Welcome Back
Hello, I am alive and well. I didn’t get a chance to recap August through September, and now we are already in October. Originally I hoped to do a recap after a week of classes, but every week I found another reason to put it off, mostly because I couldn’t think of the “right’ words to say. But now I’m here, trying to get back into it.
After a trip back to Houston at the end of August, I returned to Madison to start my second year of my PhD. Although I was excited to start my second year, I felt more doubt than I did last year. Around this time last year, I felt very confident in my abilities to complete this PhD. With 1 year of experience, I realize that this is harder than I thought. I didn’t feel the same excitement as last year, and some days I dreaded going to class. I felt guilty for feeling this way, which led to my inability to express it honestly and fully, because I felt that I had created this persona of enjoying my grad school experience.
Over the past year, my doubt has grown much more than my belief. Therefore, the overall delta of doubt is greater than self-belief. This heavily affected how I viewed myself and my abilities. I’m still processing many of these thoughts and emotions, so it makes it difficult for me to compile them into coherent sentences. I challenged myself to share some of these thoughts by guesting on my coach’s podcast, Daring Living. If you’re interested, click below to listen.
Moving Forward
I will try to write shorter, but more frequent weekly updates, no matter how messy life or PhD can get. One day, I’ll look back on this and be grateful that I had some documentation at all. So often I get caught up in setting and reaching my next goal that I forget the moments in between. In the moment, it seemed dull and mundane. But I realized that all these moments that I neglect – become my life.
In my work, I advocate for sharing your stories and journeys so that someone who is following a similar path can learn from our experience. And yet I don’t do this enough for myself. Sometimes it can be hard to show up so vulnerably – who cares about what I have to say? Maybe no one does. Or someone does. I won’t know for sure.
But what I do know now is that I wish I had documented my journey better. So I can remember what I thought and how I felt in that moment, see my growth and transformation, be proud of myself for making it this far and trust myself to keep moving forward.
So if not for anyone else, document your journey for yourself. Start your blog. Write your book. Take all the photos. Live your life. Cherish it.
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.