My research draws on information from people who are considered to be older drivers. These individuals, according to the relevant literature might be aged anywhere between 55 and 70 plus!
With that in mind, I am hurtling towards the lower part of that age range as I carry out the third year of my doctorate. Along with my colleagues aged over 21, I was a mature student. I was, however twice their age with a varied career behind me. I refer to myself as a mature student because I feel that my background has left me with much to learn. Whilst I carry out the work of a researcher, my own personal confidence has a while to go before I completely let go of those floating pool noodles.
I started this PhD process at the age of 45. I moved away from being full-time at my home in Sussex amongst family and friends to embark on this new and scary adventure in Coventry. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t take my own advice as I watched my life fall completely out of balance. I missed the people that I knew cared about me, while I tried to find my feet in the Midlands.
I felt completely isolated for the first 3 months. I attended orientations, and introductory courses that helped. However, my natural shyness led to slow beginnings of friendships. This is different now, and I am extremely lucky to have made a few special, and incredible friends – of all ages!
But social life aside, as a mature student, my PhD journey has not been an easy one. There have been times where I have felt that I have fallen between the cracks a little. To the outside world, I was this older individual who had studied independently before, who surely held knowledge of all basic research skills.
However, in reality, I was a music and health psychology scholar who was now moving into the engineering faculty to study driving behaviour, and who lacked many of the required skills to be a fully-fledged researcher. I faced this bravely assuming that these gaps would be filled. The only problem was that I didn’t quite know what these gaps actually were – my little internal Question Guy began to wonder about how much there was that I didn’t actually know. It felt like I was starting again; not quite, but almost from scratch.
This re-starting did not just need to happen in my academic life, but I also had to ensure that my accommodation was affordable as a second residence, and had to work out the balance of being able to afford to return to Sussex – in terms of money and time away from work.
More recently, events within my PhD, had led me to investigate the kind of support that was out there specifically for mature students. This directed me to the website of Newcastle University. Newcastle acknowledges that there may be specific issues that arise for the mature student, and has a designated point of contact to approach. They offer a specific Mature Student Orientation programme, and a Mature Students Society. It was comforting to see a link to a Post Graduate booklet too.
https://www.nusu.co.uk/pageassets/news/article/Post-Grad-Booklet-1415.pdf
After chatting with a colleague, she suggested a few additional resources, all of which were informative and supportive in equal measure.
Pat Thomson’s blog – now followed! – reminds us that the skills we all develop in our daily lives, like multi-tasking, planning, and working to deadlines carry over into our doctoral life. This is the same for everyone of all ages, but having worked through a varied career, it was supportive to remember that although some gaps remained, somewhere there were some compensatory skills that I had to offer,
https://patthomson.net/2013/12/16/for-the-mature-doctoral-researcher/
The thesis whisperer offers support to the “non-traditional” student. These include those who are older and/or studying part-time:
https://thesiswhisperer.com/2015/07/22/succeeding-as-a-non-traditional-student/
https://thesiswhisperer.com/2019/10/02/starting-a-phd-at-58-years-old/
Closer to home, the UnCOVered blog delivered by Cov Uni addresses questions posed by potential mature students / doctoral researchers.
https://blogs.coventry.ac.uk/uncovered/2014/08/09/6-answers-mature-students/
These offerings began to highlight to me some of those gaps that I had previously not been so sure about. I realised that those early feelings of loneliness, were to be expected; and that the balancing act between finance, accommodation, work and family was never going to be an easy one. I still retained a constant sense of guilt…but at least I now knew that I wasn’t the only one! I wish I had been able to convince myself of this earlier, but I hope that it reaches you at an opportune time.
Lara Carballo
PhD Research Student
Institute for Future Transport and Cities