PhD Diaries-II
In between Self-Confidence and Imposter Syndrome
It has been a tough year for all of us. I personally miss hugging people freely (even if I am not much like a hug-person despite all the cultural codes I inherited).
Some people earned more money whereas some people lost their jobs during this process. I might be lucky, because I have still been a student (The complete name for this kind of “already educated” studentship is called PhD student.). One of the best parts of it is you do not have any “job” to lose during this pandemic if you are still a student. For the bad parts… Okay, I might not be the ideal person to talk about these due to extreme pollyannaism (a.k.a. optimism bias) of me towards life long learning. However, I will mention some points in the following paragraphs. You will have a chance to use your interpretation skills and get some insights regarding the possible side effects (yes, like some medicine) eventually.
Most of my friends tend to reflect very limited amount of feelings/emotions to outsiders, namely foreigners like you or me broadcasting here in this post, (kinda introvert). However, I doubt I am alike.
If you ask me whether I question myself frequently why not I chose a European University or an Institute, a closer alternative to my country or hometown, to pursue my PhD, research etc. , I have always been doing that, especially during this no-travel period. I sometimes ask myself why not to choose a computational field rather than wetlab so that there would not be a location restriction. Although I have been happy to be here in this lovely country, I missed to go home and hang out with my friends and family like many other international friends of mine. However, due to restrictions and the economic burden of travel on us (students), we literally stuck where we are like many other people around the world due to the pandemic.
The question is if have the vaccination, will we be allowed to travel? Even if this is the case, I doubt I will be lucky enough to visit my hometown before the summer. Although there is no job to lose in this so called educated studentship, there are plenty of work for the projects to be completed at certain extent, especially before some deadlines such as qualification, and so on. Therefore, it is difficult to be hopeful about -personal- near future to chill out.
However, if you want to be an expert of a certain field, being good at is not enough, you need to be extremely good at that little aspect of the field, this is called doing a PhD.
I am not bad at sports, actually (was) good at with the ones with the ball such as basketball, football, and so on. I could play one musical instrument even if I am not good at either, I can improve it with a practice. I am not bad at drawing as you could see on my blog posts. I am not bad at cooking, and relatively fast at it. I could sing (might slightly better than a crow), write (rewarded many times in the high school), I have even written more than 5 poems. Although I am not a professional I am not bad at games like chess. I could learn a language quickly if I am in a good mood. I was extremely good at math. I was a very successful student once. Now, I am 27 and having no secured job and being professional of nothing. However, if you want to be successful in a certain field, being good at is not enough, you need to be expert of it with being extremely good at that little aspect of the field, this is called doing a PhD. Despite the easiness in the saying, being in it, working on it not easy. Most of the times what I feel is “I did not know this, I did not that, well, this is also something new for me”. Even though it sounds really exciting, there is always something to learn, I constantly find myself in the “nowhere-knowledge-tundra” (I don’t want to relate the knowledge with “desert” so I replaced the word desert with “tundra” to make it more exotic and growth friendly. Lets make it short and called as NKT). In this NKT, I really enjoy despite of the feeling that it will not be easy to be an expert. However, there is also experimentation aspect of this NKT. You need to try, troubleshoot, try to improve, fail once more, and loop of this unless finding the gradient descent minima of failing and maxima of improving that method (sometimes local is fine to continue). Being patient and using your logic systematically are the key for the success, and of course integration of current knowledge with these… I personally think experimentation part of NKT more difficult to endure. However, this is the part that enables you to understand the topics comprehensively. Whenever you find the convergence of both NKT and its experiment, you can accomplish something. Little something. Then, those little somethings come together and make the story bigger and “impactful” if you are lucky enough. As you might guess, this is not only joyful and exciting but also long and tiring process. You need to self-drive your curiosity. I sometimes difficult to maintain this state of mind after failed experiments or stucking in the middle of the analysis.
Moreover, I do not think the measure of being a good scientist is the number of papers one publishes. Well, maybe the good scientific papers published might be one way of evaluating it. However, I argue that having fun during these processes and helping each other to build a better and stronger scientific community and broadcasting science to people from different backgrounds might be as important as papers to proceed further. Even if I felt lost in the middle of NKT, engaging with ISCB (SC/RSG Turkey) community and organizing really nice events and attending some others were an amazing experience for me during pandemic.
In addition to having such endless curiosity talent, scientists are human beings as well. Therefore, taking a proper break with loved ones, I believe, will help to boost these special talents, and help to come up with better ideas and maintain self-confidence. It would be really nice to not experience such things in our life once more.
