One common phenomenon among the science or engineering graduate students, especially ones honored great achievements in their courseworks during undergrad, is feeling weak or lost after being a PhD student. This psychological effect can be attributed to several reasons(3 mentioned here), as far as I’m concerned though, the dominated reason is that we are so small in the gigantic achievements of the modern science. And this reason is objective. It’s true for almost every PhD student. It’s up to us, though, to realize this universal truth and to adjust our own points of view about science and engineering. We were able to accomplish the job fast, but now we might spend one or two years to even find out the job itself. We are not used to this pattern.
We all might ask ourselves such a question: what is the purpose of this four or five or even more than six years of PhD study? From the moment we are trying to answer this question but considering how much we have lost and sacrificed for the PhD study and how hard it is to be successful, the answer is getting farther and farther away from us. It’s not about what we could have achieved, but about what we want to achieve and truly possible to achieve. The PhD is the starting point of infinite many possibilities. Some of them are opportunities, yet some are challenges. The excitement about both the innovation and the randomness is the motivation not obstacle for us to fight in such massive, vast and endless sea of modern science. But having such idea and holding the confidence are not enough…
The truth is, even if we are the most brillant people, the randomness can just make us like fools. The secret for success is more than just “trying hard” as what has been taught in my high school phylosophy, but more importantly, the ability to create (or rather to find) and to seize the opportunities. Or it can be called as “luck“. We now realize that the second main reason for us to feel depressed in the graduate study is we find a significant difference from what we learnt so far. The root of such difference can be summerized as
We gradually feel that, even in the academia, the platforms are so diverse that there is no so-called justice. Instead of determined by how hard you are, rather the success depends largely on “luck”.
It’s a sad fact but a truly realistic one. By the time we realize and understand this fact, we might start to appreciate we are doing our PhD though, because this is how we can understand the world from a brand new aspect. We start to appreciate the world’s diversity and to play our roles on such marvelous stage. For example, we might appreciate some people’s ability to talk to others which can bring them more opportunities in terms of collabration; we might appreciate some’s ability to think independently and critically to notice potential problems and thus solve them. The depressed feeling comes from that we are forced to change our view about the world. Though not pleasant, this is a necessary process to build a better us. With this idea, we need to change the methodology of study. If in undergrad we spend 100% time for detailed basic knowledge study, in graduate, we would need to allocate at least 40% to the big picture. The big picture means trying to answer the question: what are people working on and what’s new could I do. With such idea, we then can take a correct approach rather than lost ourselves in random directions. This can also guide us toward innovations rather than just repeating what people have achieved. PhD isn’t about 1 week work or 1 month, it’s about several years, you’d better plan carefully about it.
And lastly, we all want a successful PhD, but what is the definition of success? It’s time to build our own view about the world, rather than just feel jealous (appreciate them though) about others achievements. We should have our own criterion rather than compare ourselves with others but in the criterion of others. For me, I will feel satisfied if I can learn the foundations and advanced theories and technologies of photonics, obtain an overview of the whole field, discuss my idea with the most brilliant people over the world and make some of those ideas real.
Feel strong when you are lost in science. After all, science is about what is not obvious, and that’s exactly the charm of it. Work constantly and smartly, you aren’t weak.
Rui & Photonics 