Appreciation

If you are a PhD student, or were PhD students, you would probably agree with me that the process of pursuing a PhD is very challenging. It's challenging both intellectually and mentally. The intellectual challenges arise from pushing the boundaries of what you already knew to trying to understand and rationalize what you don't know. You explore the unknown based on what you knew, and learn through the journey. The mental challenges often come along with this explorative process. Although you are equipped with your well-formulated hypotheses and you posses great technical skills to solve the problem, often times, you will end up finding one mystery after another because things may not work as you expected, which could come intrinsically from the subject matter or it's just an instrument malfunction. Then, considering the limited resources you have: you don't have forever to solve this problem because you want to graduate and get a real job, considering what you have achieved versus what you have failed, and considering someone constantly bugging you for results, this explorative journey can be daunting and draining. Ultimately, your confidence drifts away and it's just so hard to tell yourself "never give up."