Thoughts on dissertation as of December, 2024
As a PhD Candidate
Another Christmas approaching, and this time I've become a PhD candidate finally! :) Trying to organize my thoughts after a hectic month, I plan to (hopefully) share some random thoughts on three topics in this blog post: (1) my proposal & proposal defense, (2) first AGU experience, and (3) lessons learned from year 2024. I'm still recovering from tiredness from the crazy past month, so please forgive me if the blog post looks unorganized. Hopefully this is a fun read!
Proposal & proposal defense
My proposal defesne took place during the first week of December. Once again I was challenged by my committee with many thought-provoking questions and suggestions, which I really appreciate. I was peaceful after completing the exam without over excitement. Thoughts on how I should move forward started rushing in and even invading my sleep time soon after the defense. I have so many thoughts, so many questions to solve, and so many decisions to make.
It has been two weeks since the defense. I like my proposal but am continuously finding new things to improve on. At the moment, I can't quite express my feelings on the proposal clearly other than "Oh I would feel so happy to have them finished and published". But we can never rush! Fingers crossed for a prolific 2025 and I will try my best to work on these :)
First time at AGU
I actually enjoyed my first AGU a lot! It is not as overwhelming as I thought it would be because I had clear goals about what sessions to go to and what people to talk to, thankfully from previous conference experiences. My strategy is to first support my friends/cohorts as much as I can, and then find opportunities (firmly!) to talk to people whose work are relevant/whose paper I've been reading/whom I may want to work with. Very luckily, they are all really amazing people and very nice! In addition, a panel on giving tips to early career researchers to navigate through collaborations was also very helpful.
During the conference, I received a pro tip to take some time off to tourist around from time to time and found it really helpful. There were several therapy dogs in the exhibition hall which I think is a must-pet. I also met with friends from ASU and we visited the Smithsonian Zoo together in DC. I genuinely feel warm and happy to have fun with them. Another really happy thing for me is to accidentally run into folks I've met in other events before but haven't talked much. And we got the chance to talk more about our research and life this time! Such is a perk of spending more time in the field!
The only two "biggish" social gatherings I attended were the early career mixer and a dinner organized by sino-eco. I unfortunately did not meet any geographer at the mixer lol but the sino-eco dinner was unexpectedly fun. It was a 100+ people dinner full of Chinese ecologists. People were nice to each other and the food was really good.
Despite all the positive experiences, I still occassionally wish I could do better at some conversations. And I was VERY nervous about presenting my work in the session. But, I regained confidence because I was presenting honest research and already tried my very best. I can and will work on the regrets next year, but for this time, I presented as good as I could at that moment.
I have not entirely made up my mind if I'll go to AGU next year or not, but I think it is a very worthwhile conference. Just wish it's less expensive!
Lessons learned
The first thing I want to remind myself is not to overcommit to too many projects and tasks. The biggest reason, as obvious as it may seem, is that if I try to achieve too many goals at the same time, there is a bigger chance I won't be able to finish any of them soon/well. This is a bit of a hard lesson learned (like many others), but I don't regret this! As an early career international student, I sometimes feel insecure about my academic progress so I want to feel more "accomplished" by signing up for more things or jumping at any opportunity I see. Learning what tasks to prioritize is a skill I'm building gradually. I believe this skill will only become more important as I advance my career further. In short, think twice before accepting any offer and always remember what my priorities are.
Have a life more than as a researcher. And also care about people not just as researchers. More specifically, this can entail (1) having some hobbies other than research, (2) treating myself & others as holistic humans lol with kindness and sincerity, and (3) evaluating personal growth rather than achievement compared with others. I learned this from my friends, families, and some faculties I've interacted with and have benefited so much from healthy and positive relationships with them. The separation between me/others representing my/their work and me/them as myself/themselves is really helpful because sometimes we tend to evaluate ourselves mainly based on our academic progress or achievement (where imposter syndrome creeps in!), but this is not what I value the most in a person. So I shouldn't force this standard onto myself or anybody else. Having this mindset allows me to be more forgiving to myself and others , and therefore less likely to be stuck with frustration or disappointment when something doesn't go as I wish.
I transferred this year, but things have been going really well. Transferring can seem scary, but don't be shy to talk to people and build relationships (and do take the efforts, it will be worth it!). People have been so nice to me at UCSB geography and beyond and I'm just so so so grateful! I wish I could do better next year in terms of finishing projects and stuff (honestly speaking, I feel a little bit bad to collaborators for not being able to finish things as fast as I wish), but I'm just really thankful to be able to spend time in two welcoming and friendly departments through my PhD journey.
The last but perhaps most important lesson is to always assume kindness in people and that they have tried their best when things are not going as I wish. I learned this from a dear friend Garima Jain a couple of years ago but find this more and more important everyday. It can be extremely more streneous to carry on our daily life with unnecessary negative feelings about people and putting ourselves into a false perspective of inability to do anything with the situation or getting deeply stuck in the mindset of a victim. And more often than not, these negative feelings are simply stemmed from a lack of communication. As a confession, I feel really awful in a couple of occassions where I was secretly having opinions about other people but then found them talking or working with me with kindness. In situations where I do feel like there's a problem, I've been trying to make efforts to communicate/resolve the problem instead of biulding up unhappy feelings about others. We just know so much about ourselves but assume so much about others.