Things learnt (cont'd)
Hello my dear friends,
Here are the one thing that caught my attention today, and I want to write it down here so I never forget:
I just enrolled in a seminar series that discusses opportunities and career path to the PhD students and post-docs. One of the activities, we did, was to rate ourselves both on skills and on our experiences. I was a bit confused on how to define excellent, good, satisfactory or poor on each of the competencies asked. How good is good? What is the boundary between satisfactory and good? I really wanted to rate all my skills satisfactory, but is that the truth? So, I posed that question to our instructor saying to him: I really think I want to be better in all the competencies you have mentioned here; I don't know in which I am good at.
His response was something I have to carry with me for a little while. "It is not your fault, it is the culture of the university to raise the bar so high that you always doubt yourself". He said: "it is you, the graduate student, who has to say I have done ENOUGH for my PhD and fight for it. Otherwise, there is always more to do!"
Have you ever thought: you have done enough? Can you stand up and fight for your work? This is what I will be struggling/dealing for a little while. Wish me luck! I want to prove to myself that I can fight for the amount of work and hours I have put towards pursuing my PhD.
Learning lessons:
Fight for your work, be confident, don't worry about the consequences and just enjoy the journey.
With Love,
Ellie
Here are the one thing that caught my attention today, and I want to write it down here so I never forget:
I just enrolled in a seminar series that discusses opportunities and career path to the PhD students and post-docs. One of the activities, we did, was to rate ourselves both on skills and on our experiences. I was a bit confused on how to define excellent, good, satisfactory or poor on each of the competencies asked. How good is good? What is the boundary between satisfactory and good? I really wanted to rate all my skills satisfactory, but is that the truth? So, I posed that question to our instructor saying to him: I really think I want to be better in all the competencies you have mentioned here; I don't know in which I am good at.
His response was something I have to carry with me for a little while. "It is not your fault, it is the culture of the university to raise the bar so high that you always doubt yourself". He said: "it is you, the graduate student, who has to say I have done ENOUGH for my PhD and fight for it. Otherwise, there is always more to do!"
Have you ever thought: you have done enough? Can you stand up and fight for your work? This is what I will be struggling/dealing for a little while. Wish me luck! I want to prove to myself that I can fight for the amount of work and hours I have put towards pursuing my PhD.
Learning lessons:
Fight for your work, be confident, don't worry about the consequences and just enjoy the journey.
With Love,
Ellie
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