“This Masters is Going to Kill Me”: E-Narratives of Stress and Support Between Anthropology Graduate Students

Community-Based Researcher, Winnipeg

Department of Archaeology, Memorial University of Newfoundland

The stress of experiences in the field and the atmosphere of competition and isolation within universities make the process of getting a Master’s degree as much a test of our personal stamina and social networks, as of our theoretical and practical knowledge. We chose to write this article citing our graduate student experiences as recorded in our emails to one another during the process of getting our Masters degrees in Anthropology. The idea of using our emails started as a joke, until we realized the potential of this “raw” data—and until Amelia revealed that she had saved two years worth of emails. Including our personal emails gives us the chance to express our unheard experiences and reflections on research, or what Wolf refers to as the “secrets of fieldwork” (1996). These often volatile and passionate aspects of our personal lives helped to shape our research and yet could not be written up, as they are not what are generally considered to be appropriate academic material. This paper allows us to apply the anthropological lens to the emotional field, where we feel comfortable as “experts” and can cite our own experiences.

In writing up our theses, anthropological theory encourages us to be reflexive; however, reflexivity often does not provide an opportunity to truly include our experiences as researchers. Doubts, devastation and “extraneous” events such as relationship break-ups and health breakdowns, family troubles, issues of sinking self-esteem, and our isolation from others are issues that are still inappropriate to include in a thesis without damaging our credibility as students and experts in our field. Our fear of being judged with an academic lens, which is still patriarchal and authoritarian, inhibits the honest expression of emotion and strain associated with research. We also faced this gap when navigating between the academic and the everyday worlds. While it has become common to talk about studying others’ “lived experiences,” we often neglect our own and cannot admit that we lack the theory and language in academia to understand or express the “lived realities” we will face in the everyday world. We feel that excluding the personal journey that accompanies the academic journey is damaging to the research and the researcher.

It may be suggested that we have used emails in order to distance ourselves from directly addressing sensitive issues. However, we feel that our emails represent a parallel narrative of our graduate and anthropological experiences, developed and written out alongside our academic narratives (theses). We included them in this article because they form an ethnography of our research experience that was not appropriate to include in our academic work. This does not mean they form a definitive text or proof of our experience, just as our final theses did not tell the full story. Each narrative is a biased, partial, imperfect and incomplete representation of the journey. Our emails are our subjective but suppressed “voices” of our experiences. The significance of these narratives to us is that until now, unlike our theses, there has not been a public forum for us to express and expose this parallel narrative. As another parallel text to our academic narratives, this paper provides us with a venue to explore the personal narratives of our research and grad school experiences, as these experiences outside the field were integral to what we were able to perceive and produce in research.

While we have chosen to present our analysis in an unconventional form—our emails—we still revised and formatted them in order to protect personal identities and the sensibilities of the reader. For this reason, we screened sections of emails that we felt might be too offensive to include. Therefore, we do not claim that the following excerpts are unedited. However, they represent a far more personal and emotionally resonant form of writing than we were able to produce for academic research.

Our Fields

Amelia Fay: I am currently enrolled in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Social/cultural anthropology and archaeology operate as separate “units” within the department and thus I am in the “Archaeology Unit.” My MA research on a community archaeology project in Northern Labrador bridged the gap between the two sub-disciplines since I utilized both anthropological and archaeological methods. I interviewed Inuit Elders within the community on their perceptions of the past and current archaeological practice in the region and am currently creating a website on Labrador archaeology for the community, as well as writing my thesis.

Sara Stephens: I completed my Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Manitoba in 2006. I was studying economic and social development initiatives and became interested in researching whether or not development could be done in a way that was culturally appropriate. I began to study Community Economic Development (CED), a form of development that ostensibly involves community members in the design and implementation of development initiatives that will directly affect them. My own hometown, Winnipeg Manitoba, is a hub for groundbreaking work in CED, with many grassroots and not-for-profit organizations working to address the socio-economic issues in Winnipeg’s inner city. I conducted research with the staff and participants of CED organizations to explore the meanings of community, inclusion and exclusion from community, and the way CED navigated these definitions in the attempt to build meaningful relationships and programs for social betterment. The participants in my research were largely those from marginalized groups, such as women, single parents, Aboriginal and Métis people, immigrants and refugee and persons with physical and mental disabilities. They were further marginalized by poverty, as most were low-income, receiving social assistance and relying on foodbanks to get by.

Our Friendship

Amelia: I first met Sara during the final year of my undergrad at the University of Manitoba where I was vice president of our anthropology student group and she was a new pre-Masters student in our department. We became very good friends while working as research assistants for a professor in our department, and quickly realized how much we had in common both academically, and personally. My friendship with Sara differs from other friendships in many ways, perhaps a large part of it relates to our similar family backgrounds, life experiences and academic interests. Going through similar experiences has made us very open and honest with each other and supportive no matter what.

Sara: Amelia and I met in the fall of 2003. Having been asked what made our friendship different than others in the graduate experience, I have reflected and discovered that it is difficult to define. I believe honesty and very open expression were (and are) the key features of this friendship that made it incredibly supportive and refreshing. There was a balance between discussing our views on the academic theories we were learning, our personal perspectives and experiences, and stepping back and laughing at the entire process, or admitting that we felt unsure, unstable, or just did not understand. There were no other people I felt I had the same personal and academic bond with. I feel my friendship with Amelia perfectly combines these two elements in a way that enables me to explore the intersection between my academic pursuits and my personal identity, and to sometimes poke fun at it.

Raw Data: An Email Account

The following is a complete email and response between the authors. We included it to offer the feel of many of our emails to one another. Also, we have identified themes in this email that we will discuss and expand on in the following sections.

This set of emails reflects many of the struggles and concerns we felt while conducting research. The following sections are based on themes we identified in all of our emails. Samples from personal emails and journals are given to illustrate each theme. Names at the beginning of paragraphs indicate the writer. We offer our joint discussion of these themes at the end of each section.

Negativity, Self Doubt, Sadness and Stress

Amelia: Moving across the country to begin graduate studies was probably the most difficult, and at times the most rewarding, experience in my life. Having very close ties to my family and leaving them and my best friends behind meant leaving my support network miles away. I did not realize how difficult that would be until I began my graduate program. Although phone calls and emails make contact quite convenient, nothing compares to sitting down with your best friend and having a good cry over a cup of tea. Feeling alone in a new city, having to make new friends and adjust to a new academic program were very overwhelming for me and yet it seemed like none of my cohort were experiencing the same stress, loneliness and anxiety that I was. I later found out that they were, but at the time we all put up a front and forged ahead without support from each other or the university, all the while feeling like there was something wrong with us because we were feeling this way. The main outlet for my concerns was emailing Sara, and it was through these emails that my mind was put to ease, if only until I hit the next big bump in my grad school experience.

Common throughout my graduate experience are my thoughts of not being smart enough to be in a graduate program or feeling like my research is not good enough. Having low academic self-esteem prior to entering a graduate program has had some serious negative effects on my self-perception. Even though I have experienced success within the program and other research related initiatives, I cannot help but dwell on the negative. I repeatedly become disenchanted with my thesis project, a feeling that might be familiar to graduate students throughout the thesis-writing process, though I find it is often well hidden or masked by the need to sound confident in the research to the point of exaggerating its importance or what it has accomplished.

Writing and presenting for academic audiences proves difficult when you doubt yourself, or your research. I did not feel comfortable writing up my research because I felt that it had failed. Sara’s response not only assured me that my research had not failed, but also supported my views and gave me insights into how to use these thoughts and feelings to my thesis’s advantage.

Knowing that she too had been through similar doubts and had addressed the balance between academia and an outside community really helped. Unfortunately I did not feel like I could raise these concerns with my supervisor, as my graduate experience led me to believe that you must put up a front, not let anyone know the emotional struggles of research, and deal with it all yourself. It has become clear to me that emotions are very separate from academia.

Sara: Writing from a place somewhat removed from my Masters, having completed the work over a year ago, some of the details of the experience had faded for me when I began thinking about this article. The deadlines, specific challenges and the logistics of successfully navigating the academic system have become hazy memories. However, the emotional aspects of conducting research and writing up remain very clear to me. Reflecting on the experience brings back memories of intense stress, loneliness, isolation and pressure.

Some of these aspects of research were the result of personal trials and struggles that I faced during this time—health concerns, relationship break-ups and my best friend moving out of the province. Others were built into the Masters process—systemic issues and barriers that I believe need to be acknowledged and talked about.

The combination of personal and academic pressures, alienation and competition had damaging effects on my self-esteem, a hazard of academic research that I had not expected at the time. The struggle to distinguish myself as someone worthy of working with, to justify myself to organizations and community members I wanted to work with, and to write up the research in a sensitive way led me to experience significant self-doubt.

Graduate school was enlightening in that it broke down many of my preconceived notions and encouraged me to produce my own opinions and ideas. At the same time, no matter how enlightening the experience, it was also a painful one. I often felt that I had no familiar territory, no grounding, and that I could no longer trust what I saw and heard. While I valued the process of deconstruction, I did not have the resources to reconstruct something that would have given me motivation and a sense of purpose.

After being trained to challenge and critique everything I had taken for granted, I began to feel isolated. Academia immersed me in a worldview that was not shared by the mainstream and a language that made me unintelligible to most of the people around me. I had many personal epiphanies, but they were so specific to the field that I felt I had no one to share them with and no way of making myself understood. The isolation and alienation I felt only intensified when I was no longer in classes. I was released to discover and develop my own project, without any solid connections with the University or my fellow classmates. I was also dealing with my best friend’s move to St. John’s to start her Masters program.

In this atmosphere, I began to doubt myself, and there were no resources available to help me deal with the pressure and stress of beginning research. I coordinated and conducted research using my apartment as my home base. I spent the majority of my time working at home, alone. These pressures and the lack of supports led to the breakdown of my self-esteem. I became very negative and felt tense and irritable on a regular basis.

My emails to Amelia during this process show many examples of how my injured self-esteem and self-doubt crippled and discouraged me during this time. In many separate emails, I refer to the process of trying to get my research approved and started as “torture,” “useless,” “intimidating” and “stressful”.

Perhaps the most distressing aspect for me, as my emails illustrate, was how alone and lost I felt. With no concrete or ongoing support, and no workspace at the University, I felt completely isolated and had a very hard time getting feedback or connecting with others — the essential process I needed to help keep my motivation and inspiration going and refresh my thoughts and ideas. This was so pronounced that I felt I was in “limbo.”

The feeling of isolation created great strain and pressure when attempting to meet deadlines that were inflexible. I began to experience frequent bouts of anxiety and sometimes panic.

Isolation from others and lack of support had an immense impact on my mental health, as my comments indicate. I often moved from one part of the academic process to another without significant input or support, which felt as though I was just going through the motions; and I did not have meaningful feedback that I could incorporate into the learning process, or use to improve my project.

The emotional process I endured while beginning, conducting and writing up research made me doubt myself, by breaking down my confidence in my abilities and isolating me from other potential sources of support, such as other students, advisors or professors. Working in isolation meant that I had no one to help me build on good ideas and reject bad ones. Without this feedback, I had to constantly critique myself, which is a healthy part of academia when done in a structured and supportive environment, but was unhealthy when done alone and without guidance. My ongoing critiques led to self-doubts that were discouraging and demoralizing.

The pressure and stress of this process is evident in many negative and destructive comments between me and Amelia. I lost confidence in my ability to create and produce innovative research. While I had a strong social network, I did not have the academic network I needed, or the preparation for the adjustment to conducting social research.

Our analysis: A major feature of both of our experiences was isolation, either from being physically removed from comfortable and familiar surroundings, or by becoming intellectually isolated and unable to relate to the people around us. We have also come to realize the impact of our negative self-perceptions. A comment from a professor or a small academic hurdle could be magnified easily into an obstacle that made us feel defeated. This was in part because we were already so hard on ourselves and full of self-doubt that we internalized every comment or criticism. We felt like frauds or failures and worried that we would be perceived as unintelligent or unprofessional by others. While this is partly a personal issue, we feel it can be fostered by the academic system.

Unfortunately, we came to these realizations a bit late, and have since learned that other students within our cohorts were experiencing the same difficulties. One way to combat these feelings of isolation and negativity might be to create a mentoring program within the department where PhD or second-year MA students could offer advice and support to new graduate students. In addition, we feel it would help to complement theoretical coursework with practical field assignments, where possible. This would give students the opportunity to experience some of the practical and personal issues associated with fieldwork while they are still connected to the network of peers and professors who can offer assistance. Furthermore, the structure of universities still encourages students to be (or at least appear to be) experts, and creates fear of admitting to “failures” that could be used as valuable learning experiences. As well, the anthropologists we studied rarely include their original plans or failures in their writing, but generally only write up the research that was successful. It would be helpful to discuss and write about experiences of fieldwork that did not go according to plan or that posed emotional and structural challenges for the researchers.

Stress, Anxiety and the Academic System

Amelia: Part of what made my graduate experience a difficult one was my choice of project. Although I was admitted to the department of Anthropology and Archaeology, the two “units” are very separate and as a self-described “anthropological archaeologist” I ran into some serious challenges. My project utilized anthropological methods—I interviewed Inuit Elders within a remote northern community in Labrador—but I related it to archaeological materials and explored the community’s perceptions of archaeology thus far and their suggestions for the future. It was difficult to find the support and advice I needed concerning project design since I had very little interaction with the anthropologists.

My project also received a negative response from some archaeologists, as it was not a “traditional” project involving excavation or it did not fit into their ideals of a community archaeology project. I was at a slight disadvantage from my peers, as many of our required courses did not help me with my research design or methods.

Fortunately, I was able to take a reading course with a willing, and extremely supportive, anthropology professor. That class gave me the intellectual venue to voice my ideas and concerns about conducting social research and provided me with much needed encouragement to develop my ideas further and explore different approaches. However, having to prove myself and the validity of my project were constant throughout my coursework and research defence. This only added to my academic self-esteem issues.

My decision to do a community-based research project also created challenges within the academic system. Although the university approves of such research initiatives and provides many funding opportunities, the rigid confines of the university system make the process quite difficult. In Canada, all research involving human participants requires ethics approval by submitting a proposal that addresses and follows the guidelines of the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS) [2] for research involving human participants to the review board of your academic institution. Having successfully received ethics approval, I set out to Nain to conduct my social research, consent forms in hand. Although required by the university, the consent forms tended to confuse my participants or throw them off the interview process entirely. Despite that I had carefully worded them in “plain language,” they made no sense to the population that I was interviewing. In fact, I think they found the notion of the consent form preposterous and maybe even a bit rude. They had welcomed me into their homes, knowing that I was interested in their stories and their pasts and this formality that had to occur at the beginning of the interview seemed so foreign that it further distanced me from the community and set me apart as some all-knowing white researcher from the south. This was precisely the power differential that I was trying to avoid.

I hired a local interpreter/translator to accompany me to the interviews and work closely with me while in Nain. The money for her payment was to come from a research grant I had been awarded through an institute associated with the university. Given that money is at times quite difficult to come by in this community, the month’s salary I was guaranteeing her was very welcome. Unfortunately, the bureaucratic system and endless paperwork made getting the money to her incredibly difficult and despite my best efforts, she did not receive any payment until well after the work was completed and I was back in St. John’s. This was unacceptable to both of us and unfortunately, she has since said she will not work for a university researcher again. This situation created tension between us, which was not what I wanted, but I was helpless and at the hands of the financial officers of the university. Furthermore, it was difficult to explain to her and others in the community that although the money was mine to use, I did not have direct access to it, or the ability to speed up the process.

Although many students in my cohort were able to complete their research in the summer and begin analysis in the fall, I did not complete my research until the end of October and then faced many weeks of transcribing long before I got anywhere close to the write-up phase. In addition, a follow-up visit to Nain in the spring and working on excavations over the summer took time away from writing. Now that I am entering my third year of the Masters program I am facing many challenges, such as lack of funding, office space and constant pressure and guilt to be finished. My self-doubt and negativity paralyzed me during the writing phase and I have only recently been able to sit down and begin writing.

Sara: In addition to the struggles that emerged from being isolated from the academic environment, there were other challenges that I believe are inherent to Masters research. The academic program seemed to focus more on accomplishing work by the deadlines, rather than allowing the process to take the amount of time it needed for the work to be done properly. These manufactured and arbitrary deadlines were the source of a great deal of pressure.

Competition between students is encouraged in the academic setting. Students are often rivals for grades, for funding and for professors they hope to connect to and work with. During the second year of my program, there was a great deal of competition and comparison among Masters students over how far along we were in our research. At times I felt this was encouraged by the department:

I also found that attempting to conduct a community-based project while following academic guidelines and structure was an ongoing battle that required careful navigation. Community-based research should involve the input and participation of the community being discussed in the research. This requires a flexibility of time, project structure and authorship that I found did not fit well within an academic structure. I faced many challenges, beginning with the fact that ethics boards require a complete project proposal and interview questions prior to any research being conducted. This prevented me from gaining essential information from the community (mainly marginalized community members in Winnipeg’s inner city who participate in community-based programs) about what they would like to see in the research and the results that would be most meaningful to them. While I conducted many informal consultations, I could not conduct formal research. I also faced academic issues that were not relevant to the community;

In my experience, rigorous consent forms and assurances of confidentiality and the destruction of data were not of interest or concern to the community I was doing research with. In many cases, the ethics requirements were intimidating and made people afraid to participate. This was a case where the language of academia was alienating and discriminatory against the community that was participating in the research.

Also, the continual pressure to complete a research proposal, obtain ethics approval, conduct research and write up within one year excluded many possibilities for richer and more rewarding research. For example, I did not have time to conduct community consultations and dissemination that would have been a valuable contribution to the research.

In writing up my research, I was expected to adhere to academic writing principles that created further barriers for me in producing research that would be useful and relevant to the community I worked with. Although anthropology has become increasingly aware of the need for multiple and dissenting voices in research, academic writing guidelines do not acknowledge or address the researcher’s responsibility to communicate effectively with research participants in the final research report. The guidelines for my thesis were very traditional, patriarchal and positivist—I had to establish myself as an “expert” in my field and demonstrate my knowledge and mastery of the topics I discussed. This structure leaves little room for the voices of the participants who informed and directed my research.

I attempted to include these voices by including and analyzing quotes from community members. However, some professors felt that slang, street talk and cursing were not appropriate in the research. I felt torn between the worldviews and languages of academia and the community. Had I been free to write in a more flexible style, I would have been better able to do justice to the multiple voices in my research, as well as my own doubts and fears about being considered an “expert” in areas where I lack personal experience.

Our analysis: Community-based research is a flexible process that requires large investments of time and energy. The academic system is rigid, with strict timelines. Doing community-based research involves trying to bridge these two worlds, and they are still very separate worlds, with their own values, beliefs, worldviews and languages. Bringing academic language into communities can be isolating, patronizing or simply irrelevant. We both experienced feelings of being frauds or being suspect on account of our status as “researchers.” Following academic guidelines further isolated us from the communities we worked with and made power imbalances concrete. We felt we were not able to conduct our research in the ways that made the most sense to the communities we worked with. As a result, we suffered from feelings of guilt, disappointment, and a loss of purpose and belief in our research.

Greater communication and interaction between ethics boards and academic departments might help to address some of these issues. For example, having a consent form in plain language would benefit both the researcher and the ethics department, as research participants will have a better understanding of the project and be able to give truly informed consent. Although in some cases, “plain language” consent forms might still seem inappropriate, this can be mediated by providing participants at the start of the interview with an information sheet that describes the project, their role in it, and the researcher’s contact information. Following the interview, the participant can be asked to sign the consent form, and the researcher can sign the information sheet as a way of creating a contract where both parties fully understand how the information will be used. Also, academic departments and ethics boards could benefit from researching and participating in research being done by community organizations with a more community-based research process and philosophy.

Unexpected Emotions in the Field

Amelia: Prior to going to Nain, I received many warnings from professors and concerned individuals regarding my safety as a young woman heading to Nain to live for a month by herself. It was not something I had given much thought, nor had my advisor mentioned it in the planning phases of my research. I had been to Nain for a few weeks previously, after an excavation further north that summer, and was able to make some contacts and arrangements for my later visit. I did not foresee any problems with going there by myself and staying awhile. However, once I had heard the concern from more than one individual I started to doubt my initial perception of Nain and felt a bit uneasy about my grand research plans.

As a remote northern community, Nain was quite different from anything I had experienced. Being isolated geographically was no match for the personal isolation I felt as a strange foreign researcher. The house I rented was quite spacious for one person and not equipped with a phone, so my only contact with anyone from home was via short phone calls made from the lodge, and the occasional email when I was able to find internet access.

It was hard to make myself known in the community, even enough to hire someone as a research assistant, let alone to find people to interview. Although everyone in town is very friendly, they all have their own things going on and are a bit sceptical of researchers from away. Once I had hired my assistant things moved more smoothly, as she was able to help me set up interviews, and community members were more willing to talk when both of us were there. My days became full with meeting people for interviews, but my nights were incredibly lonely as I sat in my house watching fuzzy CBC television to try to take my mind off the stress. Nothing in my studies had prepared me for this experience and I felt very lost and alone. I was constantly second-guessing myself and wondering if the content of my interviews was okay and whether I was doing enough work.

Throughout all my night-time worries, I could not help but wonder if things would have been different had I not received all those warnings about Nain. I spent my nights alone, locked in my house because I did not think it was safe to be out. I was afraid because of what others had told me, not because of my own experiences. On a later follow-up visit I decided to do the opposite, so I went out to the bar many nights, just to play pool and meet people. I had a much better time and became better known to people in the community. My preconceived notions made me miss out on what could have been a really great research experience; instead I experienced more of the negative aspects of research—loneliness, isolation, stress and worry.

My follow-up visit was intended to provide my participants with copies of their interviews, in both English and Inuktitut, and to wrap things up with the community through radio interviews and a community presentation. Although some of my interviews had touched on some intense emotional issues, that of relocation specifically, I was able to go through them and later transcribe them without too much emotional stress. During the follow-up visit I found out that many of the Elders I had interviewed became ill over the winter, and some had to be moved and hospitalized to care-homes in the south.

Knowing that my research had made an impression on community members, especially family members of my participants, finally made me feel good about my research and the work I had done. No amount of awards or praise in the academic system made me feel as rewarded.

My repeated presence in the community seems to have separated me from other researchers, who come in, take what they need and never return.

In my plans to continue a PhD project with this community, I hope to build on this new relationship.

Sara: When I entered into research, I found myself hearing stories and experiences that were painful, traumatic and that challenged me as an individual and a researcher. While anthropology has moved towards acknowledging the researcher’s subjectivity and positionality, it has not adequately dealt with how the researcher can protect his or her emotional and mental health in this subjective state. In doing research with other people, we will no doubt hear stories that will challenge our personal beliefs, and become keepers of painful stories. I heard about experiences of abuse, racism, neglect and systemic demoralization. I felt unprepared to maintain and acknowledge my subjectivity in interviews without being overwhelmed by it, and by the emotional reactions it provoked.

At times, I felt very vulnerable as a researcher, and faced situations where I felt afraid and unsafe. I had been trained to believe that as the researcher, I was in a position of power with regard to the research participants. I had addressed this issue in depth in my research proposal and ethics proposal. However, there was no protocol to protect me and my emotional and physical wellbeing.

As I was not prepared to have to protect myself, and sometimes even felt that to do so would show a lack of trust or respect for the research participants, I ignored even basic safety measures that I take in daily life as a woman. I was eventually forced to realize this by enduring an interview where I felt threatened and unsafe, in which the interview took place in a context that left me terrified. I realized that due to my desire to protect my research participants, I had put myself in a situation where I was alone in a house with a hostile stranger, and had not told anyone where I was. My experience led me to be more careful in future interviews, and to understand my own vulnerability.

Having done research as an independent contractor since receiving my degree, I have become more informed of ways that other institutions protect the emotional and mental health of researchers. One organization offered me a “debrief” person, someone unconnected with the project who would be bound by a confidentiality agreement not to divulge anything I told them, whom I could talk to about the emotionally distressing information I heard during research. I feel that these resources should be made available to anthropology students who are working with marginalized populations and who are likely to hear about traumatic experiences and experience emotional distress as a result — a phenomenon that is recognized as “compassion fatigue” or “vicarious trauma” in mental health fields (Figley 1995).

Our analysis: We both feel that the ways in which our research subjects were constructed for us by others had negative impacts on our research experiences. Amelia experienced scare tactics that constructed Nain as an unsafe environment in which it was not possible to be social or participate in community activities. Sara, on the other hand, had been prepared to view her research participants as marginalized victims, and was so afraid to “other” people, that she did not consider the possibility of being a target of hostility and aggression.

Reflecting on our different experiences, it appears that we both struggled with the boundaries between appropriate personal and researcher behaviour. Neither of us felt we were prepared for the realities of research or our roles as researchers. We had not received any training on healthy boundaries or methods to deal with real research situations. While it is impossible to predict all possible risks or situations that might arise, we would have benefited from more practical training, especially in applied methods that would have given us the opportunity to develop practical skills and research protocol. Since conducting our research, we have become aware of the Social Research Association’s “Code of Practice for the Safety of Social Researchers,” [3] which acknowledges the importance of safety and its impact on the quality of research. Such guidelines and safeguards would make “the field” an easier and safer place for lone researchers to navigate, and protect their wellbeing.

Affirmation, Support and Camaraderie

Amelia: Not all of my academic experience was negative; there were times when I received much needed support and even praise. There were certain professors within the department that I felt comfortable raising some concerns with and, despite some negative aspects, or those that I interpreted as negative due to my own self-esteem issues, for the most part the entire department looked out for my best interests.

The majority of my academic support came from the members of my cohort. I was fortunate enough to have seven other students in my year who offered never-ending support, and never experienced back-stabbing or competitiveness. We interacted like a small family unit—as many of us were from out of province, far away from our families—supporting one another and always willing to help by editing papers or going for impromptu beers at the pub. Much of our free time was spent together, exploring the city or having house parties to unwind. There were always people I could bounce my ideas off of without feeling insecure and I feel that my graduate experience was greatly enriched by their various perspectives. I often think that without my close group of friends I might have given up and not completed the program. They always encouraged me to stick with it and I am grateful.

Sara: At times, I did receive support and affirmation from the University. These moments of support were greatly appreciated, and helped me to feel more connected to the program and to my own research.

Our analysis: While we received occasional support and advice from our departments, the majority of the support we received in academia came from our anthropological cohorts. Social interactions with other students provided much-needed outlets for social activities, as well as advice and support on our projects. The absence of, or lack of direction to, important supports such as student advocacy and counselling represent a major gap in service for graduate students. The academic system did not recognize or address the emotional strain that can result from long periods of intense stress and pressure or the difficulties of working in an academic environment. Therefore, supportive cohorts and other social networks were our main sources of encouragement and care during our studies.

While cohorts in anthropology can provide emotional support, elements of competition and struggle seem to co-exist with moments of support. While we received advice and encouragement from some members of our cohort, we faced competitive relationships with others. The distinction between friend and foe seems to be our perception of how similar our projects might be, as we would tend to get the most defensive and competitive when we felt that someone could potentially intrude on our territory. These particular people present a threat to limited resources in university such as access to information, resources and advisors. As well, graduate students are taught to focus on a “new” area of study, so encroachments from particular members of the cohort could be a significant threat to the originality and inventiveness of research.

The support that we were able to offer each other was no doubt influenced in some ways by the fact that we were not directly in competition. We were in different years of our research when attending the same university, were not in the same classes and therefore not competing for grades, and eventually did not attend the same university.

Friendship, Support and Shared Experiences

Amelia: Although my family has always been supportive of me no matter what, the main person who helped me survive my Masters was Sara. Her never-ending support and words of wisdom were a constant source of encouragement for me. Knowing that she had been through the process really helped, although I now recognize how hard it was for her starting out when I had no idea what graduate studies were all about. Our emails back and forth were great for sharing all our experiences, both positive and negative.

Sara’s emails were not only supportive, but they made me laugh and lifted my spirits even when things were rough. Being able to talk openly about my feelings without academic jargon was refreshing and a definite release from the stresses of school. I think the following quote sums up our friendship quite nicely:

Sara: Examples of support between Amelia and I are evident in almost every one of our emails. Having a best friend who was in anthropology, and in grad school, provided me with the emotional and academic support that helped me to survive the process. The lack of supports from academia and the stresses inherent in the Masters process and in social research made my personal support network a crucial aspect of my success.

The personal and academic support I got from Amelia was essential, and emails between us also reveal many of our perceptions of the field of anthropology and the experience of being grad students.

Part of the reason this friendship has been so rewarding and fulfilling for me is that it crosses the boundaries between academic life and personal life. I am able to discuss the academic worldview and anthropological issues that I have developed during my Masters, while also being able to joke about them, view them from a personal, emotional, and critical lens. When talking to Amelia, I was able to use both academic and “street” language, and to combine the two worlds in a way that made the research and my experience as a researcher more understandable and relevant to me. Our friendship helped me to define which academic principles I agree with, and which have no resonance with my personal life and beliefs. It broke my isolation by enabling me to speak from both of my perspectives: academic and personal. I feel that this ongoing dialogue enriched my perspective on my research.

Our analysis: Our friendship, as a major component of our social support networks, was an integral part of our Masters experience and one that stretched across a long distance. Continual phone calls and emails kept us connected and allowed us the opportunity to express both our personal and academic selves. Our combination of academic and street language in emails was a refreshing and uniting expression of the challenges and successes we faced as researchers and as individuals. Our ability to express ourselves in this way helped us to build a strong friendship and break out of academic isolation.

Conclusion

We embarked on this journey as friends because we wanted to take the opportunity to experiment with our personal and academic experiences. Our belief and hope is that other graduate students will be able to identify personally and anthropologically with the issues we have raised. Social networks and emotional experiences should be acknowledged as important components of graduate school. Even when we are aware that others share our issues or concerns, it can be hard to approach them and difficult to admit when we are struggling. By denying or repressing these feelings, we allow ourselves to be silenced. We are grateful for the opportunity to express our anthropological and individual positions, and to make ourselves heard.

Endnotes

1. See Behar (1995).

2. The Tri-Council refers to our three main funding agencies, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

3. To view a copy of this code, visit: http://www.thesra.org.uk/documents/word/safety_code_of_practice.doc

References Cited

Behar, Ruth. 1996. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston: Beacon Press.

Figley, C.R., ed. Compassion fatigue: Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder in those who Treat the Traumatized. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Wolf, Diane L. 1996. Situating feminist dilemmas in fieldwork. In Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork. Pp. 1-55. Boulder: Westview Press.