Let’s Skip to the Good Parts of Doing a Ph.D.
The new year brings new hopes, beginnings, and excitement. I looked at the last year and realized that I generally mentioned the negative things about doing a Ph.D. Let’s open a new white page and start this new year’s first article with positive thoughts. Despite all the negativities and struggles, I want to mention why people like me still stand and continue to do Ph.D. Of course, there are positive things and advantages to doing that. Hopefully, this reaches out to the people trying to decide which way they follow: academy or corporate life.
- Becoming a problem solver
Whenever someone asks me what values I gained while doing a Ph.D., my answer undoubtedly goes like this: “I learned how to solve a problem.” Imagine all the uncountable days, months, and a total of 5 to 6 years you will spend trying to find answers to the unknown questions you proposed in your thesis. You will learn to attack those hypotheses from different angles by trying other methods, running multiple codes, or repeating the same experiments repeatedly. After a while, you are turning into someone who finds solutions and knows where to look. You gain this ability with a spider bite and turn into Spiderman, whose special power is solving problems or at least how to deal with them.
2. Failure is not a failure anymore
You should have seen a lot of graphs about Ph.D. life which has a lot of ups and downs. During it, you will fail over and over again and wake up the next morning to continue to do the same things until it will teach you something. Sometimes, you do some experiments or trials to actually intend to fail. They will become your control experiments. Each failure would take you to the next step by showing you what to do next.
3. Being a time management master
The time management ability will automatically load to you along the way to your Ph.D. Think you have to first complete your classes (some Ph.D. programs require you to complete certain credits, some don’t) and start to prepare for the qualifying exam. After becoming a candidate, you need to give proposals and progress. I have not talked about the grant proposals, experiments, or manuscript preparation. What I am trying to highlight is you are becoming a master at completing multiple tasks during the day. Since you are the only person responsible for completing those and not dependent on others’ schedules (sometimes besides your advisors), you are the manager of the planning. You are your own secretary.
4. Anti-aging effect on your brain
Ph.D. is a journey in that you learn new things every day. You are catching up with the new trends in your field by reading publications from all over the world. You have discussions about your projects with people who have different expertise. You start to live with a light bulb next to your head, and it generally turns on during the day.
Besides, you are pursuing your career in a university environment and it causes you to meet with younger people all the time to help you to close the generation gap.
5. Team-player
If you do a Ph.D., you will work very closely with other grad students and professors. For many projects, you will have to share resources, join meetings for brain-storming and collaborate for better outcomes. You will be qualified to be a team player.
6. Expertise in coffee
Last but not least, you became a coffee expert since you consume a lot. Jokes beside, you really turn into one. When you see a person in a coffee place who is drinking coffee in the biggest cup, typing quickly and seriously, you be sure this person is writing a thesis, project, or an article. Every place can be your workplace if your laptop is with you. You can even give suggestions to others about where to study better.
We grad students survive on coffee. If you want to support me, you can always buy me one.
