Learning how to celebrate the small victories

Sharon Bolanta (@Shayrunn) is a PhD candidate in the Republic of Ireland, at the University of Limerick. In this story, Sharon talks about the importance of carving out your own path in life and learning how to celebrate the little things.

This story was published on February 5, 2018, on Charlotte’s blog, Wandering Thoughts (available here) and has been republished here with her permission.

A month after obtaining my B.Sc, I went back to school to start working on my PhD. Before I went back, I had a list of things I wanted to do outside of my research. I didn’t want to be one of those people who became so consumed with their research that they forgot how to live life. LOL — I laugh now because the thing that I feared was what happened to me. A year into my PhD, I found myself struggling to find a balance (a story for another post).

I began to measure myself and my growth and progress against what those around me (and by around me, I mostly mean the people I knew back in Nigeria) were doing.

In my eyes, they were living the life, achieving their dreams and I was the struggling researcher living the work-to-home life 6 days a week. LOL — What a silly comparison to make!

For a long time, I struggled with feeling like I wasn’t measuring up, feeling like I was left behind, and not progressing. But recently it struck me that I am doing a PhD!

Interested to know how Sharon learned to celebrate the smaller victories? Read the full story here.