Voices of SCWIST

My Journey in STEM: Lessons for an International Graduate Student

By Pargol Hashemi
PhD Candidate- Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Molecular Epigenetics
University of British Columbia

Are you a grad student who has recently started school in a new country? Maybe you have started school in a country that is a thousand miles away from your roots, your home. Maybe you are a grad student in her early twenties majoring in biological sciences? Is that a yes? Perfect!

Do you sometimes get hit by gloomy thoughts that make you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t ever have left your country or that this new life and the path you’re currently on isn’t ever going to take you where you want? If your answer is again yes, instead of spending time scrolling up and down your Instagram and being tricked by the illusion that everyone is immersed in happiness, I encourage you to read this article…

Here is what we are going to do: I want you to imagine yourself sitting alone in a movie theatre, waiting for the movie to start, in this case a 3,068-word movie that will screen the ups and downs of a girl’s journey, one who left her country nine years ago to be good at something she is passionate about.

Why should you watch this movie? Is it maybe because you want to get to know that girl? Not at all.

Actually, you will get something more; you will get to see yourself acting at some point in this movie or find yourself in more or less similar situations. The words of this girl that will take you into her journey might act as a reminder of the simplest of facts, those crucial for keeping us all on track and determined along the way of pursuing something big in our lives; or can act as a reliever, calming you down by picturing what your future might look like.

But before the movie begins, I will give you a biography of the main character of the film, the girl everyone at work calls Par.

Par is an Iranian–Canadian citizen who’s currently completing her PhD at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

She became a Canadian citizen when she was in grade ten, but oddly enough, right after, she went back to Iran.

Life was an adjustment for her in Iran, but she eventually finished her BSc in Microbiology. Right after finishing her bachelors, when — according to her parent’s opinions — her personality was shaped and mature enough to face the realities of life, she was allowed to go back to North America to further pursue what she had been so passionate about: Biology.

She worked on her MSc in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Southern California (USC). While there, she worked on a project that focused on investigating how the expression of a particular gene, NQO1, is regulated during alcohol-caused liver injury.

After her two-year graduate studies, she worked for a while at the UCLA JCCC (Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center) on a melanoma-associated project tackling the cell’s signalling pathways that are involved in making cancerous cells resistant to commonly used drugs in melanoma therapies. Finally, around ten years after first leaving Vancouver, in 2013, she returned to Canada to do her PhD at UBC in Biochemistry and Molecular biology with a focus on Molecular Epigenetics.

What she had simply been doing over the last five years of her life was messing around with the virus HIV, which could scientifically be described in her case, as identifying novel compounds with particular pharmacological features to awake silent viruses which are integrated within the genome of patient’s immune cells, referred to as latent proviruses.

Why bother waking up a latent provirus? The simple answer is: patients boosted immune defense would then be able to recognize that awakened virus, and eliminate it; otherwise, the virus would remain hidden and be unrecognizable.

Why is there an issue with having a hidden virus? Patients will be destined to remain on medications for their entire lives just to keep the viral infection manageable; otherwise, upon therapy cessation, the viruses quickly reappear from those cells bearing the latent proviruses and destroy the patient’s immune cells, which could result in AIDS if the patient does not get back on their medications in time.

What are the main consequences of taking medications forever? The patient might, at some point, become drug resistant, not to mention that accumulating the drugs’ side effects can lead to serious complications. In simple words, in order to achieve a long-term management of the HIV epidemic, those latent proviruses have to be purged from the patient’s body.

Luckily, Par could identify five novel compounds capable of disrupting HIV-1 latency. She is done with her benchwork and is currently improving her written thesis, adding an additional chapter to the comprehensive review on efforts conducted to discover compounds much like what she identified; providing better insights into how the structures of these molecules could be chemically optimized and become more potent for future relevant drug designs.

Now enjoy the short movie.

On January 4, 2010, at around noon, I arrived in LAX with two suitcases in hand, a huge backpack slung over my shoulder, and memories of 23 years of my life spent in Iran tucked away in my heart. Honestly, USC was the only school I had applied because my older brother lives in LA. He picked me up from airport, and a new journey was officially off and away. Having a fun and too sociable sibling as my new roommate not only guaranteed having endless love and support, but also endless new adventures and friends. So, those first few days before classes, were started with what California is always known for: sunshine. On top of that, because I had travelled there before, the city didn’t look new to me, so I was a happy kid unaware of the reality about to hit, naively thinking that moving wasn’t so hard. No, it was amazing. Fairly speaking, it was an ideal situation. Having the instant emotional support of someone who is close to your heart drastically changed my story, made the emotional struggles endurable, and the feeling of being lonely, something which began to crawl all over me on the plane since leaving my country, less noticeable.

I bet many of you reading this didn’t have a single relative, or even a friend, in the countries where you moved to. If that’s the case, thumbs up to you guys because you are truly brave. I believe, if you have already been brave enough to come here on your own, the word lonely would never apply to you: you are a less-distracted, more focused person who’s capable of accepting and dealing with everything that comes with your intentionally made decisions, like pursuing something valuable. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have left your country in the first place. Furthermore, in the end, that person in charge of who you truly want to be and where you want to end up in the future is you. Regardless of how close your loved ones are, they are powerless in taking that journey for you.

We have always been and will remain the solo rock star of our own life story, the story that is carrying different number of people we’re surrounded with in its different phases. Therefore, this less-crowded phase of your life is not only sufferable, but instead, it assists you in finding who you truly are by offering the time to dig deeper into life real purposes, leading you to a path where you may become even more eager to achieve the goals you left your country for and gradually revealing the different levels of your abilities.

But let’s get back to the moment of my truth. As school started and reality began to show up at my door, everything began to look different. First, that all-the-time sunny city had turned into an unreasonably gigantic city that seemed no longer shiny.

After two weeks of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, when sitting on several lectures, talking to other grads, and looking for a potential lab to get started, my former idea of “who said moving is hard” was replaced yelling, “You are in a serious trouble.” Everything and everyone seemed intimidating.

The worst part was the confidence I’d gained during my undergraduate degree from being among the top three students in the department and from being someone who was good at talking and presenting all crashed within the first few days. When I talked to other students, they all seemed very well equipped with lab techniques and knowledgeable about various assays that made me feel like an idiot trapped between a bunch of geniuses.

Now, as part of the PhD studies, that I was supposed to train undergrads, I truly understand why they initially looked unreasonably sharp to me: Nothing like doing directed studies or co-op in a lab, where undergrads learn techniques while working on actual scientific projects worth thousands of dollars, in addition to the insane number of science-related volunteering opportunities outside of schools, even existed in Iran. Nothing was even close. So please don’t laugh or judge, but honestly, I was able to only do two things in lab: running PCR and extracting DNA from blood.

The only thing I vividly remember I was trying to do those days was not lose my smile and pretend that everything was fine while I was scared to death on the inside.

Before my ship was able to sink in an ocean of fear, I saved it by pushing my “pace” button.

I ran twice as fast as the others to catch up and fill the gaps. If you are wondering what running faster means, it means read, read, read, and read again papers.

During grad school, basically, we become the masters of finding the right ways through which scientific questions must be addressed to provide us with the particular information we are looking for.

By reading more and more papers, you learn about various traditional and advanced techniques and their appropriate use; this, then, gradually enables you to recognize the right ways of addressing a question. It also provides you with the scientific terms you will use.

This is critical because when we talk in our native languages, the appropriate words automatically snap into place and spill out of our mouths without thinking. Yet when we talk in a different language, our brain consumes a lot of energy in trying to dig into, for instance, our English vocabulary pool and find the right words. Because this process takes time, your pace at both talking and writing is relatively slow. This easily leads to frustration, especially when the topic you need to talk about is complicated. Therefore, another benefit of reading more papers is that it increases your pace by broadening your word pool and placing the right words on the top of your mind, enabling your brain to grab what it’s looking for faster. In essence, your scientific speaking skills slowly improve.

At the beginning, our language barrier inevitably prevents us from fully expressing ourselves or truly conveying our knowledge. By reading more and participating in class discussions, that language barrier slowly becomes narrower, eventually letting us not be afraid of sharing what we have in mind.

So, I bombarded myself with numerous relevant papers in addition to extra the reading materials the professors assigned. Not only that, every night before bed, I began to write down everything I had in mind, all the names and new stuff I had learned that day; this improved both my writing skill and memory, the two essential things that if you don’t have, makes it impossible to get far in basic science. Those first months were all about catching up, which fortunately led to a slow revival of my lost confidence when my hard work started to pay off and I noticed a little progress.

The way we should deal with the fear that comes from experiencing a new environment — maybe more like a new world — is critical. This is how I would describe fear: it looks like a cancerous tumour, and when it is diagnosed at a right time, the patient will most likely be saved, but if not, it eventually becomes metastatic, spreading all over the body. So, if you allow your fear to get into you and spread, it is powerful enough to knock you down like a metastatic tumour. You must nip it in the bud.

But how do you do this? By fighting back against it. which is simply translated in my case as working harder compared with other grads. Yes, you need to sacrifice a lot in the beginning, but the truth is you will eventually be surprised by how far better you can perform if you keep consistently going. Yes, it’s true: the harder you work, the smarter your brain becomes as it is slowly being developed with all the knowledge you give it. Furthermore, fear magnifies the difficulty of doing tasks. Some of the things we need to do are not actually that hard if we just control our fear.

Another thing that I believe enormously helped me cope with the challenges of my new environment was putting my future plans and end goals completely aside during the first year of my master’s degree. Although doing a PhD had always been in the back of my head since my undergraduate work, during the first year of my master’s program, I didn’t bother thinking about what I wanted to do next. Here is what I cared about: doing well in courses, keeping my GPA up, refreshing my basic knowledge, and figuring out what running a scientific research project truly means.

There will already be a lot on your plate at the beginning of a graduate program, so overthinking questions like whether you must do a PhD afterwards, whether you would be able to find a good job without holding a PhD, and which companies you need to look into to find a job at will only leave you overwhelmed and less productive.

The answers to these questions will naturally come to you as the program moves further along. Take the time to truly digest what’s happening right now in the present moment instead of diving into an ocean of the future that will take you nowhere, especially if you haven’t learned the swimming skills you need first. In other words, you need to obtain proof that assures you that doing research is what you really want.

Usually, regardless of where people took their undergrads, most of them don’t have an accurate understanding of how research is actually run. All they usually see is the very end point — “publication” — and fail to realize all the vital factors that let someone get that far. Therefore, once you get in a lab and pick your project, allow yourself to acquire a true understanding of what becoming a researcher is all about.

Finally, once I felt comfortable with the whole situation, I started enjoying the ride, both inside and outside of school, which meant I also found the time to explore the city and mingle with people.

In my opinion, your off-campus adventures also play an important role in achieving your goals. Looking at it from a bigger picture, your overall purpose is not just to be good at a particular subject in school but rather to grow in different aspects of your life. Therefore, things like exploring the city, doing other activities, and getting to know the people and culture not only speed up adaptation, but also open your mind, helping you grow into a better person. You may not have those people with whom you would like to do such things with, but believe me, you will regret it if you don’t go out and see the beauties of this world. You must just be patient and slowly find those like-minded people along the way, and then, your circle of friends will grow bigger and bigger.

Speaking of friends who are going to be added to your circle of friends, we are unconsciously attracted to the people whom we share the most similarities with, which means at first, we tend to hang out mostly with people who have come from the same country and speak the same language. This is great because it undoubtedly gives us a pleasant, familiar feeling. However, down the road, make sure people with a variety of backgrounds are being included in your circle of friends. This is vital because you need to be comfortable with interacting with all kinds of people and personalities, not only with those sharing the same language, especially if you see yourself staying longer after your school. You should have a mixed community of friends.

Back to another moment of my truth, but this time, a sweet one. After a year passed, LA was again my favorite and all-time sunny city, more importantly, other grads looked intelligent but normal, definitely not a bunch of geniuses anymore.

However, this doesn’t mean life is going to be easier as time passes. You just become better at handling multiple things at once. Once you begin to move on with your research project, usually from the second or third semester depending on the school/program, your work load skyrockets because you now have to move your project forward while still keeping up with your courses. If time is managed efficiently, meaning that you could then enjoy the moments in the lab, this would indeed turn into a priceless experience that can change your world.

After completing a two-year master’s program that showed me what being a researcher truly means, I was able to realistically decide what to do in a future science career rather than blindly jumping into a PhD program.

Like any life-changing decision that must initially be evaluated from various perspectives (such as someone’s financial status, marital status, age, etc.), it must be able to fit into someone’s life, and deciding to do a PhD is no exception.

It varies at different schools or different departments, but as an example, the average time to complete a PhD in biological sciences is five to six years (mostly six years) at UBC. Those six years could be dissected into three phases: two, three, and one.

In the first two years, you take courses, become confident with the topics in the lab you have joined, finalize the research project you want to continue for the rest of your studies, write your thesis proposal, and, importantly, prepare yourself for the comprehensive/qualification exam to be transferred into the PhD candidacy.

The next three years is when you start moving your project along faster, generating results, and publishing. The last year is all about wrapping up the last four to five years of your work, writing thesis and defending. So, you never truly get a chance to catch your breath and recover. It’s truly like a marathon run, and each phase has its own challenges.

All of this means that doing a PhD is a big commitment. Furthermore, the overall purpose of making such a commitment greatly affects a person’s success in the career field down the road. If the main purpose of doing a doctorate degree is just to get those few letters added to a name without being greatly interested in science, that person should expect a very miserable life. The purpose must be beyond getting a new label.

I’m the type of person who always makes room for unpleasant outcomes while staying positive about the whole scenario. I did the same thing for my PhD and thought I was mentally prepared for what I was going to face throughout that journey. Now that I’m almost at the finishing line and looking back at what I truly went through, I find the whole scenario ten times more challenging than what I was mentally preparing for at the beginning.

I’m not saying this to discourage you. I’m saying this to push you to think deeper about why you would really do this because you want to enjoy the ride and have a fulfilling professional life, not a miserable one.

The key personality factors I found essential for keeping me on track, in addition to staying enthusiastic, patient, and realistic, were having the capacity to constantly face failure and move on from it, having discipline at work, and being focused on my own things and not getting distracted by other’s shiny outcomes. Someone may move toward earning her or his PhD, but if you are not really into science, developing a personality that can reflect these key elements is less likely to happen.

Even in the best-case scenario when you know science is the only thing you want to have a professional career in, things get tough and hectic. I know this is a harsh reality about life in general, but the fact is that during a PhD program, you are sacrificing in other areas of your life. So, when you don’t see the expected results despite your endless efforts, those key personality factors nourishing you from your inner love for science are essential to keeping you on track. Otherwise, you may get lost.

During the past five years of my PhD studies, there were times when on a Saturday night around eleven at night, I found myself sweating in a closed-door tissue culture room; it’s a tiny room containing four 37˚C incubators that make you feel like you are in a dry sauna, and this can get even worse when wearing a gown and double layer gloves. And that can get even worse after witnessing a completely failed experiment after weeks, or even months, of hard work. Then, you start to wonder what the heck you are doing with your life, sitting there in a lab on a Saturday night. You should have had a glass of Merlo in hand somewhere cozy, wondering which cheese would make a great pairing.

However, the truth is that the moment you receive an email from a high-impact journal saying your work has been accepted and is in the process of publication, that exhausting feeling building up from such harsh moments of failure are immediately wiped away and replaced with a feeling that are flying through a sky full of stars.

All I said here could simply be squeezed into one fact about life: “It’s all about trade-offs. You can’t have everything at once.”

The End

I don’t know how true you found the words of Par after she just shared her very personal experiences with you, but I hope she could make at least one single point useful for you.

As a closing remark, I want to add few more things.

Always keep in mind that education brings power but not happiness; no matter what you decide to do later on in life — and it may be something completely different — just try to be good at it; finally, but most importantly, your physical and mental health in any circumstance come first, so please take good care of yourself while taking consistent, little steps toward your goals.

Remember that since the day we sat on the plane leaving our countries to achieve something meaningful, a blank white canvas has been following us, lurking in our shadows, a canvas on which the story of this exciting new journey is being painted. Each one of your moves, decisions, attitudes and the people you let in your circle of friends will draw something on this canvas. I hope that years later, when you stop to look back at your painting, it will put nothing but a very big smile on your face.