Yesterday a friend of mine poured his heart on how he lacked support during his PhD, and a while ago, I learnt that another friend had converted his PhD to Master as he felt that he couldn’t move forward with the current support he had at the moment.
The significance of good supervising and support system is real. When I looked back on my own journey, I realized that I have been saved multiple times by the amazing supervisor and support system I have, both on my personal side, and even more profound in the department where I did my PhD.
I remember having my low moments in the second year, where spirit was running low, and all results seemed trashy. I would like to think that I have done tremendously well to overcome those and finally finished my PhD, but looking back now, I realized how much I have been supported to be able to do it.
Yes, PhD need preseverance, resourcefulness and determination, but if you keep hitting a wall over and over again, with no way out in sight, or if you have been ignored, not taken care of, feeling lost without any hand to point you to the right direction, it need a huge huge effort to move on confidently and keep sane.
The other day, I read a twit regarding appropriate training for PhD, and totally agree. After all, PhD is a training, a training to perform research independently, a training to think scientifically, to solve problem. As important as the inherent quality of the PhD trainee to complete the training is the quality of the training program and trainer (in this regards, supervisors and departmental and university support).
My Laniakea 