3.21 Six types of social support you need as a PhD student (and how to get it)

Doing a PhD and even working in academia can be a lonely business. Sometimes we just don't feel like we've got the support we need around us. In this episode, I am going to identify six different types of social support that I think all academics need and give you some ideas to start assessing where you think you are at the moment. From there we’ll identify some steps forward that you can take, so that you can get the social support that you need.

Links I refer to in this episode 

You can find links to Dr Lilia Mantai’s research here

How to build your own academic community

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

If you sometimes feel lonely or like you haven't got the support that you need around you, unfortunately it's not that unusual. Often when people feel like this, they feel like they're the only one, right? That everybody else is part of this like fun and vibrant academic community and has got friends around them supporting them and cheering them on, when in reality I speak to PhD students all the time who feel really disconnected from their studies.

Maybe you don't get on with your research group as well as you thought you might, and outside of that you're not sure where to find an academic community, or perhaps you've had to move away from family and friends and you're really missing that. Maybe you're a part time student, a distance learning student, whatever it is, there's tons of reasons why you might currently be feeling lonely, and you might feel like you haven't got the community you need.

As usual though, I'm here to tell you that although it's normal, it doesn't have to be like this. And in today's episode, I'm going to tell you about six different types of social support. Five of them grounded in some quite interesting literature that I found and one of them, which I haven't found in the literature and I think is really important. We're going to use this framework to kind of audit where you're at and to think through what's what types of support you might want to actively try and build over the next few months.

Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach and this week we are talking about social support. Now many of you will know I stayed in the same university all the way from undergraduate through to full professor so I was there 25ish years in the end and you'd think that would mean that I had. a pretty stable community.

Now the fact is that actually in academia, at every kind of milestone you hit, you have a big change of people. So when I finished undergrad, they left. Then when I finished my PhD, lots of the people I did my PhD with left. And then over the years, I kind of made friends with different groups of people, many of whom then got jobs in other places, moved on and so on. So there were several times during that academic career where I really felt like I was having to rebuild the support around me.

And at that stage, I was kind of winging it, I guess. I was feeling like I didn't necessarily have people at some stages to, like, go do fun stuff with, at other stages, who were kind of at the same place as me in their careers, where we could share ideas and things. And so when I noticed that, I made efforts to build those connections. I'm quite a social person. I'm quite extroverted. And so once I noticed what I needed, I didn't find it too challenging to go out and at least start creating those bonds. To tell you the truth, I'm having to do it a little bit now because, um, many of you will know I left my university job back in 2022. I'm living in a much smaller place than I used to, and I'm still finding my friendship group. I've got an amazing family network around me. I've got a few old friends near here , but in terms of those sort of fun, hobby connections, and I used to have a lot of them in Birmingham. I'm still figuring that out, right?

But often it can feel either like not a priority, or it can feel a bit like you don't know where to start. Or it can all feel a little bit like luck that you either meet people you get on with or you don't. Now, I did make an episode quite a long time ago called How to Build an Academic Community. And if you haven't listened to that one, I will link it in the show notes for you. I highly recommend you go back to listen to that because there's some really important stuff about the kind of how to connect with people, where to connect to people, um, in that I'm not going to touch on in today's episode.

What I want to do today instead is to give you a framework to assess where your support is at, to better identify what type of support you might need more of. And some of this builds on, as you know, I always try and be a kind of evidence based practitioner. I'm trying to stay up to speed with the literature, bring that into my practice.

You guys want to be connected to an academic for a reason. You don't want me just making stuff up. So I was looking for some stuff to do with social support and PhD students and academia, and I found some really interesting work by somebody called Dr. Lilia Mantai.

Now I am hoping, I'm going to contact Dr. Lilia to see whether she'd like to come on the podcast at some point in the future. But one of the things that I pulled out of her work were these different types of social support that she identified and the different roles that they play in academia. And so what I'm going to do today is I'm going to introduce you to the four that she outlined in her first pieces of work. A very important fifth one that she then uncovered when she did some more detailed research. And I'm going to finish up with one that I think everybody overlooks and I'm going to explain to you why I think it's overlooked, why it's so important, and what you can do about it. 

The first four that she identified is built out of the social support literature. These were moral support, emotional support, guidance and mentoring, and companionship. So let's think about those. The first one is moral and I was a little bit like what do we even mean by moral support. How it's usually framed is around inspiration and encouragement. This is having people around you who support you and cheer you on in what you're doing and give you a kind of image of what it could be like. So for some of you, those of you who are in positive supervisory experiences, you might find that your supervisors are an amazing source of moral support.

That you look at them and you're like, oh my goodness, one day I could be like them. If I work hard, if I do all the things, I could be like them. You see the change they're making in the world, see the impact they're having, the publications they're getting, and you're kind of inspired to make that kind of change.

For others, maybe it's senior people in your research group, so the PhD students or academics who are a few years ahead of you, whatever stage you're at, right, there's people that are kind of ahead of you, and those people may be encouraging you, they may be sort of showing you what's possible.

Now this is really important because whether you're doing a PhD or working in academia more generally. We often don't spend too much time in the big picture. We often spend time in the day to day of, I need to do this. I've got that on my to do list, that needs writing, that needs researching, whatever it is. And we don't always take that time to kind of take that step back and remind ourselves why we're doing it. Having somebody who is inspiring or encouraging or both can help you recall that big picture. When, in the best circumstances here, when you see that person it reminds you of why you're doing this stuff. 

For others of you, maybe you're thinking that you don't get that from your supervisors, from your research group. And that's okay too. You can look further afield in academia for people who are perhaps more in line with your priorities or doing things more the way that you would like them to be and maybe think about how you can remind yourself of those people more regularly. Do you want to follow them on social media? Do you want to try and meet them at conferences? How can you make those people a more tangible presence in your life? 

For others of you, that moral support might come from other parts of your life. It might be your friends or your family. Maybe you've got a reason you did your PhD. Maybe you know somebody who has a condition and you're now researching that condition. Maybe you've grown up with somebody who always inspired your interest in archaeology and now that's what you're studying too. 

I'd really encourage you to think about who in your life inspires you, who in your life encourages you, and to think about not only how can you have them in your life more often, but also how can you have those conversations and those reflections more often. Because there's something very energy giving about being encouraged and inspired. So try to identify who that is for you and how you can get more of them in your life.

The second type of support that she identified is emotional support. This is somebody who really provides a listening ear. So they don't necessarily have to inspire you to great things, they have to be there for you when you're struggling. They need to be somebody who you're willing to be vulnerable with, at least to some extent. You're able to share your worries and concerns with, and who will give you that safe space for you to be able to talk about the things that are bothering you.

Now, I think this kind of divides down into different sorts of support in that sometimes you want somebody who totally gets it and who'll perhaps moan along with you, right, so that you don't feel like you're crazy. So that you feel like other people experience this and they will say, yeah, tis is rubbish, I hate it when that happens, that happened to me too.

Other times, the listening ear you need is somebody who's completely detached, who can help you sort of retain some perspective and who can help you see that perhaps outside of academia the things that we're stressing about aren't as big as we're making them out to be. Who in your life provides that listening ear? How do you feel about sharing with them? Do you feel comfortable? Do you feel like you burden them? Do you feel like you talk too much or not enough? Do you feel better after you speak to them? Ideally, that person doesn't necessarily fix the problems that you've got, but helps you to feel heard and helps you feel like these problems are both legitimate and manageable one way or another. 

Again, for me, I kind of have my insiders and my outsiders, right? I had really, and I still do have really close, lovely colleagues who would be my emotional support who knew exactly what I was going through, knew the people that I was moaning about, knew the types of situations that I was talking about, and so could really empathize and understand without me having to explain it.

And that has been absolutely crucial at so many stages of my career and that builds over time, right? Some of those people who I feel like are my closest people now started out as people I didn't know that well. They started out as people that I invited for a coffee every now and again and we had a little chat and slowly you get to know and trust each other. So you can build these things over time. Then on the other hand, there were people that are outside my academic circle who are a listening ear, but in that slightly more detached way. So I have friends that work in the corporate world, and they don't get it at all. They don't, you know, they don't understand what I do, and why the things that feel like a big deal to me are important. But they love me so they listen to me talk about it and sometimes they give an angle that maybe I hadn't even thought of a different way of looking at it based on their experiences in their different world that they live in. So this emotional support can come from inside the academy, it can come from outside the academy. Some of you may also have professional support in the sense of counsellors, therapists, that sort of thing. And again, you can never underestimate the impact of having that really neutral space that is solely about you, unlike with friends where it goes both ways, where it's solely about you to be able to talk through the kind of the deeper aspects of the emotions that you're experiencing.

The third type of support I want you to think about is guiding and mentoring. Now the obvious person who should be providing this is your supervisor, your supervisory team, your dissertation committee, if that's how your structure's set up. The people that are actually, it's their jobs to provide this stuff. And I want you to think about how that's going for you right now. 

What sorts of support is your supervisor good at providing? What support do they automatically provide that you find useful and that's working well? What elements are working less well? Either they don't provide it unless asked, or that you don't like the sort of support they provide, or that you just don't feel like they're there for you. This is one of the reasons why it's important to separate out these forms of social support.

Because when we think about our supervisors, there can be a tendency to expect our supervisors to provide all of this support. They're going to be a listening ear, they're going to inspire, they're going to enthuse, they're going to guide and mentor us. Maybe we even expect to have social time with them as well.

I want to encourage you, your supervisor doesn't have to provide all of these. Hopefully your supervisor is providing at least some of these, at least some of the time. They don't have to provide all of them. So think, in terms of guiding and mentoring, where is your supervisor really useful? Where are they expert?

Where are they willing to help? Where does it fall within their comfort zone? You can then think though, where are the gaps in that? Where's the sort of guiding and mentoring that I'm not getting? So for example, one I've seen is people where the supervisor is amazing at teaching research skills.

They'll be in the lab with them, they'll be hands on, they'll be helping them develop whatever technique it is they're doing. Super, super helpful at training in the laboratory, testing the equipment, you know, learning new techniques, all of that stuff. But if you want guidance and mentoring about organizing your time, or you want guidance and mentoring about how to write effectively, this person might not be your person.

Maybe they're really bad at it too. Maybe they're naturally amazing at it and so have never really thought about it before. And I want you to think if there's gaps in that guiding and mentoring. Where can you fill those gaps? Think about where are there gaps and where can you fill those either within your university or beyond. So it might be bringing in collaborators. It might be accessing support for things like writing, for example. Most of your universities will have how to write effectively courses and all that kind of thing. How can you fill the gaps instead of spending time sort of bemoaning the fact that your supervisor doesn't provide everything? How can you find the bits that you're not getting from your supervisor and fill them from elsewhere. Or how can you identify the bits you're currently not getting from your supervisor and consider whether it's something that you could legitimately ask your supervisor for. Sometimes they don't do it automatically but it doesn't mean that they're not willing to help with those things.

The fourth type of social support is companionship. This is often not anything to do with academia. This is having people that you can just have fun with. Now this might, if you have your own families or you live close to your family, it might be your family. It might be friends, it might be people, like I was saying at the very beginning, from hobbies that you're involved with. One of the things I adored about where I was before was I had sort of little pockets of random people. I had my paddle boarding club and my circus club and my people I knew from kids camp and my people I knew from the adventure races I worked on and things. I had my little random pockets of people, whose company I loved, who I always had a giggle when I saw. And where I felt like a part of a little group.

Now one of the problems in academia, whether you're a new PhD student all the way through to a senior professor, is we often convince ourselves we don't have time for that stuff. That by the time we've done our work and dealt with our responsibilities, particularly those of you who have children that you're looking after, we think we haven't got time for that stuff.

I should be working. You know, academics work all the time. And I'm here to wipe away that. I guarantee that you will be more productive if you have some times of companionship every week, if not every day. There is something about having playtime, having time where you can relax and just enjoy somebody's company and not have to think about work and not have to think about performing well or any of those things that is so good for the mental health, so good, I believe, for your physical health that it will infuse everything else you do.

I think we're going so far as to say. I think it's super important, even if it doesn't make you better at your job. Even if it does take a bit of time away, and you don't make up for that time by being more effective, I think it's still super important. I think you need it to be a functioning human being.

The people that I saw being most miserable in their PhDs and academia more generally, are the people who didn't have any of that stuff, are the people who only worked. If you feel like you've let that slip, if you're listening to this going, I just don't have that, I'm in a country where I don't know anyone, or a city where I don't know anyone, I haven't had time, don't worry, it's okay, this isn't some like big failing of you that you haven't, we're, you're under a lot of pressure, and that's okay, it's fine that you're under, and that's okay, it's understandable that with all the pressures on you, you've prioritised other things.

But this is my little call to you to do one or two things to just try and build some of that companionship. That might be taking people for coffee at work, just suggesting catching up for a little zoom chat with people you don't know that well, maybe, or preferably please do some stuff outside of academia, even if it's one off stuff, even if it's going to be, you know, I'm not saying you have to join a club and go every week or whatever. Find something that's fun to do once in a while where you might see the same people. If you go back at the same time, you might see the same people and where there's little opportunities for interactions. So I've just joined a netball club. I can't remember if I've told you guys that before. It's like slow basketball. Um, And this is perfect. I don't go all the time. I've only been going a few weeks. So I haven't made any good friends yet, but we chatter before it starts. We have a giggle while we play. We chatter afterwards. At some point, I am sure that we will suggest, you know, probably when the weather improves a bit and things, we'll suggest going for a drink afterwards or meeting up for a coffee during the week or whatever it is, there's opportunities there for it to progress into more friendship type things. I want you to look for things like that, whether it's going to the gym, whether it's going exercise classes, art classes, whether it's just regularly going to the same coffee shop. So you might see the same people working in the same coffee shop and you can sort of strike up a bit of a conversation with them. Introverts, I know this may sound completely painful, but we don't have to do it with lots of people. We don't have to do it hundreds of times, but just putting yourself in a position where you might have that kind of regular contact can be an amazing way to build that sort of companionship.

So those were the first four moral, emotional, guidance and mentoring companionship. And then Lilia Manti identified a further one. She did research with PhD students and their supervisors and really identified how social support can also help you in your developing identity as a PhD student, as an academic. And like I say, I don't want to go into this in tons of detail because I do hope that I'll be able to get her to come on the podcast at some point in the future to talk about it in more detail. But essentially, when you go from the beginning of a PhD to the end of a PhD, or starting an academic position to becoming a more senior member of staff, you're not only learning new skills and doing new things, you're changing who you are as a person. You are becoming an academic. You are starting to identify as somebody who has academic skills and who has academic opinions and belongs to an academic network. And your social support is hugely important to this. 

So, I've seen over the years, particularly at undergraduate, but to some extent at PhD as well, people who do their PhD without ever really engaging outside of that direct supervisory relationship. They've got their friends at home, they've potentially got family at home, they turn up, they do the things they need to do, they leave. And that can be, if your goal is simply to get a PhD, happy days, do it, let's go. But if your goal is to become somebody who is an academic, whether that means you want it for a career or not, but if your goal is to identify as belonging to an academic group, then we need to have the connections in place in order to do that.

Now I'm going to refer to the how part of this. I want you to listen to that podcast I mentioned called how to build your academic community. I also want you to listen to an episode that I recorded with Jen Polk a few months back where we looked at networking. So if you're just like, Oh my God, no networking, definitely not. That's awful. Check out that episode. We kind of debunk a whole load of thoughts around networking. 

But when we surround ourselves by people who care about the research that we're doing and where we care about their research and who think about things the way a historian or a biochemist or whoever you are think about things, that starts to change who you are too. It starts to change the way you see yourself. Suddenly it's normal to be somebody who can experience a critique of their work and not internalize it too horrendously and respond to it in a constructive way. Suddenly you become somebody who is part of that broader academic community.

And again, for some of you, your supervisor will be a real kind of gatekeeper, facilitator to this, introducing you into different networks. They'll really see that as part of their role. Others won't. Others will take a more functional approach to supervision. They won't necessarily, they'll see getting you through the PhD as their prime concern, not so much sort of enculturing you into these sorts of academic communities. But that's okay. You can do this in your own ways. You can build that sort of network for yourselves. This doesn't necessarily need to be within your direct group if your supervisor is not providing it. But it does need to be within your kind of academic setting or discipline more broadly.

We are trying to develop ourselves as somebody who is capable within this setting and who feels they belong to the setting. Again, if that doesn't feel like you right now, that's okay. This is a kind of, this is an audit, right? We're checking in. There are some of these that you'll be like, I do not feel like that at all. And that's okay. What I want you to do is just start thinking about where you can build tiny bridges towards these things.

Now, I promised at the beginning that I was going to share with you the five that Lilia Mantai talks about, and then I was going to share with you the one that she doesn't talk about, and I, to be honest, I haven't seen people talking about. And I think the reason we haven't is because most of these data collections are kind of bottom up. They ask PhD students, what sort of support they get, what sort of support they want. They ask supervisors, what kind of support do they provide? What kind of support did they have? And you can do that super thoroughly, but the problem is, if there's a type of support that people don't even recognise as a type of support, don't even realise that it could be helpful, then it's not going to come up in that sort of bottom up exploration.

And the type of support that I think is missing is self developmental support. What I mean by that is support that helps you develop your processes, that helps you organize yourself more effectively, but also helps you with thoughts and emotions. That helps you to manage yourself more effectively. To self regulate. To make decisions. To show up as the person that you want to be. 

Now, many of us seek this out in the form of podcasts or in the form of self help books, right? But often it doesn't progress far enough to become an interpersonal relationship. Now I found when I started reflecting on this, I found that I actually did have this in some elements of my life before I got into coaching and things because I made friends with people who were interested in that sort of stuff too. So you guys have heard me talk about Professor Jen Cumming a number of times. She and I are very close friends and we were both into kind of that self-help vibe and working out ways to be more effective without having to work harder and all of that stuff. And so we used to swap tips. You know, we used to learn about bullet journals and both try out our bullet journals.

Hers are beautiful. Mine did not last. Didn't always work. We'd look at different project management software or different ways of managing the stresses that we were under. And so we sort of made this kind of very informal, very kind of unintentional in many ways, support network for that kind of more human side of self development.

And lots of people don't, right? Lots of people don't find people who are interested in that stuff. I was lucky that the person I found who was really interested in that stuff, was also a psychologist, was also an expert in self regulation, was actually trained in all of this stuff.

And so in a good friend, I found somebody who had professional expertise too. So I was super spoiled. Most of you don't have access to that. Most of your supervisors can't support this stuff. They might talk to you about Gantt charts, they might talk to you about to do lists. All those things, but they don't have, most of them won't have the expertise to support you if you said, I tried it but I couldn't make it work.

You know, I had good intentions but I didn't follow through because they don't have expertise in behavior change. They don't have expertise in habit management. They don't have expertise in emotional regulation. Most people don't have access to that sort of support. And it's such a shame because that support underpins everything else.

Because I guarantee that every one of those other sorts of support I talked about, you probably have thoughts about. You probably have thoughts about being too nervous to turn up at a club where you don't know anybody. You probably have thoughts about whether you're burdening somebody by sharing your emotions with them. You probably have thoughts about how much help you're allowed to ask for from your supervisors. Seeking out all the other types of support is affected by our thoughts and emotions and our ability to self regulate those things.

Even the practical stuff I was talking about, whether you have time for it or not, whether you have time to seek out those things, and more importantly, you believe you have time to seek out those things, is dependent on your ability to manage your tasks, to prioritize, to make decisions, to manage your own overwhelm, to manage your general life organization. This sort of support underpins everything else.

Some of you who know me well will know where this is going, but I promise it's not the only place it's going. So one place this is going is I can provide that support. The PhD Life Coach membership specifically does that. It creates a community of people who are all trying to figure out what their best realistic selves looks like and how they can make this whole thing feel more fun, more engaging, more purposeful, and more intentional.

So, in the membership, not only do you get access to me and my expertise, more importantly, in many ways, you get access to each other. My members are cheering each other on, they're offering each other bits of advice in the background, they're connecting each other to tools and techniques and books and opportunities that they might not have seen.

They're doing co- working sessions where they give accountability to each other and show up just to help the other person to work. So they're kind of mutually assisting each other. So it connects you with a community that actually can provide quite a bit of this. It can provide some inspiration. You see people in the membership go on and finish their PhDs when you remember them being coached about how they didn't think that would be possible. That is hugely inspiring. 

It can provide emotional support and emotional support that isn't. Indulgent, that doesn't just go, Yes, it's terrible to be you, isn't it? Which, sometimes we need to hear that, but often we actually need something a little more neutral to help us think about what we're struggling with and to potentially reframe it or handle it in a different way. It can provide that. 

We don't provide guidance or mentoring in a technical sense, but there are times where we provide guidance and mentoring in things like reading effectively, and organizing your studies, and organizing your time, and all of those sorts of things. So there's elements of guiding and mentoring there.

There's definitely elements of companionship. I have people who jump on Zooms with each other all around the world, just to catch up and just to be cheering each other on and helping each other out. 

I think it also hugely helps with developing identity because one of the biggest limits to developing identity is a sense that if I was an academic, if I was a good PhD student, I wouldn't worry about this, I'd be able just to do that. It wouldn't be this hard. And being in a community where you see other people experiencing those things and being effective and succeeding makes you realise that I can feel like an academic, even though I often am finding things difficult. That I doubt myself sometimes, that I don't know how I'm going to do something. 

None of those things stop you identifying as an academic, as a PhD student. And finally, I think it is one of the unique places to support you to develop yourself. To develop the way you want to speak to yourself. Develop the way you want to treat and organise yourself. You're not going to be perfect. I didn't get out of bed this morning at the time I intended to. I'm still working on that. But I am on track to get done today everything I said I was going to get done, including recording this podcast. And that's because of the skills that I've learned in this sort of setting and because of the skills I teach in this membership.

Now, if you're not interested in that, hold fire for two seconds and I'm going to tell you some alternatives. If you are potentially interested in the membership, this episode comes out on Monday the 27th of January. If you are listening to it live or anywhere close to live, you can literally join the membership now.

We are open from Monday, the 27th of January, 2025 until Sunday, the 2nd of February, 2025. Okay. A full seven day week. If you go to my website, the phdlifecoach. com, click on the membership, you will find all the stuff you need to know. It is £149 for three months You'll get all the details on there, but there's workshops, there's themed coaching sessions, there's open coaching sessions, there's online courses, there's co working sessions, there's access to me through Slack if you can't make it to the live sessions. So there's a ton of stuff. Check it out. Join now. We start on the 3rd of February. You do not want to miss out. 

Now, if you're sitting there going, there's no way Vic, I'm really sorry, this sounds great, but definitely don't have any money for this. Um, you know, PhD student can't do it. It's okay. I gotcha. First thing, make sure you're on my newsletter. I mention it every week. Make sure you're on my newsletter. You'll get structured support every time. You will sometimes get hear me talking about the membership and encouraging you to join. Feel free to ignore it. If you're not in a position to pay for it, you don't want to pay for it, just skim past those bits. It's all good. I'm not offended. Happy days. 

And keep an eye out. I'm going to do a monthly webinar on a specific topic this year. You can sign up to as many of those as you want. Get the free support that's there. So you've got my podcast, you've got the newsletter, you've got those workshops.

But if you want that little bit more, and you think you can prioritise £149 for three months, not per month by the way, total, £149 total, if you think you want that little bit more, if you've tried to implement stuff on your own before and it just hasn't worked out, Let's go. 

Quarter one is going to focus task management, time management, how we can build a kind of structure to a life that feels fun and doable and that helps us achieve our goals. I mean, three months to do that. Amazing. I'm so excited. I've already got a ton of you on the waiting list. I'd love to have even more on too. So jump in, go do it now. If you're listening to this and it's past February 2nd, don't worry. We're going to open up again at the end of April, go to the same place. Make sure you're on the waiting list and you will be the first to hear about it. 

Thank you so much for listening, everyone. I want you to think back, take a moment after you finish listening, especially if you're currently driving or walking or whatever, and you can't make notes. Think about those six areas. And even if you're not going to join the membership, I want you to identify one other area where you want to make a concrete step. Where you want to do something to improve your support in that area. Have a think, let me know what it is. You can always email me vikki at wembury coaching. com.

Let me know what the one thing that you might do to improve your social support is. I promise it will make everything else feel easier. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.