Looking back on the first year of my PhD

About a year ago, by chance, I came across the job posting for a PhD position in the project The Art of Creating New Stories: Working with Art-Based Learning in Palliative Care. Immediately the words art and palliative care jumped out at me. After my bachelor's in Art History, I took the master's in Cultural History of Modern Europe. Shortly after graduation, the corona pandemic broke out in the Netherlands, causing my job opportunities in the cultural sector to go up in smoke. For context: In the most extreme case, there were 400(!) fellow applicants for a job in the sector. This felt alienating at a time when healthcare was under enormous pressure.

Six months after graduation, I was a student again, but this time at HBO as a nurse in training. Just under six months after getting my blue pin, I decided to jump into the deep end again. I am aware of my hypocrisy: I went into healthcare to make a contribution, at the same time I am leaving healthcare in times of dire staff shortages. However, I was out of place in the nursing home and burnout was looming (believe me, work in care is tremendously hard, all credit to all caregivers). With encouragement from friends and family, I decided to apply for the PhD position. Two weeks after sending my cover letter, I was hired. A month later I returned to the academy, this time in a teaching hospital instead of the university building, which again seemed to symbolize the convergence of my trodden paths.

So now I have moved on a year. Over the past year, I have been introduced to Art-Based Learning, a method of looking at art, with the goal of learning from art rather than about it. I got to interview people with incurable cancer about their experience with Art-Based Learning, and how they experienced art in the hospital. This world of art and care was still somewhat familiar to me. I was quickly pulled out of my comfort zone with data management plans, something totally unfamiliar to me as a humanities scholar, and yes, with statistics. Six months into my PhD, I had already produced my first survey of demographic and clinical data in SPSS from the participants in my first study. And next year I am going to do a questionnaire study, for which I will write my own syntax. I am well on my way to becoming a jack-of-all-trades.

Still, it is mostly the people who have made the past year so special. It is special to be part of an incredibly talented and interdisciplinary project team that always manages to excite, inspire and grow me. But also the people I interviewed made an unforgettable impression. To see how people with chronic, incurable diseases live, how bravely they face life, its duration in limbo. And that they participate in scientific research despite everything, to be able to contribute to better care for others who come after them. It is therefore my goal to articulate their experiences to the best of my ability and to ensure that their voices can help shape the care of the future.