You can't learn what you think you already knew - the lesson from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus could be the maxim of a Ph.D. or any academic endeavor, for that matter, as it is, first and foremost, a learning process.
I am embarked on this journey since April 2021, and despite (or maybe because of) starting in the most severe lockdowns in Europe, it was a transformative experience.
The success of my journey is not my task to assess, but the notion of success is a useful concept to ponder: I often revisit Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers - The Story of Success, which has a message that has stuck with me: he concludes that the unique ingredients of our lives, including, bafflingly, even our disadvantages, hardships, and maladies contribute to the success we achieved. Furthermore,
success is not simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift.
We cannot control external events such as where we are born or whether we get opportunities, but we could strive to adapt the proactive mindset such that when an opportunity presents itself,
we have the strength and presence of mind to seize it.
As a first-gen academic, I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to do a Ph.D. among researchers and fellow Ph.D. students, whom and whose work I admire. However, the point I want to make is that
If you have got the opportunity, use it wisely. Most importantly, pay it forward.
As the academic hiring season is full in motion, I often recall the fallacies and traps this journey presented me with - particularly as I have received several questions in the last one and a half years to share my experience.
Lo and behold: the abbreviation of this newsletter, P2P, is the first warning sign about my nerdyness: it plays onto the concept of peer-to-peer from computer science and emphasizes where I position myself: I am not the holder of the Holy Grail, but I see myself as the messenger who collects, organizes, and shares the subjectively most useful practices of my peers. Most of my experience is of n=1 or potentially based on anecdotes from a dozen people.
Nonetheless, I am confident that what I learned from my peers is meaningful advice, and I hope to assemble a travel guide for all of us out there looking for ways to learn, improve, and thrive.
Since starting my journey last April, I have grown personally and professionally. Now it's time to pay it forward. The blog posts under the name Path to Ph.D. is my attempt to do exactly that.
The ELLIS Ph.D. Program (deadline on November 15)
In my Ph.D., I am part of the ELLIS program. If you are interested to do cutting-edge research in intelligent systems or machine learning, I encourage you to apply!