Challenging the Ph.D. Encounters!

The Ph.D. experience can be made less daunting and more enjoyable by trying to do things in a way that they become the thrill of life. The course comes with its unique traits, and it is up to you whether you want to let those traits overpower you and boggle you down or you try to challenge the encounters that it throws at you. Let us look at some struggles of the doctoral journey, and how you can turn them around and make them enjoyable for you.

1. It brings loneliness to life: Yes, it does bring in its elements of seclusion but you need not surrender in front of it. Accept it as a passing phase, and search for solution that can ease up the journey for you. You would find some solace in your peer, family, friends, supervisor or maybe even the social media.
2. It makes you feel lost and confused: True, it does. Is Ph.D. not about exploration and finding out what is not known? Feeling lost and confused is a normal feeling in doctoral research, and that is the only way that you would be able to pave through the path and uncover the unknown.
3. A lot of effort and work goes futile: Ideally, no effort and work is useless. Everything is a learning experience and with all the effort you think did not bring in the desired results, it did make you a more seasoned researcher. It is only through failures and repeated attempts that the required skill development happens. No Ph.D. scholar has achieved his mission without having failed couple of times. That is an indication that you are going in the right direction.
4. Success takes time to show up: Agreed that your publication and your viva are the parameters to evaluate your accomplishments and they take time to show up. Don’t just wait for them to know that you are succeeding. On day to day basis, your small little accomplishments shouldn’t be ignored. They would contribute in keeping you spirits high and making you know that you are going somewhere in the right direction.
5. Your supervisor will be critical always: That’s the job of the supervisor and he is meant for that. By being critical he can push you and ensure that you would be bringing out your best in creating your research document. With all the flaws that are identified in your document, know that it is after all your baby, and it is onto you to polish it as much as possible.