Rough Sea of PhD

I can’t claim that I am smarter than the rest, or even more organized. But, I am pretty proud of myself as being a person who, with God’s graciousness of course, successfully complete most, if not all of my major attempted tasks. In fact, I have always set a challenge for myself to do so earlier than scheduled. I remember taking full credit hour of classes every semester and sparing some parts of summer for classes when many of my friends spent the whole summer for holidays. It’s a fulfilling experience when you get to complete the task earlier and “holidaying” after that felt more satisfying.

I guess having a mom who is always at my toe helped pushed me. Mom is a perfectionist and I seriously don’t know if it is a good or worthy trait to inherit. And the boss at the old workplace…known as Bandit for his working style. He would push me (and the rest of the team) to utmost limit as he nonchalantly changed project schedules to months earlier than what was scheduled. Arghh…we all suffered. In fact, all this anxiety had affected me with gastric pain, a problem that I dim-wittedly could not understand why I had. Leaving the old office had brought many benefits to my life, while my health gained the most.

I have thought that for the rest of my life, with God’s blessing again, of course, that any task would be accomplished if I invested the right amount of time, energy, focus, and a good road map. But for the first time of my life, I feel that it does not work that easily anymore. My experience doing a PhD has changed my whole perception about my theory and I was forced to step back and take a deep breath. After more than a year into my candidacy, I have tried almost everything that I was supposed to. I have read the literature, worked out the research framework, done preliminary data gathering, identify the variables, surveyed the literature again, reworked the framework, and on top of that, wrote a number of research proposals and searched high and low for research grants to support the studies. Gosh…I have done so many things, but how come I am still in troubled water? I feel that I am still gasping for air; it really feels like that…not exactly knowing where the tide would sweep me to. Thousands of questions linger in my mind, “am I doing the right thing?”, “will it take much longer than it should have?”, “am I on the right track?”, "will I ever complete this?"......

Sometimes, I would picture myself sitting at the end of the line, but somehow, the picture was not very clear. In the meantime, I would constantly remind myself to place my whole trust in Allah the Almighty to guide me through this period of uncertainty while I swim the rough sea of PhD.