My PhD Saga: A Farce in Three Acts · Women in Tech Power Network

May 26 (edited) • Wins 💎

My PhD Saga: A Farce in Three Acts

👩‍🎓Prologue: the adventures of Dr Dickhead👩‍🎓

As some of you may know, I have been undertaking a PhD programme since June 2021. I look at AI implementation and its impact on marginalised communities, and my research has latterly evolved into understanding the new ways in which AI discourse conceptualises power and how this shapes public policy. After a year at a standstill, I recently decided to withdraw from my programme. Reader, I have never felt so free. So by popular demand (well,

@Sue Black

asked for it), here it is, the dramatic retelling of my PhD saga nobody (except Sue) asked for. It's a long one, so settle in with a cup of tea.

I’d love to say that I went into my PhD programme in search of intellectual rigour, the pursuit of truth, and to expand the parameters of AI research (having barely worked in AI at the time, of course).

I did not.

I chose to do a PhD because it was offered as a perk of working for the university in question, and I really wanted people to call me Dr Dickhead for some reason (the Dawn of 2019 - when this odyssey of nonsense first started - was an exceedingly different beast from the Dawn before you). But, in spite of myself, I actually got into the whole academia thing and genuinely started producing good research, novel (gasp) concepts, and the occasional bout of existential dread.

The university’s jacket was always on a shoogly peg with me (you get what you pay for) but I was making progress, my Viva was planned for December 2025, and I was looking forward to becoming Dr Dawn.

Then came July 2025, piles of apparently unpaid invoices, a block on enrolling and a protracted institutional horror show in which I was apparently expected to pay for services not rendered, nod politely while my data was hacked and the finance system imploded, and then behave as though this were all some charming quirk of higher education.

💸Act One: the invoices from hell.💸

There are few things more brazen than being charged for something you did not receive. It has the same moral texture as being happy slapped by the Honey Monster and then sued for bringing Sugar Puffs into disrepute. This, apparently, was the first act of my doctoral education: fees for phantom services (almost £6,000 in unpaid invoices apparently), some light administrative necromancy, and the general sensation that someone somewhere had decided to trial extortion as a means of plugging the university’s £14m budget deficit.

All invoices related to pre-2023. 2023 was the year the university was subject to a cyber attack. I know because I received an email saying all of my student and employee data had been hacked, and did I fancy a free subscription to Experian to make sure I wasn’t being robbed at that very moment? I decided to challenge the invoice requests. Surely this was a huge mistake and we would get this all sorted out in plenty of time for me to do my Viva?

Reader, I was wrong.

👊Act Two: the year of beige warfare. 👊

After two months of attempting to resolve the invoice issues with the Doctoral College and the Finance Department, I submitted a formal complaint in early September 2025. The formal complaint process dragged on for, well technically I think it's still ongoing, which is a magnificent amount of time to be trapped inside a bureaucratic mausoleum where every email sounds like it was written by a sentient filing cabinet.

And when the initial complaint outcome finally emerged from the swamp in January 2026, all three of my grounds were upheld in my favour. The university had tried to charge me for a year I didn’t attend, didn’t apply my fee waivers correct, didn’t correctly record my shift from full time to part time, and didn’t account for my 7 month authorised interruption period. Hurrah! Surely I would be enrolling and doing my Viva now? A tiny, shining moment in which the proverbial squeakiest of wheels got the grease.

I was vindicated. Smug, even.

And then, because hell is other people when those other people form a higher education institution, the university refused to honour the recommendations of their own internal complaints process.

Which is, frankly, exquisite in its audacity. Not merely wrong, but stubbornly, performatively wrong. The kind of wrong that makes you wonder if all of the grown ups had been locked in a cupboard and the university had, in fact, been overtaken by feral cats hopped up on acid-laced Dreamies.

So I did what any right-minded person does when faced with the audacity, the cheek, and the nerve: I fought back. I documented everything. I submitted a Subject Access Request and a Freedom of Information Request. I submitted a formal external complaint to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. The FOI request came back with boilerplate refusals to disclose, I am in the internal review process (which I have received no acknowledgement of) before I go to the ICO and the Scottish Information Commissioner. I combed through my Subject Access Request and found a litany of evidence that up until August 2025, the university actually didn’t think I owed any fees at all. I found account extracts that looked less like an accurate recording of my financial record and more like an omnibus of unsuccessful attempts to crack the Enigma code.

I have a law degree and ADHD, and I have channelled every iota of those two facts into making this the university’s problem.

🏃‍♀️Act Three: the exit (with my dignity intact)🏃‍♀️

The battle rages on (it will be several months before I receive a definitive outcome from the SPSO, plus I have other avenues of complaint to go down) but I have now withdrawn from the programme. Not because they broke me, though they did try with some enthusiasm, but because at a certain point continuing to participate becomes a form of masochism, and I do not believe in practicing kinks in public. I will not be pummelled into a delicious Scottish slurry by the meat grinder of public sector bureaucracy.

I thought I would feel sad. I actually feel free. And further fuelled by the fiery wrath of a thousand furious suns.

So instead of continuing to kiss the toes of the sunk-cost fallacy, I am focusing on independent research, which is allowing me to go off on many whims and flights of fancy. I am open to research opportunities and collaborations (hit me up!), and I’m not about to choke on the poison apple of this one rotten experience. Next year, I’ll be applying for a PhD by publication at a more prestigious university, which feels both delightfully strategic and, frankly, morally correct. And yes, the alumni discount is a beautiful little insult to the universe.

So this is the lesson, if there is one: Never, ever let the bastards get you down.

Because there are institutions that love nothing more than assuming you’ll tire first, go quiet, and let them keep the version of events they can live with.

Fuck that. I’m interested in making this right and holding these people to account.

And if you see the Honey Monster, tell that bastard I’m coming for him too. 💥

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My PhD Saga: A Farce in Three Acts