Thoughts on dissertation as of May, 2024
Getting there!
In the third episode of this series of blog posts, I finally have a dissertation proposal (draft?) of some sort!! I will write more about the content once I become a candidate (hopefully soon!!), but for this blog post I'll be reflecting on how I got here as a reminder for my future self of my hard work (and perhaps naivite as well). I do think it's such a good idea and such an interesting field to work on. But on the other hand, there are indeed lots of challenges.
Developing the idea was not easy or intuitive for me. I've always admired researchers who identify problems from the field or their lived experiences. That would be hard for me for now but I can have my own way, which is through news and literature. I read as much as I can and benefit a lot from people sharing papers on twitter (thank you!!!). By "as much as I can", I refer it to a degree at which, I don't hate reading papers, and I don't force myself to read every single paper carefully, but I skim through a lot and read through (potentially) broadly relevant papers carefully. For a very long time, the questions of "is my research meaningful/useful" hovers over my mind. "Am I proposing something that is really a thing? Or am I just creating research for the sake of research?" I even had a nightmare about it. These questions still come to me from time to time, but I feel a bit more confident as I dive deeper into the topic. There was a time when I discovered real world efforts being done on this idea I want to work on, which made me so happy and it felt already rewarding. At the beginning, I was a little afraid to tell people my idea because I was afraid of questions and doubts that might reduce my motivations. Spending more time and efforts refining and learning helped boost my confidence a lot.
I've also learned to enjoy stepping out of my comfort zone more and more. Again, to a degree at which the mental damage is not too large to discourage me once and for all.
There are so many more things I want to say! But I have to debug for my script now! So maybe next time! Good luck to whoever is reading this!!! Let's fight imposter syndrome relentlessly together and yes we can do it!! : D