I’m not a Dr.

There has been this thing bothering me internally which is the truth about my experience with taking a PhD course.

Many of my friends, colleagues and even family members don’t know and they just assume I am a doctorate.

The truth is I never completed my PhD course. My interpretation of it is completely different from majority around me.

Before I continue writing this post, please don’t get influenced by my experience here. This post is not to encourage you to copy me or model me or follow what I did. The purpose of writing this post is to share the truth of my PhD experience and how it had profound impacts on what I do today.

So here is how the experience started:

It started when I observed many of my colleagues and friends went for their PhD courses, completed and returned back to their careers. I remember this incident when one of them entered my office, sat in front of me and asked: So what about you? What are you doing here? Until when you are going to sit like that?

This is what I call the peer pressure at work. The pressure that you need to fit in, to conform and be like your peers.

I can’t deny. It really affected me and pushed me to go for it. I didn’t know that it would create negative consequences later on.

So I did what others did, completed my proposal, followed the process of study application and finally got the acceptance to study the course in Sheffield University in the UK.

At the beginning, it was cool living in another country and independently learn to live on your own and manage the home, kids and studying at the same time.

Later on I observed a context that didn’t really appeal to me. There was this professor in the management school who looked at me. Interestingly she didn’t look at me but looked down to me which shrinked my throat and chest. There was this formality and external shield majority was wearing that didn’t seem real and personal to me. I saw that context happening in most of the department workshops, seminars and events.

I started getting to know the system and routine of being a PhD student. It included tasks like meeting your supervisors once monthly, researching and reading articles and books, writing sections of your PhD thesis, attending seminars and workshops and continuously shaping your work to meet the guidelines and feedback received from the supervisors.

Throughout the journey, I faced episodes of loneliness, depression, isolation and lack of drive and meaning to move forward with the work. These were activated by lack of communication with family members, the isolating set-up of doing a PhD and the discovery of self-study options and pathways outside the system of a recognised university.

Keep in mind I come from a family and society background where all the people I know and love perceive me as an A student. So writing this post would definitely create intense shock, disappointment and sadness among them.

Anyhow, days, months and years passed by with me ignoring my guts and inner drive. I remember dragging myself to go to the library to do the work. When the depression reaches the peek of me, I remember going hiking in the woods for straight 3 hours to seek for the answer and what I need to do.

I was torn between the need to satisfy my family and friends and do what I am expected to do and the need to set myself free from the education system chains and go find myself a different route and path that suits my personality, character and inspiration.

My inspiration is really to influence people, make a change in the human mind, shift people from one state to another and just go out there self-educate and self-made and make things happen. This inspiration didn’t really find a place in the PhD set-up.

However being in that box of fitting in, conforming and being like my friends, family and colleagues, that didn’t really appeal to me anymore. The more I realized that, the more emotional pain I felt. This was one of the most difficult scenarios in my life I ever had to face alone.

So finally the day arrived. It was during the lock down when we were all isolated and locked indoors because of the pandemic. I took the option to withdraw from the PhD course. I contacted the university, the embassy and the ministry of higher education to stop everything.

I remember these comments few of my friends told me: “ Oh Hudham what a loss”. “You gave up on yourself”.

But internally for me it was acknowledging my guts, aspirations and shift in my personal preferences and likes. I realized I just pushed myself to take the program because I wanted to be like my colleagues and to be accepted in the university community. But it never came from my actual truth and desires.

Reading this post might not be comfortable to you and this has been something I wanted to do for long time. But thinking about others, how they would perceive me and the loss of my previous identity delayed my speaking up until I started blogging.

With blogging, I see an increased sense of ownership of your actions, behaviors and whatever you do or say. It also allows other people to come out, share their experiences and exchange thoughts and ideas.

I knew the day would eventually come. I didn’t know when. But here we are. We are here. We arrived. And sorry if I’m offending anyone by writing this post. But I think the most honorable and humble thing anyone can do is to present yourself as you are, real, honest, vulnerable and authentic. By doing that, you bring back to the humanity something they lost long time ago which is their truest and authentic self.