What I have learnt during my PhD studies

Hello my beautiful friends,

Happy 2019, ya I have been away from blogging for a long time but its on my intentions to come back to this more often for 2019. During the same time last year (2018), first week of January, I defended my PhD from University of Toronto, Canada in Biomedical Engineering. So I love to share what I have learnt from this journey.

I like to start off with what I have learnt the most: to use failure as fuel for success:
I've had times that I worked hours, days, or months for a small part of my studies that had absolutely no results or everything was wrong about my results; it was devastating times, but I realize that I have to learn from my results and come up with different solutions FAST since there is no other way around it. It was important to recover quickly.

I've learnt how to learn: there was times where I had to teach myself topics at high level regardless of its difficulty. I obtained the ability to teach myself challenging topics which is an amazing and useful life skill trait. I became a world expert, although in a niche area. I realized how much effort and hard work is put to master a craft! I realized a journey from apprenticeship to professional is so rewarding. I assimilate that if I can become an expert in one topic, there is no reason I cannot do it for the second time in the future.

I've learnt how to deal with rejections and keep my expectations realistic: Research is very risky and so many of our ideas, no matter how brilliant they are, never comes to fruition, our ideas are turned down by our supervisor, papers are rejected and results refuse to improve even after hours of work. During graduate studies you realize that you need to deal with rejections. Moreover, bring your expectations to a realistic level. Most of us are over-achievers and our expectations are sky-high, we expect things to work on their first try, papers published with ease, and luck be on our side all the time! The reality is that things never go as planned and PhD studies gives you that head start.

I've learnt to work on my own: once you are starting to extend the state-of-the-art in your narrow area, you are already the expert and no one, not even your supervisor knows the solution. So you have to learn to work alone and come up with working solutions that are both novel and interesting to the community. This is a valuable life lesson you learn along the way.

I've learnt a lot on my communications skills: Communication skills are the belaboured of pretty much every article and discussion about graduate school and PhD teaches you how effectively communicate with others through multiple mediums.

I've learnt that PhD is not enough, its just the beginning of a long journey and I keep looking forward to expand on my journey and keep coming back to learn, evolve, and make an effort to step out of my comfort zone.

I want to leave you with this:
EDUCATION IS NOT FILLING OF A PAIL, BUT THE LIGHTING OF FIRE!

   
With Love,
Ellie


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