Jaelen Myers, PhD Candidate at James Cook University

Two years since the outbreak, the world has been returning to normalcy. In Australia, for instance, the international students who had been trapped in their own countries could finally grab their Visas and board their long-awaited flights. Some of them had been waiting for six months, a year, or even longer to commence or resume their post-graduate studies in Australia, and thought the agonizing wait would never end. This was me. After a year and a half of biding time, I boarded the plane and arrived Down Under Christmas Eve of 2021, more than ready to trade the bitter cold for the tropical breeze and finally get this PhD rolling. However, my PhD story, like that of many others, began before I landed in Australian soil, and this is the time we shouldn’t sweep under the rug.

Back in autumn of 2020, I decided to commence my doctoral study from abroad, thinking the COVID-19 situation would surely get better any day. Remaining optimistic, I designed a PhD around the ecology of stingrays in tropical Australia. I may be a bit biased in that rays are unquestionably my favourite animal, but if that’s not reason enough to focus on them, I’ll also add that they’re gaining spotlight in the ecological sciences. Besides just being pesky, slimy things you step on at the beach, research is growing supporting their integral roles in ecosystem function and balance! Therefore, dedicating my professional career to the “pesky, slimy things” would be an honour. To add to the excitement, I was going to use novel aerial drone technology to study these rays, making me eager to take to the skies. This seemed worth moving over 16,000 kilometres away from home for.

For those of us who had big ideas for doing a PhD in the diverse land of Australia, things did not go like we imagined. As an ecologist, it seemed like a safe assumption that I’d be interacting with my study sites and creatures, but as my project went on things became much different. Instead of prowling the coastlines of north Queensland with my drones in search of stingrays, I was in the central US, thousands of kilometres away from the nearest ocean but never more than a metre away from my laptop screen. Instead of working with other PhD students and poking in the offices of my supervisors to ask questions, I settled for any contact I could get through emails and Zoom. Instead of handling rays, I was merely digitizing the data after the fieldwork had been done.

The hard truth of the matter is that it was hard to feel like a real scientist who was doing anything useful without being part of the action.

It was during the planning stages of my candidature that I realized the necessity of motivation and self-empowerment to carry on when it felt like my PhD was slipping quickly out of my control. As ecologists, we know there are things in the natural world we can’t control (like a global pandemic), but we do have the power to remain hopeful and diligent when undertaking difficult milestones in our research. It was very tempting to quit and find some other PhD opportunity COVID-19 couldn’t ruin. In an alternate universe, maybe I would have done that and never arrived in Australia at all. However, in this universe, my arrival changed everything, particularly the way I was doing my PhD and my overall perception of it.

The most valuable message I gained from this trying experience, which was shared by so many other international researchers, is this: we have to remind ourselves why our research matters. In the end, even when we’re fighting the throes of imposter syndrome and our research reaches a speedbump or two, we’re still the ones breathing life into it. I had to tell myself (and I still do) that my work will provide new knowledge on stingrays that could be used to improve conservation of valuable species and habitats in tropical Australia. For some of you reading this blog, COVID-19 likely also set you back in some way (maybe even your own PhD). Doing what I’ve done and reflecting on how these experiences shape your perceptions and purpose could be the best way to strengthen the connection you have with yourself and your research. As for me, now that I’m here in Australia, I feel confident knowing that I dived into a PhD during the greatest pandemic of my lifetime and survived it. It’s the unexpected turns along the way that show us resilience may just be the greatest tool you have in your researcher tool kit.

Jaelen Myers is undertaking her PhD at James Cook University, studying predator-prey interactions of marine life and using aerial drones to study rays. Her research is supported by a Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment Grant.