PhD.

The Graduate Recovery Lounge

A membership for PhD survivors.

The PhD can fuck you up and after such an exhausting and traumatic journey, you deserve academic after care!

Recover from the stress and pressure you endured in your PhD journey, as you reconnect with yourself and reintegrate into society!

Join the Lounge!

You’ve finished the PhD

But you’re unsure of how to move forward in your life and with yourself.

And most of the people you talk to just don’t get it.

Friends, family, even classmates and professors expect you to just move on. They ask you, “So what’s next?” They don’t get the difficult journey you just went through.

The PhD is an isolating experience all around.

Sitting with the mixed feelings: joy, grief, anger, anxiety, burnout, imposter syndrome, etc. might feel uncomfortable. But they’re all normal. With our capitalist society and expectations of immediately finding a job after graduation, it might be hard to prioritize time for yourself to sit in these feelings.

Whether you had a support system during your PhD or not, you deserve one as you find a new normal after the PhD.

You need curated space, time, and community where you can feel and heal with other people who get it.

Welcome to

The Graduate Recovery Lounge!

A semi-structured membership for people who finished or withdrew from the PhD program and are ready to build a lifestyle that reflects their capacity so that they can thrive in the transition period and beyond, from PhD into real life.

There’s a lot of us trying to make sense of what life is after the PhD. Inside the Lounge, you’ll build your own personalized post-PhD journey, supported by coaching, creativity, and community among like minded folks who aren’t work oriented, but liberation oriented.

Here, you can prioritize yourself and recover with others who know exactly what it was like to suffer for the PhD and now want to thrive.

When you join the Lounge you get:

Daily support & community via Discord

Build relationships and join conversations around hobbies, neurodivergent-oriented care, and community wellbeing

Weekly Playtime (Thursdays at 4 PM Pacific)

A choose your adventure hour where you decide on a fun activity that you enjoy doing to work towards reconnecting with yourself

Biweekly Strategy Sessions (2 per month – Tuesdays at 10 AM Pacific)

A 90 minute call where you’ll share what’s working and not working in your current post-PhD lifestyle and gain a personalized strategy to reclaim your schedule

I'm ready to join the Lounge!

After getting fucked by your PhD program,

You deserve academic after care!

Instead of fighting your university or abusive advisor, it’s cheaper to invest in the Graduate Recovery Lounge where you can commiserate and celebrate with others who know what academia is like.

Every month, inside the Graduate Recovery Lounge, you’ll get access to:

daily support and community in Discord
biweekly group coaching calls
weekly playtime

All for $99 USD/month!

You don’t have to process your post-PhD journey alone.

Join the Graduate Recovery Lounge!

Hi there! Grab your favorite stuffie and sit with me!

I’m Shine! I’m your alt advisor and practical grad expert.

I thought I’d be happier after I finished the PhD. Don’t get me wrong, I was. But I was more deflated than anything. It was an anticlimactic ending to a very traumatic journey. I couldn’t recognize myself anymore. I felt lost and had to pave my own way forward as I navigated post-PhD life.

Finishing my PhD meant I had to confront with a reality that I had been putting off for five years: I’m starting over.

It was both exhilarating and terrifying.

But for once, I felt in control. I was free to live without guilt and always thinking, “I should be writing.” I could rebuild my life the way I wanted it.

Are you unsure of how to rebuild your life after the PhD? I’m here to support you.

I spent two years navigating the post-PhD life, intentionally experimenting. I processed my feelings while prioritizing my joy and capacity. I’ve done the work so that I can help you in your post-PhD journey.

Join the Lounge!

woman with black hair smiling in front of pizza and boba

I want to join the Lounge, but I have questions…

Understandable! Let’s see if I can answer some of them.

I graduated more than 2 years ago. Can I still join?

Yes!! Anyone who is in search of finding a community who understands how traumatic and exhausting a PhD is, is welcome to join.

I’m a faculty. Can I still join?

I’m sorry, but no. The intention of the Lounge is to help people who pursued PhDs recover, heal, and thrive in their post-PhD life. Constant interaction with faculty may inhibit people’s progress, especially those who had bad or absent advisors.

How is the Graduate Recovery Lounge different from therapy?

The Lounge is not meant to replace therapy, it is a community membership where you can meet other PhD graduates and share your experiences and build relationships. Instead of scrolling through Reddit to see if others can relate to you, I’m bringing us together so that we can form a community.

I’m currently a PhD student. Can I still join?

Not yet. This space is for people who either graduated or withdrew from a PhD program. In the meantime, I can help you make progress at your capacity even when your advisor is no help. Book a free session here, if you’re curious about 1:1 coaching! Also, please feel free to join the Academic Support Hub—a community for current students.

I’m a PhD candidate and am set to defend within the next six-eight months. Can I still join?

If you have a confirmed date for your dissertation defense, please email me a screenshot of your agreement with your chair to shine@shinekimphd.com.

Why are you trying to profit off people who pursued PhDs?

It’s not a bad thing to make a career out of coaching in order to support PhD students who entered with no knowledge about academia and then get stuck with a bad experience. Not everyone has the support system to survive and heal from a PhD, which is why I created this community.

PhD

You can explore your post-PhD journey in community!

I’ll help you build a post-PhD life that follows your capacity without judgment or shame.

A PhD includes constant sacrifice and isolation. After years of only living for that degree, who are you beyond academia?

The Graduate Recovery Lounge isn’t a textbook with all the answers, but it is a non-judgmental and kind space for building a capacity-honoring lifestyle that anchors you month after month.

If you’re ready to reconnect with yourself, I’ll see you in the Lounge!