Boya's Adventures in Molecular Programming
“Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss. But every once in a while, you find someone who's iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.”
----- from the film <Flipped>
That's the exact feeling when I found this field.
I know that I want to continue to write my story because I really like the beginning. What stopped me from continuing was that I had complicated feelings when looking back to where I started. I always saw me -- the young, passionate, brave and curious girl who actively pursued what she believed and liked. But every time I saw that me, a strong feeling of grief rose up.
A semester-long event provoked my deepest fear. Since then, that brave me have been suppressed. Fear made me isolated myself and prevented me from opening up, from connecting to people who I liked and admired. It took years to explore, to heal and I am still in the process. Being able to continue to write the story provides an evidence to me that I am changing. (I also re-published my personal site, not sure whether I will do more blogging, but at least I can face what I wrote before.)
A semester-long event provoked my deepest fear. Since then, that brave me have been suppressed. Fear made me isolated myself and prevented me from opening up, from connecting to people who I liked and admired. It took years to explore, to heal and I am still in the process. Being able to continue to write the story provides an evidence to me that I am changing. (I also re-published my personal site, not sure whether I will do more blogging, but at least I can face what I wrote before.)
I know that grief is not the full story. Graduate school is so long that when one starts, it is hard to vision how it is like when it ends; Graduate school is so short that there are "countably uncountable" times I talked to myself "I don't want to graduate", although I knew there is a Chinese saying "天下没有不散的宴席" ("There is no never-ending feast"). Graduate school is so exciting that I could keep interacting with new contents/ideas and there is a huge space for exploration; Graduate school is so frustrating that I realized how much I didn't know and "nothing works". To honor my journey and all the help I received along the way, I spent a lot of time on my thesis acknowledgement and I hope that I included everyone who has played a role.
So what has changed after getting the doctoral degree?
That's the topic for next time. ;-)
---- March 2021 (6 months after graduation)
So what has changed after getting the doctoral degree?
That's the topic for next time. ;-)
---- March 2021 (6 months after graduation)
A quote from Dave Zhang's website and from Chief Justice John Roberts:
"From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes."