Well, hello! I didn't realise it's been 12 days since my last post. I thought it's been only a week. Time flies quickly when you're doing many things all at once and keeping up with deadlines. It's been hectic these past two months, but more so in the last two weeks of July when the summer semester is ending. There's barely room to take a break as assignments and projects just keep on coming and piling. This summer semester is indeed a sprint, but a 400-m sprint where a bloodhound is nipping at your heels. You fall, deadlines catch up on you, you cram your work, you don't understand anything what you're doing, you don't sleep, you get stressed and cranky, you turn in a mediocre work, and overall you'll just feel so crappy it fucking sucks. That's PhD life. Well, I could say that's graduate school, but there are some nuanced differences between a master's and a PhD.
Someone asked me this recently, the difference between the two graduate degrees. Basing everything off on my experience, PhD is more intense as you compete with yourself --- yourself as defined by the beliefs and principles you've learned and upheld since childhood. For example, it is only now in PhD school that I realised I'm a perfectionist, meaning I don't easily submit anything that minimally satisfies the question; I am not satisfied if I think I have not fully elaborated on the answer. There's a perpetual weighing and debating in my head whether or not the answers I'm giving are substantial, if they make sense, and if I'm able to put forth the arguments coming from different angles. It sucks because I get stuck answering the questions, which in turn makes me stressed, and for what? This also applies true when writing manuscripts. There's so much processing going on in my head that I'm not able to write anything down because I'm already stopped by these arguments in my head. That's wrong. I can't move forward and accomplish anything with this. So I think I should really have more compassion towards myself, that if I'm not able to elaborate fully on a topic, then it's okay, just let go. I think a lot of PhD students fall in this trap. That's why many of PhD students as well suffer from Imposter Complex. We always think we're not good enough, so we need to always go beyond what is needed, and that is going to be detrimental for our growth. Ninety percent out the door is better than 100% on the desk.
Compared to a master's, remembering my time at ANU, I didn't feel the HUGE need of going beyond what was needed. If anything, I had difficulty even meeting what's needed. So when I'm doing my assignments, my focus was just delivering what was needed, making it sound it's important, and satisfying the requirement of having at least one non-strawman argument. I wouldn't say that ANU was a walk in the park. It was challenging too, but perhaps it was so because I also had extra-curricular activities to juggle. Moreover, I had a social life in ANU and interacting with fellow students is very much encouraged. Here at UNTHSC, EVERYHING is CURRICULAR. Once I'm done with my coursework assignments, it's time to shift my attention to research work. Extra-curricular? WTH is that? Ain't nobody got time for that shit. Hahaha. It was really fun in ANU as there were a lot of mixers and get-togethers for graduate students. Overall, in a master's degree, your focus is to learn how to learn and get your feet wet in a particular field.
PhD is a whole different animal. PhD REQUIRES you to become an independent researcher after you graduate. That means you establish yourself to be proficient in leading scientific projects. And, of course, for you to do that, you must know the ins and outs of your research topic. And you must have displayed a high level of competency in the field through your published works. In short, pursuing a PhD prepares you for career path of being a scientist. A master's degree prepares you to continue your present job with some additional knowledge gained.
Again, this is all just based off from my experience, which is very limited. Other graduate students, of course, have different definitions and experiences of PhD vs Master's.
Anyway, time to get back to work. This was just a break for me in between working on my papers.
Until then,
(yes, that's a comma)
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