First Semester in PhD

I have completed the first semester in graduate school. Throughout these first months, I constantly felt exhausted and anxious all day long. I always felt lost and not doing enough even though I worked like 12 hours a day.  During my undergraduate years, my jobs were more diverse, including classes, research, volunteer, application, part-time job, but I did not feel it was busier than this one semester. In grad school, there is always so much to do even though my jobs were only to do research and study for classes. This one class covered a wide range of biology research topics. The amount of information was enormous and the class was taught by a large group of professors. This gave me a very difficult time to study and handle the exams well. I failed on the first two exams because I was not active in studying for classes but instead spending too much time on exciting research projects. I never failed this bad, this failure in classwork struck me hard. I felt absolutely down and stupid. I started studying seriously and giving up some lab work and fun time. I got my grade back up to A's. I was so happy and gained back my confidence. In the end, I felt so relieved when I passed this class and I will never have to sit in that class ever again but rather moving on to more focused, interesting classes for my research concentration.

I have learned so much during this half-of-a-year time in grad school for how to be a grad student, a good scientist. In short, becoming a good scientist is at a huge expense of personal time, family time, and outside entertainment. The excitement needs to be constantly found in my heart to keep myself motivated and curious to gain my research knowledge and laboratory skills. There are several things I have learned that have helped me becoming a better researcher. Staying focused and critical is crucial in executing experiments to save time and materials and to gain trust from others. The ability to think carefully on every step to troubleshoot technical problems is gained through time and experience. Taking in educational criticism, reading reliable resources, keeping myself updated on new technology, being open-minded, and having research-unrelated hobbies are healthy characteristics that I need to develop, because they will help me enjoy the learning process during PhD, making this path become more enjoyable.

What has been keeping me motivated throughout this time is the enjoyment of being around professionals from where all kinds of interesting ideas are established and shared. I am always amazed by the creativity and the critical thinking that are going on in these scientists' minds. The advanced technology and wide national and international collaborations gave me a number of opportunities to develop myself into a more successful scientist. Obtaining a PhD became so much more challenging than I have ever imagined. All the elements mentioned above together keep me always inspired to continue my training.