6th February 2022
Everyone doing a Ph.D. has a different story to tell. To each, their own. The hurdles that everyone faced, endless struggles to complete the degree, and solutions that helped them overcome it. All are different.
However, no matter in which subject one is doing a Ph.D., no matter whether one is currently pursuing it or has completed it a few decades ago, or will pursue it a few decades from now, there are a few things that bring all of them together. Because Ph.D. is not just a degree, it is a journey.
It is a journey that has a deep impact on your life, both professional and personal. It changes your life in a certain way. There are a few skills that I feel this journey teaches us.
1 Choosing to do hard work
Pursuing a Ph.D. is hard. It takes a toll on you, mentally and physically, both. Many a time you don’t know if all the effort is ever going to pay back. There is no instant gratification. You come so close to quitting, yet, stretch all your willpower to not quit.
You don’t want to give up when things get difficult and you want things to work out, irrespective of the time and hard work that it takes. You don’t want the easy way out. To put it straight, you choose to do hard work. You voluntarily agreed to it. And this quality will take you places.
2 Accepting failures. Understanding what doesn’t work
Sometimes things just don’t work. You get exhausted troubleshooting why a certain experiment is not working out as per your plan. You start with a completely different story in your mind, and you end with a story that explains why your first version could not work. About 70-80% of the time goes into failed experiments.
Eventually, you understand that it isn’t about failures, but rather understanding what doesn’t work. It takes a big heart to go out there and perform your experiment for the 17th time, after knowing that it hasn’t worked the previous 16 times. If 50 things don’t work, you go to the 51st. You do not sulk over failures; you embrace them and move on. It teaches you resilience.
3 Super planners
That brings us to the next point. Planning contributes to a major part of your Ph.D. journey. You read, plan, and work. Then you read more, plan more, and work more. And the loop goes on. When you’re formulating your thesis, you intricately think about all the angles of it.
You think about a lot of ‘what if’s and answer a lot of ‘then what’s. You have backups for all your backups. And if all of them get exhausted, you begin again with a fresh perspective. This attitude helps you in your personal life, whenever you think about something, you think about it from all 360 degrees.
4 Patience
In the end, it is all about patience. Ph.D. is really a doctorate in patience as much as it is in philosophy. Good things fall apart, but better things can fall in place. It takes an immense amount of patience and there are no cherries on the way. All thorns. Things don’t work, working things suddenly stop working, papers get rejected, social life is stunted.
The probability of losing your patience, your interest, and your mind are quite high. I guess that’s when you get in peace with your inner self and understand that what you’re doing is going to be worth it, but it will require a great deal of time.
Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind
David Allen
I haven’t completed my journey yet, and I still have a lot to learn. But these qualities top the list of observations I have seen in most people who have pursued this journey (not exclusively, of course). No matter if you stay in academia or switch to industry. No matter if you end up doing something completely unrelated to your research background. You can never unlearn these skills. It becomes a huge part of who you are.
-Sanketa Raut
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