It’s almost the end of first year as a graduate student and
probably the best time to look back and figure out if I am happy with what I have been doing. Even if I am enjoying the life of a graduate student, there are other
important questions to look at: What are the new things, other than the course
work, I have learned in last one year, what are my strengths and weakness that
are relevant to field of research and most importantly, am I able to fulfill my
duties towards my family that includes my spouse, daughter and parents.
Before being admitted to PhD program, I was only concerned if I
would get admit in any of the colleges, I applied to. But once I got
confirmation from my top choice CMU, which obviously made me happy and
satisfied, I was forced to rethink about questions like: Do I really want to
pursue PhD., do I have energy and perseverance to go for higher studies, Is it
right time to go to academia when I am about to enter into my 30s and priority
should be to earn more to support my family, does it make sense to demolish
well-settled life, how will my decision impact the family. But my passion
towards learning and teaching, desire for stable life for future, offer from
one of the most prestigious university, and dissatisfaction towards the
industrial work motivated me to join as doctorate student at CMU.
I joined CMU with mixed feelings. On one side, there was sense of
pride of being student at a top college and working with some of the best
people around the world but on the other side there was a sense of guilt of
being selfish by leaving my parents alone, specially when they needed me most.
However, as the semester gained momentum there was no time left for any
feelings because of the massive workload pounded on me. Even though, I was
mentally prepared for the hard work, still I was shocked by the sudden impact.
There were courses, assignments and projects with conflicting deadlines, exams,
research meetings and my personal research work. But gradually, I got adjusted
to this new lifestyle and worked hard meet the expectations of a top college. I
think the support of my advisor (Prof. David Garlan) and family also
helped me lot in handling the initial pressure. Once I absorbed the initial
impact, I was much more confident about my capability to work hard and was more
assured about desire to learn.
During first semester, I had to make lot of adjustments to get
used to academic life. However, the most significant adjustment was to shift my
thought process from engineering mode to research mode. Generally speaking,
engineering is about detecting a problem, categorizing it to some predefined
category and finding out the solution that works best for the problem based on
the experience or bookish knowledge. Contrary to this, not always as prominent
as E=MC2, research is about defining a generic problem that is
independent of a particular system or a domain, trying to find a generic
solution to it and proving that the solution is generic works for all similar
types of problem. In theory, I knew this fact but realized it once I got
involved in research meetings and read research literature. Over the period of
time, I observed one more significant change in by attitude. Now I don’t feel
bad about saying “I don’t know the solution”. In fact, I feel proud about
saying it because this makes me feel that I am working on a problem that is
really difficult to solve.
By the end first semester, I was bit used to academic lifestyle
and my thought process also start getting adjusted to the research needs. All
these changes helped me lot in my second semester, which was more about research
rather than the course work. However, I think that course work in the second
semester was more painful because it was not useful from research perspective.
At CMU, I came across some of the best researchers around the
world. Interactions with them helped me a lot in improving my thought process.
It was surprising to see how these people interpret the same problem differently than me. There was even a lot to learn from my peers
having different strengths varying from technical skills to communication
skills to interpersonal skills. However, the biggest source of learning was my advisor who, after achieving so much professionally, still works harder
than any of his students. Overall, it was a humbling experience to work with
such smart and knowledgeable persons and learn from them.
Throughout this period, I kept on observing myself and tried to
analyze my strengths and weakness. The biggest strength is that even now I have
desire to learn and want to improve. However, there are number of weakness where
I need to improve like communications skills, thought process and most
importantly ability to concentrate hard, which is critical for clear and deep
thinking. I believe that my concentration has detoriated considerably over the
period of time.
To conclude, last 8-9 months have been great learning experience
for me. I think, I am really satisfied with what I am doing and proud to be a
part of intellectual powerhouse like CMU. However, there is always a pain of
not being with my parents. Perhaps this may prove to be a biggest motivation to
graduate as soon as possible.
