Letter to my pre-PhD self

If you’re reading this in March or April of 2022 I am a few weeks away from doing my PhD viva, the final assessment that will determine if I pass my PhD. If you’re reading this after May 2022, and the science gods (and my examiners) have been merciful, then I will get to call myself a Doctor. But, as the saying goes, it’s not the destination that matters but the journey. This is especially true of a PhD. Adding those three letters after your name does bring a smug sense of satisfaction, but a PhD is about more than that. It’s about learning: learning to solve problems, learning to question assumptions, and even learning how to learn.

The following is my attempt to summarise what I learned during my own PhD. I don’t just mean the scientific knowledge, there was enough of that to fill 200 pages of my thesis. These are the lessons I wish I’d known when I started my PhD just over 4 years ago. Maybe you’re about to start your own PhD journey, or have just finished one, either way I hope you can take the lessons I learned and apply them in your own life. But that’s not the aim of this letter. I’m writing this to remind myself of the lessons I learned the hard way – through experience. In the future, when things inevitably get hard, I can look back on what I learned and remind myself what I achieved.

To myself, 4 years ago...
The journey you are about to start is going to be long. Right now you’re 22 years old and 4 years doesn’t sound like a lot. But you’ll be spending the majority of that time studying a single area of science. It will become boring. More than that, it will become almost painful. And yet no matter how much you read, study and revise you’ll never feel like you know enough. Eventually you’ll come to the realisation that a PhD is more about understanding how little you actually know. This means that it is your job to try and move things from the “ we don’t know anything about it” column to the “we now know a little bit more than we did before” column. This is both terrifying and amazing. It is terrifying trying to coming up with questions that no one else has asked. But it’s an amazing feeling when you can actually answer those questions.

Not only is the road ahead tough, but it can be lonely. Early mornings and late nights in the lab - alone. Hours spent writing up publications and your thesis – alone. It will feel like everyone else is too wrapped up in their own world, so you are left – alone. But you don’t have to bear the weight of your problems alone. When you need to vent, find someone who can listen (they do exist). When you are struggling to solve a problem, talk to someone, they might offer a solution or can at least help you figure out how to solve it. When you need support, don’t be afraid to ask for it. Don’t let your pride get in the way; it’s not weakness to ask for help, it’s the exact opposite – it requires strength. There is never any shame in asking for help.

Next, you need to accept that you can never predict what will happen. Small things will go wrong, experiments won’t go as planned, in fact they might not work at all. Publications will get rejected and the feedback will be harsh and unfair. Then there will be big things, like a freaking global pandemic! These things feel like they come out of nowhere. Try and be ready for anything, but you need to accept that you can never be ready for everything, because fortune has a way of doing exactly what it wants. It’s your job to try and deal with what happens as best you can.

On a similar note, sometimes the best you can do is just that – the best you can do. Stop judging yourself so harshly; nobody is perfect. Some people might expect you to be, and they will put unnecessary pressure on you. Ignore them. You will make mistakes and encounter failure, but do the best you can to deal with it and move on. Learn from your mistakes, yes, but don’t let a mistake become baggage. Mistakes and errors are inevitable, that’s not a bad thing, they are how you grow.

Finally, make time for what matters (hint: it’s not work dumbass). Striving to work hard is important, as are extracurricular activities, publications, networking; all of it has a place. But when you look back in 5, 10, 60 years (if you live that long) are you really going to say to yourself, “I wish I had one more publication.” Be honest, no. You’ll look back at Saturday evening’s on the couch eating raw cookie dough in your PJ’s with your partner, playing board games with your friends, and climbing half naked into an ice bath on a beach in Helsinki (yes that actually happened to me). All of this is easy to say; strive for work-life balance, avoid burnout, don’t become overwhelmed. It is a lot harder to achieve. You’ll have to learn to stand your ground and say no more often. You’ll have to fight tooth and nail to carve out time for what matters. But if you can manage to do it, it will be worth it.

It took you 4 years to learn these lessons, and you still fall short. Just remember to focus on what you control. Try to learn as much as you can. And don’t take anything for granted.

Good luck.