Navigating the “Messy Middle”

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Doris Iarovici, MD

Are you in the middle of graduate school but suddenly feel like you’ve hit a wall? Does it seem like nothing is working, or that you don’t know what your project will be? Do you question whether you’re even cut out for scholarly work?

You are not alone—but thinking you are is probably exacerbating the problem. Many students I meet with expect that certain early or late milestones, such as qualifying exams or completing a dissertation while going on the job market, might be particularly stressful. But the middle years—once you’ve gotten the go-ahead to progress to independent research but before you’ve fully fleshed out your intellectual “story”—can be a surprisingly difficult time, too. Understanding and addressing the common challenges of what’s been called the “messy middle” may not only help you navigate the transition to becoming an independent scholar but also position you for an easier time completing your degree. Read on for a few tips to consider.

Set Realistic Expectations

This doesn’t mean tempering your research ambitions; rather, understand that there are reasons this is a tough time. An adjustment at the beginning was foreseeable—after all, everything was new and challenging. Anxiety then may have been mitigated by excitement. You expected things to improve once you finally focused on your own work in an area in which you’ve previously excelled. Who thinks the middle will be harder than the beginning?

Students are often surprised to find that the flexibility and intellectual freedom they’ve spent years longing for can trigger anxiety, feelings of impostor syndrome, and even depression. 

In fact, the middle may more accurately mark the true start of your journey as an independent scholar. Those first years of graduate school were not that different from your undergraduate years in terms of structure and learning. You were still taking classes and being presented with knowledge. Now you have to generate knowledge. Your time is often unstructured. You’ve lost your familiar benchmarks of progress. Often, this phase is also much lonelier: You’re reading for hours on your own, running experiments, or staring at datasets, while your friends are either making money at actual jobs, which they can leave behind in the evenings and on weekends, or similarly engaged in parallel but separate journeys. In addition, you may feel your adviser’s expectations have ratcheted up, now that you’re supposed to be producing research.

Students are often surprised to find that the flexibility and intellectual freedom they’ve spent years longing for can trigger anxiety, feelings of impostor syndrome, and even depression. Studies now document how graduate school can take a toll on mental health. In fact, research shows rates of depression and anxiety increase with each year spent in a PhD program, peaking in years five and above (Bolotnyy et al., 2022). If you’re aware of the normal pitfalls of the middle years, you’re less likely to misattribute setbacks to your own capabilities and more likely to take steps to protect your mental health. Expect that:

• You may not yet have fully defined your research questions.
• You may have ideas you’re passionate about, but your adviser may steer you toward other questions or shoot down your ideas.
• You may have started work on a defined project, but experiments aren’t yielding results, or you unexpectedly lose access to databases you’ve counted on.
• You may spend long hours reading books or running experiments, but don’t feel like you’re moving forward and are unsure whether you’re focusing on the right questions.
• If you’ve just started teaching, you may not be sure how it’s being received, whether you’re doing it right, or how to balance the time it takes with the demands of your own work.

Structure, Structure, Structure!

Encountering the above challenges, some graduate students I’ve worked with push themselves harder and harder, forgoing sleep, exercise, or social connection. Doing that can trigger or exacerbate mental health problems, which themselves then interfere with getting work done. It becomes a vicious cycle. In the most severe instances, their days and nights become reversed. Students work feverishly at night and sleep during the day, completely out of sync with the world around them. Staying up past 1:00 a.m. or frequently missing sleep can lead to various health problems, including depression, anxiety, eating disturbances, and even psychosis.

When doing independent work that doesn’t rely on a 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. schedule or deadlines, it’s crucial to develop routines, especially ones that align with circadian rhythms. Be sure to:

• Set up regular check-ins with faculty so that if problems arise in your work, you’re addressing them early and systematically.
• Get into the “flow of research.” As one recent graduate recommends, ask for advice on how to do this, since the best approaches depend on your field, subfield, and adviser’s research style. Remember, your adviser encountered these difficulties too.
• Schedule the basics: sleep, meals, and exercise. Sleep during the night, and save most of your work for the day. Even if you’re a night owl who naturally gravitates toward late-night productivity, consider that studies link poorer mental health with staying up too late, even if that is your natural inclination. Don’t skip meals.
• Turn vague questions into small, actionable steps that work toward a concrete output you can show others for feedback.
• Consider an “accountability device,” such as scheduling meetings with your adviser early in the day to get you up and out of the house or having a workout buddy.
• Schedule time off, including social time with people you care about. This can help prevent depression and anxiety and, paradoxically, make you more productive when you return to your work.

Remember it takes time—and failure—to build something new.

You’re in graduate school, so you’ve proven you excel at being a student. But completing independent work requires skills you’ve just started to build.

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Coping on Campus: Mental Health and the University Student, December 2024.

Successful scholars recognize that there’s more to thriving in graduate school than being smart and working hard. According to Nir Hacohen, AB ’87, director of cancer immunology at Mass General and a professor at Harvard Medical School, a major source of anxiety midway through the PhD is not yet knowing the “story” you’re trying to build. And how can you? It’s a story that’s never yet been told, and there will likely be false starts and missteps along the way. Those aren’t proof you’re not good at graduate school: Those are graduate school. Most faculty members experienced this, too. In the midst of uncertainty, it can be hard to maintain hope that you’ll have something meaningful in the end. Hacohen says, “The main question is always ‘How will this story ever come together?’” He notes that students “don’t always realize that just doing good work is not enough: You need to understand how to complete a coherent body of work. That’s a lot of pressure and it is not easy to do.” In his experience, “the ability to visualize the path” is a skill that most people have to learn.

You’re in graduate school, so you’ve proven you excel at being a student. But completing independent work requires skills you’ve just started to build.

Failed experiments, negative results, and “wasted” time are all part of the process. You’re often learning a new method or collecting data that will eventually be useful in a future context. Writing in the journal Nature, Eileen Parkes reminds us that “the whole point of science is that it is cutting edge . . . if we want to make new discoveries, that means taking a leap in the dark—a leap we might not take if we’re too afraid to fail.” This applies to all fields of PhD study, where building resilience around setbacks and “wrong” turns is a skill you must develop.

• Have smaller, lower-stakes projects going, which can provide a break if high-stakes or risky experiments or directions hit roadblocks.
• You are not alone. Many of the students I’ve worked with are surprised at how helpful it is to talk to peers, postdocs in their groups, or faculty members about their hardest moments.
• Counseling and Mental Health Services (CAMHS) offers a support group for graduate students each semester. Learn more about current groups and workshops on the CAMHS website.
• The Office of Student Services at Harvard Griffin GSAS can also direct you to helpful resources.
• And of course, you can always confidentially talk to one of us at CAMHS.

When the story you’re building eventually comes together, you’ll have more than just your degree. You’ll have learned how to be a resilient, self-sufficient person, clarified your passions—which sometimes change over the course of graduate school—and learned how best to pursue them.

Dr. Doris Iarovici is a psychiatrist at Harvard University Health Services’ Counseling and Mental Health Services and the author of Coping on Campus: Mental Health and the University Student.