Phd Has Changed My Life

Here are 5 things that Phd journey has changed my life.

1. Sleepless Night

Not only halfway of my Phd journey, I experience sleepless night but even the beginning journey. The supervisor is pushing to write the thesis, find more articles to support the arguments, stuck with the unseen problem that might not discover previously. All these make me wake up in the night with the answer to the problem I couldn’t solve the day before. Day and night, Phd is on my mind. All of the time.

2.  Becoming a Nervous & Anxiety Wreck

3 weeks equal to 3 months 

Waiting supervisor’s feedback, reviewers’ comments from the publication and the academic paper being published seriously increase my nervous and anxiety level. All these waiting are unpredictable. I’m not being notified how many weeks or months needed for waiting. Waiting after waiting without dateline is the painful experiences and really haunted me honestly. Recently, a publisher request me to wait for 3 weeks for comments but I end up wait for 3 months although in between I follow up with the publishers, they would say “your article now still in reviewing process. I will inform you as soon as I get the reviewer report.”

3. Not Much Talking to People

Talking with people is always undervalued for my Phd journey. This journey requests me constantly work my own research. But sometimes for weeks or a month, the only person that I talk to is my supervisor. I know it’s important to know more people, to talk to them so that they will help me in the long run. Nevertheless, meeting and talking with people really distract my research attention.

4. Poor Presentation

I admit that I'm like this during presentation 

Presentation (i.e talking to a group of audiences on the stage) is forgotten in my Phd journey. I spend majority of my times to read the articles, how to write like an academicians and digest supervisor’s comments. I seldom do presentation except attending the academic conference once a year. I lose the presentation confidences. So, you all can imagine how poor my presentation! I kept on looking the slides during presentation and the speed is fast too.

Sigh….

Sigh……

Sigh…… 

5.  Able to accept critics

Along the Phd journey, I always receive critics from the supervisor. E.g “your works need a lot of improvement”, “you must strengthen your write-up”. Luckily, my supervisor won’t be too harsh on me. I need to take those critics to improve my research skills. I remind myself don’t scare with the critics, in contrast learn as much as I can from the critics because they are constructive feedback.

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So, above are my personal experience deals with Phd journey. Hopefully those that interested to pursue Phd can prepare yourself for and mitigate if possible. For those that are in the Phd journey like me, did you experience them? Do share.

Once again, I never regret my choice in stepping into Phd journey even though this journey is lonely and a lot of ups and downs.

At least I out from my comfort zone- constant learning from supervisor, accept rejection to improve my own research and get to know that a lot of things that need to do before graduating.

p/s: I certainly don’t speak for every Phd students out there.