As a phd student I have gone through the whole gamut of emotions regarding why am i doing, what I am doing. At first there was the excitement of research, the thought that i was going to enter a system whose ideals matched mine - with the quality of work being the only criteria for success. After 12 -14 months when i saw how the actual system works, the madness to get papers, marketing your research etc., cynicism set in. I started doubting myself. Am i doing the right thing? When i saw my friends in the "real" world making money, talking about bonuses, property prices, getting married, settled down in life, the anxiety deepened. And the worst part of this feeling was that ever since the age of 16, I had never let other people's success affect me. Now here was i stuck at one point while all my mates where zooming ahead in their life. It was not jealousy. It was weird feeling which I was not able to put a finger on. Talking to many of my friends it became very obvious that you don’t have to be better in solving analytical problems to be a success in life/career. I understood pretty fast that the qualities that make a person a "success in life" are intangible and is primarily dependent on reacting to the pitfalls which life throws at you. And it was with all these doubts in mind that I took a vacation to my home in India.
These doubts where whizzing through my mind for the first few days. It was around 8 in the morning when i woke up and I was feeling very nostalgic. I stared across at my table and started remembering the memories of my high school when i used to sit there and solve problems out of Irodov. I remembered how I used to literally punch the air, feel nice whenever I solved a tough problem. I remembered, how once I paced around the room with a big wide grin when I gave a very elegant solution to the problem: (a,b,c) are sides of a triangle show that a/(1+a) + b/(1+b) >= c/(1+c). I used to do this while many of friends used to go out for movies, hang out, and do the normal cool things. The normal teen community would have labeled me a looser and I never used to regret spending time this way. Part of the reason I used to spend time this way was my desperation to get into a great university which will ensure a "better" life. At that point, I realised that the actual reason which spurred me on was more than just getting into a good university. I actually liked spending time solving such problems. A few months earlier when my academic cynicism was at its peak, I was having dinner at a friends place and the guy got really excited about an elegant proof involving a sum of series equals PI. I remember my instinctive involuntary feeling was wow that’s a great one, but i immediately covered that feeling with a "Dude, u need to get a life". I was so enamored with other people's lives that I was trying to become some one else.
Deep inside my heart, i realised whenever I see some elegant proof I get hooked. I immediately start wishing that I could do some thing like that. I am not really good at it, I am better than average still no way good enough to come up with really really clever ones. But I still like trying solving problems, both practical and theoretical. Every time the course list came up I get excited and come up with a list of atleast 5 courses which I want to take. I like doing new courses. I have met some fascinating people in school. Geeks/Nerds however u might want stereotype them but I learned so many things from them and I hope some of them will remain friends for life. I may not be in school for long. I may end up doing a job which may not require a phd, but I will never regret doing a phd because I can say at least for four years of my life I did something which I inherently enjoyed. And there are a lot of things which I have learned, which I think will help me succeed in the real world.
