewhere else in the world. More than once I asked a question I felt was reasonable, only to be met with “A trained bioinformatician should know this.” Right. But I was not one yet. That’s why I was there.
In November 2018, I stopped sleeping. 1–3 hours was the most I could manage. I started doing more in an attempt to tire my body out: attending events as audience and speaker; agreeing to interviews; attempting to start an HPV awareness campaign due to a lack of advertising for a vaccination programme aimed at LGBTQ+ individuals. But this didn’t force me to sleep, only further exhausted me.
It seemed like there was no reason for me to feel permanence anywhere; no space I could root myself.
I was forced to take time out to recover about 4 months into my studies. I hadn’t thought about it at the time, but my doctor was most worried about how depressed I was. By the time I returned to my studies, it had been two months. I was placed in an isolated bay, though fortunately this time there were other people in my proximity. I made firm friends fast in my area, before being moved once again as the space was reallocated with little warning. It seemed like there was no reason for me to feel permanence anywhere; no space I could root myself.
In July 2019, I was given therapy by a trainee who probed my trauma too far. My mood fell apart. My emotions became very unstable. I began to dissociate for hours on end. I ended up being forced to pay for an experienced specialist, and to leave my PhD track entirely. I would rather the scholarship funds went on someone who could make change.
These experiences in my MSc and PhD echoed the isolation and neglect I’d felt from caregivers, and from earlier stages of my life while the abuse was taking place. The experienced therapist’s hypothesis is that my experiences triggered my PTSD, and I hadn’t realised. None of my academic supervisors were to know. I certainly didn’t realise, and I was experiencing it. As pointed out by student mental health campaigner Dr Zoe Ayres, isolation and absent supervisors are common stressors that affect even the most capable of students.
Be Sure to Make Changes
What I learned by neglecting myself in the name of some higher goal is that I am my biggest asset. If I don’t care for my mind and body, my most important tools, then I will not be able to do much else.
If you’re a student in a similar situation, make sure you find a therapist. This is best if you can do it before you start your programme of study, but it’s never too late. What I learned by neglecting myself in the name of some higher goal is that I am my biggest asset. If I don’t care for my mind and body, my most important tools, then I will not be able to do much else. Put your well-being ahead of everything. Self-care is a skill that needs to be practised carefully.
For managers, this is a difficult one. You take on students based on their track record to make use of the skills they have while boosting them further. They’ll require help to adjust in the early stages, but will become a mostly independent researcher in time. If you expect them to be fully independent from the start, you might find you’ve wasted your investment later. Make sure you or someone in your lab has knowledge of the field that the student will be working in and the skills they’ll need to start with. They can’t learn from people who don’t know; less so if they’re physically isolated.
Academia is tough. That should never be understated. However, the way a student interacts with their supervisor is one of the pivotal aspects of any given project. Maybe this requires more training — fostering nurturing without overbearing, and space to discover without it becoming neglect. I hope that by laying out my experiences as a case study, some may feel less alone, while others understand that these problems exist, and I hope that if you’re in a position of influence to change things, no matter how small, you may lift someone out of a life of hurt in their career. I’m yet to find that myself, but now I know what I don’t want, and giving up is out of the question.
Things will get better, it all takes time. If you’re struggling and you live in the UK, you can speak to The Samaritans on 116 123.
If you’re a student, your university may have its own confidential nightline service where you can speak to a volunteer who understands the struggles of student life.
