Tag Archives: phd

I have no clue what I want to do in life and I’m happy about it

I’m currently in a period of immense doubt about my future and about my life. this isn’t something I’ve ever experienced before, and I’m so glad that I am going through it.

Throughout university I have always been sure about what I want to do with my life and how I wanted it to play out. It certainly wasn’t always the same path but I believed it with full conviction. After a year of university I wanted to do medicine, and I was 100% sure that this was the right path for me and I would definitely do it, then after a year of planning my life as a doctor, I decided medicine wasn’t going to be for me and I would do a PhD instead; for a year, I was set on doing a PhD. In my final year I continually changed from wanting to be a medical doctor, and getting a PhD, with increasing frequency. I decided to sit the GAMSAT (medical entry test) in early 2020 but not put too much emphasis on it, I got a respectable mark and conveniently forgot to apply for entry. I told myself this didn’t matter as I was going to undertake a PhD at that point, so I signed up for a year of honours to introduce myself to research.

After my final year, full of placement and research I was no closer to knowing what I wanted to do, but vehemently told people that I was going to do a PhD if I was asked. This must have given me comfort, sounding like I knew what it was I wanted to do with my life. I was lucky enough to finish my pkacement early, in mid december, giving me 2 months before I started honours to figure my life out. In this period I vowed to not fill my time with work or other commitment, rather have it as a period of contemplation. And boy, contemplate I did. I spent at least 20mins every day meditating (sometimes up to an hour) and wrote every day. I feel as though my turmoil was displayed pretty well in my writing, I was always writing about careers, finance or productivity as these were all the things on my mind.

During this time I spent a lot of time with friends, as well as learning how to surf which I am so grateful I did. I began honours quite apprehensive, something I’ve never experienced before in a situation like this. I realised I did not know why I was doing it. Over my time contemplating, I realised I don’t know what it is I want to do with my life, but by reaching high earlier (ie. choosing medicine or a PhD) it meant I worked as hard as possible to allow myself to be afforded the choice when crunch time came. I believe very high goals are the best thing you can do for yourself in a period of doubt, because it is much easier to elect to take an easier path down the track when you’ve been aiming for something harder than it is the other way around. Although this isn’t without cost.

I realised I had spent so much of my time at university being focussed on my academics that I did not spend a huge amount of time with my friends, I wasn’t the most social person, and I believe my social skills deteriorated because of it. Now, I don’t mean to say I was a hermit, I still socialised, just not as much as I would have liked when reflecting back on it.

Now, I’m in a position where I have absolutely no clue what I’m going to do next year, and I love it. I love it because I think I’m moving beyond the typical social script of ‘do well at university, get a good job and earn lots of money’. One of my biggest fears is committing to a path I don’t truly enjoy, and thats the path I believe I was on. Maybe I do want to do a PhD or medicine, but maybe I don’t. I’ve stopped saying I know my path and I’m just going to enjoy it and see where it takes me. I’m focussing on the things that matter, my health and fitness, my family and friends and just developing more as a person, rather than as a student. I never thought I’d be so happy to be so lost.

PS. I have been reading a lot of books which helped me come to this realisation, this may be of interest to some people so here they are:

Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World – David Epstein: the most successful people are not those who work the hardest and specialise, but those who diversify, are curious and have broad interests and passions, as they allow your thinking to be flexible and not rigid.

Buddhism without Beliefs – David Batchelor: A great book describing buddhist beliefs without the religious aspect behind it, a great introduction to a different way of seeing the world

Ego is the Enemy – Ryan Holiday: A great book detailing all the ways our ego will be our downfall, and how to reduce it’s negative effects

Learning and Asking for Help

At University there are many ways of learning new content, but in this post, I’m going to be talking about learning things in a more self-directed way, more relevant to courses like honours or research-based classes, where things aren’t necessarily explained explicitly.

Largely, there are two ways of learning things: you can ask a tutor or supervisor, or you can try to figure it out for yourself. I am currently doing a research project in collaboration with several staff members in the final year of my degree. In this project, we are doing a systematic review and I have been tasked with writing up the protocol, something I’ve never been taught how to do. Initially, I was very nervous as I was completely lost on how to start and realised I had two options, either ask my supervisors how to do everything when I would hit a barrier or learn how to write a protocol from first principles and figure it out all on my own; I chose the latter.

The reason I chose to learn from first principles is that I was to go into research after I finish this degree, so I decided it was crucial I understand how to do research. This makes a lot of sense but at the time this task can seem extremely burdensome. I picked up the Cochrane Handbook of systematic reviews, a 750-page text explaining how to do a systematic review and was initially very overwhelmed with the complexity and magnitude of what I had to learn. Rather than sit down and read this before bed (when I normally read) I decided I would essentially switch out my kindle for my phone when I’d normally just scroll aimlessly through social media and read the handbook. Whilst this doesn’t seem too fun, it was extremely effective as I’ve now written my protocol from scratch and have completed a significant chunk of the handbook, and crucially, I understand how to conduct a systematic review. I could have asked the supervisor to hold my hand throughout the process but I wouldn’t have gained anywhere near as much knowledge out of it, which is fundamentally the goal of the project. 

Despite reading the handbook, I continued to hit barriers where I would feel the need to ask for help, a recent example being the statistics surrounding meta-analysis. Statistics have never been a strong point of mine so reading example protocol and seeing a whole bunch of letters such as I, Q, Tau and more I was again, very overwhelmed. I resisted the urge to raise a white flag and ask for help and researched what these statistics mean, why they are important and how to use them so I’d be able to write how we would use them in our review. It took me two days to unravel the secrets of these statistics but I eventually got there and asked a PhD student if I had understood them correctly, and thankfully I did.

Learning these tasks from first principles was very useful for me, not just because I got a deeper understanding for the processes which I was learning, but because they reinforced that I could learn anything I put my mind to, even if I was clueless beforehand. This extra confidence is really reassuring and empowering because I now feel like nothing can stop me and I’ll always be able to figure out something if I need to. 

Ultimately, no matter what you are studying you will encounter scenarios where you are at a loss on how to do something. I’m by no means recommending you don’t ask questions, because throughout the process of learning all of this I sought feedback and asked plenty of questions but when it comes to significant processes, don’t ask for the answer or solution to be spoon-fed to you because you gain nothing from that. If you try to learn from first principles, you will gain a much deeper knowledge of the task at hand, and this will always result in higher marks. So next time you hit a barrier and don’t know what to do, look it up, and try to figure it out for yourself, I guarantee you’ll be able to and you’ll gain much more in the process.