Quick Take: The Dip Explained Using Famous Five Chapter Titles

A couple of months back, I wrote about The Dip—the difficult, depressing period you encounter when doing anything substantial. I recently found a delightful Twitter thread by @HarrowerSophie where she documents her PhD journey through titles of chapters of Famous Five novels. Look at some of these tweets and you’ll recognize the dip:

It starts of great

Sophie Harrower @HarrowerSophie

Me, in the early days:

You make quick progress:

Sophie Harrower @HarrowerSophie

Me, after diving into the literature:

Then the dip starts:

Sophie Harrower @HarrowerSophie

Me, after realising that the first few months are deceptively easy and PhDs are actually hard:

The dip has much emotional turmoil:

Sophie Harrower @HarrowerSophie

Me, trying to re-learn R (again):

And you feel like this project has been a disaster:

Sophie Harrower @HarrowerSophie

Me, looking at my data:

and only later do things start looking up:

Sophie Harrower @HarrowerSophie

How I hope I’ll feel when I complete it:

I guess Sophie is still not done with her PhD so hasn’t yet reached the final part of the curve (the “plateau of productivity”) but she will.

I know this newsletter is supposed to be full of long paragraphs of text that feel like homework to read. Hopefully, we’ll be back to something like that next week.