Advice

I've learned a lot while making my way through college, internships, and the first couple of years of a PhD program. I've relied on Reddit posts, advice from friends/peers/mentors, and a bunch of trying-and-hoping-for-the-best to get to where I am now. I figured I would write my experiences down along the way, in hopes that it make someone else's academic journey easier some day.

How to use my advice: At my first internship, right before I applied for PhD programs, I went around asking different full-time employees with PhDs if they would recommend going to a PhD program. Shockingly, most of them said no, it's not useful, and I should avoid it if I can. One panic later, I realized that I was speaking with the wrong audience: these were software engineers, many of whom don't work in research or at least don't aim to publish every year. Some of them were from other countries and pursued a PhD to help with immigration. Our goals and situations were too different for me to directly apply this advice, but I did learn a lot about career planning in general.

In this spirit, I try to avoid making universal declarations because I know what works for me won't work for everyone because we're all different. I also try to be explicit about my thoughts and experiences so you can understand why something works for me, not just what works for me. Then you can extrapolate to fit your own thoughts and experiences. Or just ignore me. 😅

Happy reading!