Saturday 28 November 2015

PhD finished - lessons learned

I defended successfully my PhD on 20th of November. As you can guess, it was a relief. Almost 6 years working on a book that synthesises all the work done... at that moment, you think how many experiments were not successfully published but were good ideas yet.

That was a very long journey.

I could write a long text describing the positive and negative things of this long journey - you know reflecting on my journey... believed me... I have done it several times... so I will summarise them in just three points:

1. Keep working and just do the best you can... and even when you do that, be ready for criticism. Think that when you read a published paper from other PhD student:

  • the promoter agreed with the content. In many cases, even co-promoters and other colleagues from the same and other institutions have agreed with the content;
  • three reviewers agreed that the content is worth to be published;
  • editors or program chairs have given the ok...
       So, if you think this was going to be easy, give up and change your career... 

2. probably one of the biggest lessons learned from your PhD will be: learning how to deal with disagreement. Good ideas are not enough, the idea and the results will require the consensus of at least 4 people with different background, expertise and interests. 

3. don't set up wrong goals (maybe it's a too hard statement)... the MIT has a limited number of places ;). Don't get me wrong, there are people who need this sort of goals. However, the PhD is about the journey and it will take you between 3 and 5 years. Your most important goal is to improve. It's an individual goal. Remember that each publication will be reviewed by 4 people at least (see point 2 ;)). Do you think that if you finish your thesis with 5 papers and your thesis that probably will involve and average of 15 and 20 people who thought that your work is relevant for the field, aren't you a suitable candidate for whatever institution around the world? What if, in addition, you won best paper awards, participated organising workshops, reviewed papers and created an interesting network of contacts?

Don't you think that it will keep yourself busy for 3-5 years? Good work will lead you to nice, good and wonderful learning experiences and do not worry about the next step. If you nailed your PhD, many interesting groups will want and need you.

Summarising: keep up the good work fellows!

I must admit that I struggled with the three lessons. But don't get them wrong... it doesn't mean that you need to give up on your beliefs... on the contrary... believe on them hardly.... they will keep you alive...

Commit to your ideas! Keep your mind open and be aware that science is team work more than you think! 

In my case, I moved back to the private sector in August as you can check on my LinkedIn and I am quite happy with the decision. Btw, we are looking for a Senior Big Data Engineer, so feel free to spread the word. I am sure that in this company, we know where we start but we don't know where we are going to end because we are going to face very interesting challenges quite soon. I would love to partner efforts and collaborate with a Big Data Engineer. 

Now thinking what is the best platform to blog... probably Medium but thinking also to blog on LinkedIn... but this is my last blog post here: new topics and new blog posts are about to come! (somewhere else ;)) 

I also share the slides of my PhD presentation if you want to check them out!

Ps: As I said, this PhD was a team effort. And I must thank especially to my promoters Katrien Verbert and Erik Duval who is dealing a very particular fight! Good luck!