This article reconsiders narratives of the doctoral journey. It aims to contribute to a small but growing body of work which offers an irruption to widely accepted notions of learning as a linear pathway with a fixed end-point. The article engages two of Deleuze and Guattari's many generative concepts: rhizome and becoming. In doing so, it explores the value of attending to the multiple and messy becomings that researchers experience, as they evolve throughout a doctorate and beyond. It focuses on how such an unsettling may be foregrounded by the increasing prevalence of new forms and possibilities for doctoral study, and it explores the textual implications of disrupting assumptions regarding doctoral writing. The article closes with considering what such a re-theorising might offer for our understanding of doctoral study and doctoral writing, as well as for the broader concepts of time, learning and change within higher education.