For graduate students, summer is a blank slate, full of possibilities. We don’t teach or take classes, so we can focus on research more. Older graduate students told me that the PhD learning actually starts in the first summer.
Like many other graduate students, I thought that summer would my chance to catch up and get ahead on my long to-do list. I believed that summer would bring renewed motivation, but I find that it’s not as strong as I wanted it to be.
In this post, I’ll share what I’m working on in my PhD work, what I’m thinking about for my future goals, and why I’m taking a break from my business again.
What I’m Working On in My PhD Work
For the past two months, I felt off my game. I go through cycles of focus and fatigue. I can be motivated and focused for two weeks or so, before I tire out and need to recuperate. I remind myself daily to be effective, creating the result I want, even when I might feel crappy. It’s better than feeling sorry for myself and not making any progress at all.
For example, I recently realized that I did a set of experiments wrong multiple times. I forgot to do a calculation, and it was pointed out to me during my first group meeting presentation. I didn’t understand what they meant and I was too embarrassed to ask. When I realized what they meant, I felt so stupid because it was simple.
I admitted my mistake to my PI, who was kind about it, but I was beating myself up for it. I spent so many days redoing the experiment and wasting precious reagents. I know that grad school is about learning and failing, so I shifted my perspective and focused on how I can apply what I learned moving forward.
Despite that incident, my research work is going well overall. I presented my first group meeting in early June and received valuable feedback from my PI and senior group members. This will help me prepare for my thesis background exam, which will qualify me for a master’s degree (MS). It’ll be a major milestone in the PhD process.
In addition to research, I’m also working on my personal statement for the National Science Fellowship Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP). When I started writing the personal statement, I compiled old personal statements to get a starting point. I hated how boring it was – “I did this, then I did this, then I did this.”
To make this more interesting for me, I reframed how I was writing my personal statement. When I thought about writing it as a story about my science journey that I could share with my family and friends, I felt more authentic in my voice.
My family and friends have celebrated me in those accomplishments, but I never shared with them what I thought and how I felt about it when it happened. This personal statement, or short story, will help them understand me better.
Revisiting and rewriting my story has also healed me in a way. I thought that my science journey was about struggling and lots of trial and error, and I somehow magically ended up here, working towards my PhD. Now I see how much I’ve grown through each experience, a steady self-discovery. Everything happens for a reason, even though we don’t know why when it happens.
What I’m Thinking About for My Future Goals
Part of the NSF GRFP asks me about my future goals. When I started my PhD, I thought I knew what I wanted. Now my personal situation and perspective changed more than I expected. Without going into many personal details, I expected things to be the same while I was doing my PhD. As if I could move away and not worry about my familial responsibilities and focus on my career goals entirely. But that’s not the case. I feel guilty for not being there, and there’s nothing I can do about it right now.
Amazingly, the universe delivered some insights to me. A former coworker reached out to me to ask me about my PhD progress. After I explained my situation, she offered her advice to me, which I’ll share here:
“Whether you want to get MS or PhD should be dependent on the types of career you want. It seems long now, but in the grand scale, it is still only a few years. If the reason for wanting to leave early is due to discomfort or uncertainty at the moment, not because you don’t want it, you should try to make it through.
PhD is the ticket to the elite club in the chemical industry, MS is not (but more commonly seen for sales/marketing type careers). But there is no reason to make yourself crazy if it turns out to be hard to handle. However hard you think it is now, it hasn’t started yet. Your last two years will be more difficult.
No matter what decision you make, you will have my support. If you want to stick to the end, I am here for you to vent. If you want to dip out in 2 years, I will help you any way I can to land a job. Everyone is different.”
Although I’m not sure what my future career looks like exactly, I know that I still want to be here, working towards my PhD. I don’t want to have any regrets about this opportunity I have.
Why I’m Taking a Break from My Business Again
I’m disappointed to say this, but I’m planning to put my web design business on the backburner again. At the beginning of my PhD, I stopped taking clients in the fall, so I could focus on my classwork and TA work. I thought I was ready to reboot my business in the spring semester, so I onboarded 1:1 clients again.
Although I enjoy client work, I created the same situation for myself as last summer, which is taking on too many clients at once and setting too many goals for myself. I started feeling dread when I planned to work on clients’ projects (not because I didn’t like helping my clients, but because I made it a huge deal in my head) and guilty when I didn’t meet the goals I set for myself.
After considering my energetic capacity, taking 1:1 clients is no longer a priority to me. When I contemplated raising my prices, I still didn’t feel excited about working on it. That’s when I knew I needed a break again. I may return to it in the future after my thesis background exam and research proposal.
For now, I want to focus my energy towards my PhD, enjoying my life here, and playing piano. Instead, I plan to continue developing and promoting my Website Setup Workshop. This way I can help out more graduate students and early career researchers, without feeling the pressure of 1:1 clients.
I hope that you enjoyed reading about my personal experience and takeaways from my chemistry PhD journey. If you’d like to chat more about what I’ve shared, feel free to send me an email at hello@brittanytrinh.com or send me a message on Twitter and Instagram @brttnytrnh.