How I survived my first year of US PhD program from my bedroom in Indonesia 2020-21

When I applied for a PhD program at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Johns Hopkins in December 2019, I did not sign up for spending the first two full semesters from my bedroom in Jakarta, Indonesia. In late August / early September 2021, I started the program fully online from Indonesia because of covid-19 pandemic and US travel restrictions. Online learning is nowhere near as effective as face-to-face learning, and yet I am grateful for the fact that I am still alive to date with no covid-19 experience, and that the pandemic did not put my life on hold as I had completed my first year! In hindsight, there are actually some highlights from my experience worth sharing, because it is 2021, and sharing is caring.

Impostor syndrome

“Do I belong here?” That question came across my mind sometimes. In my cohort of 2020 intake there are 8 PhD admitted students: 4 American men, 1 American Canadian woman, 1 Indian man, and 1 Indonesian woman (me!). It is an increase from 2019 intake of only 6 PhD students with only 1 American student. I look forward to meeting them all in person this fall. My fellow PhD colleagues are bright & amazing. For example, one went to Harvard for his Master’s Degree and one had a father who earned a PhD degree. I automatically looked at myself: “Do I belong here? My dad did not even go to uni.”

I thank God for the right people in my life who convinced me that by God’s grace I too earned to join this PhD program. My cheeky friends from IDS/Sussex reminded me that our University of Sussex is world’s 1 in Development Studies according to QS World University Rankings by Subject (psst Harvard is 3 for Development Studies, ha!).

Comparison is the thief of gratitude and joy. We can’t compare ourselves with others. Easier said than done? Fosho! But the truth is, I can only compare me with the old version of me. We must respect our own story that makes us unique. It is my story that makes me me, and your story that makes you you. As a first-generation PhD student at SAIS, and probably the first one from Indonesia, my story hopefully can rekindle the hope of those who want to pursue their dream and/or higher education irrespective of their family background. Michelle Obama got it right when she said in her Becoming book (page 401):” Education has been the primary instrument of change in my own life, my lever upward in the world.“

Time poverty

In my first semester, I took four full-credit courses: Statistics, International Development Proseminar, Microeconomics, and Theory & Method of Qualitative Political Research. I barely had any day off in a week. In my mind, I thought the more courses I could take, the faster I could complete them and move to the next stage. Indeed, in the US system, particularly at SAIS Johns Hopkins, PhD students who did not take their MA degrees from SAIS will have to complete Economics and Methods courses AND pass 3 Comprehensive Exams by the end of the fifth semester. Only then, “PhD student” can move to dissertation stage, and change her title as “PhD candidate.”

I was in a complete shock due to the transition from work life with more predictable schedules to school life with barely any day off. I suffered time poverty. October 2020 was so awful that I got eczema as my body reaction to high level of stress. I had not known there were midterm exams in the US education system. Coming from the UK system during my MA, we did not have any midterms — only finals! Yet, the midterms came in the form of exams or papers. The uncanny thing is that they happen while our regular classes still run: that means we had to juggle class workload of some courses with midterms of other courses (depending on how many courses you take). In Indonesia and in the UK, we would have a special period dedicated for exams only. This means time-management is by default a skill all students at SAIS must develop on their own as they go along. Time poverty forced me to upgrade my time-management skills. I would make time to only plan and design what my week will be with daily target of desired outcomes I want to get.

Stress management

The first year has not been easy especially with the distant learning context. It is due to the stress from boredom of staying at home, the loneliness from the absence of in-person community, and the high level of workload among competing priorities. I shared courses with MA students too and I asked some, they admitted how they had emotional breakdown and high level of stress. Perhaps this is due to the fact that all midterms, finals, and assignments due around the same time while some classes were still running with their respective tasks? Time zone difference is another issue. I was grateful that a Professor was super considerate to change the schedule time of our PhD virtual class initially set 4pm EST DC (3am WIB Jakarta) to 10am EST DC (9pm WIB Jakarta) to accommodate me and another classmate in India — although it then became a Saturday class! Thankfully my other fellow PhD colleagues were so understanding and cool about this.

Taking 4 online courses had made me suffer from time poverty. Some courses appeared to be longer than what it would have been if they were in-person. This is because we have to watch some recorded lectures in addition to read assigned reading materials before we attend the virtual class via Zoom. Thankfully as a PhD student I could take the liberty to select only 3 courses in my second semester! They were Econometrics, International Trade Theory, and Health Policy Analysis in Lower & Middle Income Countries. I could embrace the joy of learning better in my second semester. I invested more time to understand some topics for the sake of my intellectual curiosity, and not just for the sake of completing such courses. Most importantly, I had more time to do other things outside my full-time job as a PhD student: to rest, to exercise, to celebrate small wins, and to read & listen to God’s words (a new habit I have developed since January 1, 2021 through Bible in a Year daily podcasts it is changing my life and changing what I love, what a gift!). We can’t avoid stress, we can only manage stress. I reached out to Johns Hopkins counselling centre too. Stress is necessary in life so we can grow. To deal with stress well, I think one must prioritize their mental health too. This whole journey, or life in general, is a marathon, not a sprint.

Humility

We are not infallible. I made mistakes in my first year of PhD journey, and in fact made a separate blog post about being wrong. The most memorable error was a typo that I missed until a Professor circled in my essay in which I wrote “casualty” when I actually meant “causality.” That was embarrassing. It was more embarrassing than a typo I made in my MA draft dissertation when I wrote “week commitment” when I meant “weak commitment”. Yet, I tried to be more gentle with myself, reminding myself again that English is not my first language, and that I am not perfect.

On a deeper level, I realized if I overly worried about myself I might have been vain. Vanity can come in many forms. It is not necessarily only an infatuation with yourself or narcissism. It does not mean we should not care about what other people think at all either. Vanity is an inordinate preoccupation with what other people think about you. Only humility can heal vanity. “Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less” (Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life).

Singlemindedness

I had the luxury of being a full-time PhD student without having to do other job on the side in my first year of PhD program. In August 2020, when my thoughtful supervisor at DFAT asked me if I wanted to do a part-time job for them since I would still be in Jakarta anyway after I resigned, I only responded “I cannot answer that before I know what sort of battle I would face in the coming months. Can I come back to you in October after I got some idea of how my workload looks like?” In retrospect, I think I made a good call because it turned out I could not commit on it.

Working with Australian civil servants who in my view mainstream the importance of mental health (especially during this pandemic) and the work-life balance culture before I began my PhD journey, today I am still adapting with the American culture that appears to regard a state of being overworked and oversubscribed as something to be proud of. It is like the more activities you have, the more productive you seem, and the better you are. Don’t get me wrong, I too value hard working as a positive trait, but I also think we become effective by being selective.

In his book of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren warns me (page 32): “Knowing your purpose simplifies your life. It defines what you do and what you don’t do. Your purpose becomes the standard you use to evaluate which activities are essential, and which aren’t. Without a clear purpose, you have no foundation on which you base decisions, allocate your time, and use your resources. You will tend to make choices based on circumstances, pressures, and your mood at the moment. People who don’t know their purpose try to do too much.”

For someone like me who cares more about impacts than activities, I would agree with him: if you want your life to have an impact, focus it! I learn that there are many reasons we choose to commit to activities. It could be the fear of missing out. It could be that we feel important for being needed. It could be our need to be liked. Or, it could be to earn money, which I think will be the case for me in my second year. But if I find myself unable to make saner schedules and to rest, do I have a clear vision of what I truly want out of life?

I am curious how much bandwidth I can expand as I move forward with my PhD studies in my second year to allow myself engage in other activities though. I will definitely need a side job when I am in Washington DC to complement the (limited) stipend I get from the university’s scholarship so as to support my living in DC. I hope I will be blessed with the grace of wisdom to allocate my priorities right, and the grace of obedience to seek to fulfil God’s will in my life.

Thank you, next!

In sum, the first year helped me a lot to get to know myself and my purpose better. The first year did train my fighting spirit and perseverance: that staying strong is equally important to starting strong especially when the newness wears off. I thank God for not giving up on me each time I fail Him. I am grateful for the people around me, near and far, old and new friends, who support me and pray for me. They know who they are.

When I’m asked me how excited I am to move to DC, I would usually say “I think I will get excited in July.” The truth is, at the moment I feel too busy to get excited. In fact, I will be off from social media most of the time to a reading retreat to prepare for my 1st Comprehensive Exam (Comp) in International Development by September in Washington DC, God’s willing. There are 128 (ONE HUNDRED TWENTY EIGHT) reading materials below I must read & learn throughout summer for that exam. Shout out to SAIS Library Team who has been wonderfully professional and helpful, scanning some chapters of books that I cannot find the online versions and sending them to me. This Comp thing is my first-time experience. I had taken the lengthy UN YPP exam and GRE tests, which required some preparation, but this time is different: I will need to read, digest, and learn the below reading materials for two-three months prior the exam. It will also be a training for my steadfast spirit, self-discipline, and focus. I still don’t know how I’d get through it. But if God calls you to it, He’ll equip you for it right (Philippians 1:6)?