Insights pulled from my PhD Research Experience
In this article I would like to summarize the important insights that I realized from my personal experience while pursuing my PhD on Anisotropic Thermoelectric Polymer Materials in the Institut Charles Sadron (ICS).
Don’t worry ! I am not going to talk about Physics here :) The aim is to share my reflections and what helped me to transcend difficulties along the way and also to envision what to do next!
Let’s get started!
Insight 1: We are responsible for our own progress.
I was doing a research for more than three years. This was a fascinating journey despite all the hard work. I was learning new stuff everyday from my supervisors, from literature and from my own experience in the laboratory.
Our research subject was multidisciplinary, diverse and the work was divided across the following main steps! There are several important aspects in everyday work of a PhD student, such as: bibliography, planning/performing experiments, analyzing data, interpreting results, writing scientific publications based on your research topic, communicating results during team meets as well as on the conferences and of course discussing research with others!
All these steps may look like quite separately standing things and in a certain sense they do are!
I simply noticed that when I got focused for several weeks only on reading, my research was not advancing and I was reflecting more on the field in general. It is important not to fall down in the rabbit hole trying to embrace everything (which is not possible!) and be in balance with the general advancing in your research topic!
However, taking some time to reflect on what you are doing in general and what was known before in the literature is valuable in order to understand how your study fits into the literature? Are your results important for the field? What else can you try to understand deeper your subject or pull more insights from the data already collected?
At that moment I realized that progress is not possible without constant exploration and how it pushes us towards a new perspective and therefore to growth!
Insight 2: Good questions are 50% of success
Whatever topic you are learning or exploring, whether you’re in the beginning or in the middle of your journey you will stuck at some point! And this is OK! But in order to unstuck, it is important to:
- break a problem into small pieces
- approach it with targeted questions that step-by-step allows to solve it in your mind alone or with the help of an expert or the internet
We often tend to try to “eat the whole elephant” instead of firstly dividing it into digestible pieces.
Posing good question concerns not only problems you are tackling, but mental habits in general.
For example, instead of asking “How to DO ALL these stuff?”, ask yourself “What is the priority for today/this week?”. Instead of “What if my work will not be accepted?”, ask “What should I do to make it accepted?”. Instead of “What if I fail?”, ask “What if I learn?” and so on.
Questioning is actually a tool! And it should not lead you to the dead-end but instead should lead you to the new perspectives.
Insight 3: The path of any scientist is not trivial and never straightforward, we know which direction to take but we never know where will it take us
The important quality of experimental physicist is open-mindedness. We have some intuition and some expectations before making the experiment and analyzing the data.
But what we get is rarely fully predictable when things are done for the first time. That’s why being receptive to new ideas allows to be able look from different angles on your subject and develop the study in the right direction.
Sometime we tend to underestimate our obtained results, because of being too focused on what is not working with no gratitude for the path we’ve done so far.
In such kind of situation, it is very helpful to discuss your work with others, take your time, switch to something else to get a rest in order to come back refreshed.
We can see physical experiments as kind of opening the gift box, getting some results and then interpreting it based on our knowledge about the system.
Discovering new subject is always a very inspiring and enriching process!
Insight 4: Work of any scientist requires a lot of multicultural understanding
Most of the scientists worldwide moving from one lab to another, between the countries in order to gain new experience. In Europe, it is very common practice in scientific field to hire foreigners for doctoral/postdoctoral position or even a permanent position in both public and industrial research.
Human qualities such as ability to adapt to a new environment, open-mindedness and efficient communication allows to interact more productively with others. It is important not to feel isolated too much and try to talk to your supervisor or trusted people around about possible difficulties, concerns or bad feelings around your work!
Personally, I find very fascinating to meet new people especially from different countries, to get familiar with alternative points of view on whatever subject or even on life in general.
In my opinion, it allows to open up new possibilities in who you are and who you can be depending on your current environment and opportunities in front of you.
Insight 5: Don’t wait till the end of your PhD, envision your future in advance!
As you might know, after successfully finishing my PhD I switched to the Data Science field being inspired by the immense growth and accessibility of AI knowledge and technologies. Incredible learning opportunities that were less accessible two decades ago, allows you to get acquainted with almost any topic(!) online and decide what attracts you most and which career direction to take! Use it to discover what is available, otherwise how you will know what to do next if you don’t know what exists? It is often the case, that while doing our studies in the university we are not really aware of the value of what we learn and what we can do after finishing our university studies! Ideas are often coming during the exploration beyond the topic of your everyday study!
Insight 6: Your PhD topic is a valuable knowledge, but your transferable skills are even more important!
In ninety nine percent of cases the PhD subject is something that covers extremely narrow specialization that you study in extremely deep way. Even though my topic was interdisciplinary concerning Material Science, Physics and Polymer Chemistry and required a lot of knowledge and experimental techniques to master. Nevertheless it stays quite of a specific topic studied vertically.
So when trying to clear you mind and add value to your PhD degree think more about which transferable skills you gained while pursuing your PhD ?
Transferable skills are skills and qualities that can be transferred to another profession, e.g. excellent communication skills, open-mindedness, confidence, public speaking, scientific writing, attention to details and so on! If you sit and reflect on what skills you mastered, you will realize that the list can actually go long!
Transferable skills like trouble-shooting, emotional intelligence and positive attitude make you more flexible towards ability to embrace inevitable difference between your expectations and reality : )
Second kit of skills such as curiosity, listening skills and patience make you able to address any technical or interpersonal issue you might encounter during your working progress.
Take some time to think about your own transferable skills. Which of them did you realize you have?
Insight 7: Don’t overthink
The common problem among scientist and other intellectual people is overthinking. We always want to go deeper and deeper in our understanding of how things are working so we tend to overthink thoughts that might not matter so much or interrupt the formation of the bigger picture in our minds.
What always helps when you are stuck is to take a pause and do something completely different from the problem you are trying to solve. Putting it simply — let things go!
Insights often come not during a brainstorming and constant focus on a problem, but during a routine activities, such as walking, exercising or taking shower etc. when your mind is at ease.
Interestingly, after a pause when you are looking on what you have done with the fresh mind you see that in reality things are not too bad and there are minor things left to do or some fresh better ideas suddenly come — the picture of your work becomes clearer and nothing holds you back.
The worst thing that PhD students might tend to do is to spontaneously decide to completely redo an experiment on Friday evening : )
Insight 8: Relax and remember that you are enough!
I know about anxiety and depression among the students not from somebodies talk. Unfortunately, the pressure we experience while digesting enormous amounts of information, accomplishing tasks, preparing to exams, coping with difficult emotions might overload us and alter our inner well-being.
Remember, that your health both mental and physical are the precious things you have! So it’s up to you to take care of it!
While chasing your goals — Don’t forget to relax and enjoy the things you love to do that replenish your energy and put you back into positive state of your mind!
Conclusions
Here above I shared some life-changing insights that helped me to tackle my own issues and that hopefully can help you as well whether you are a PhD or not these insights might serve you to improve both your everyday life and your work or study !
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In case you have some questions/comments or want to share some relevant thoughts, do not hesitate to leave comments below or contact me through LinkedIn !
Photos by Dr. Liudmyla Klochko.
