A reflection on my PhD experience

Now that my PhD program is coming to an end, while waiting for my viva, I’m getting ready to start another phase of my career. I’m looking for a role as a machine learning researcher or a data scientist.

As I reflect on my PhD experience, I could write a thousand word about how my initial idea was to change the world when finishing or after my PhD to when my supervisor thought I could end up finishing my program within 2 years with the rate I started to when I got into the valley of shit (a period in your PhD however brief, when you lose perspective and therefore confidence and belief in your ability).

The valley of shit is a terrible place to be, it smells. No one walks with you down there, no matter how close they are to you. No matter how reassuring those encouraging words can be, somehow you still have the feeling that the valley has no end. Despite the many challenges, I never lose faith, I kept fighting, kept walking in that valley and kept pushing. By which I mean I kept writing, doing analyses, kept reading and reproducing bunch of papers and kept writing bunch of codes. Now I can gladly say it’s been an amazing experience.

The PhD experience has been an amazing one, it has shaped me, and affords me to not just answer a given question, but to also define the question. Sciences are primary defined by thier questions rather than by their tools. It has also helped me to solve independent problems and strive for excellence at all time.