Curious Enough to Begin

Before starting my PhD, I thought I had a fairly clear idea of what it would be like.

I knew it would be challenging, full of uncertainty, and probably involve many moments of wondering whether I actually knew what I was doing. 😅

But more than being worried, I was curious and excited.

I was excited about the things I did not know yet.

I wondered what new ideas I would discover, what places I would explore, and what kind of people I would meet along the way.

Moving abroad made that curiosity even stronger. I was not simply starting a PhD; I was also beginning a new life in a country with a culture very different from the one I grew up in.

And then I arrived in New Zealand and realised that I was not adapting to just one new culture.

New Zealand is wonderfully multicultural, so I found myself learning from many different cultures, perspectives, and ways of seeing the world. 🌏

Then, of course, there is the actual PhD.

Read papers. Find a research question. Collect data. Run regressions. Write papers. Present them. Revise them.

Sounds quite straightforward.

That was before I discovered that a regression can look absolutely beautiful one evening and, after adding one control variable the next morning, suddenly behave as if it has never met you before. 🤔

As my PhD journey has unfolded, I have realised that the research appearing in my thesis is only part of what I am learning.

Some lessons come from papers and supervisors. Of course, my supervisors are wonderful and have been an incredibly important part of my research journey — guiding me through difficult questions, challenging my thinking, and helping me find my way whenever the research becomes uncertain.

Others come from conversations, unexpected experiences, mistakes — and from the people I meet along the way.

As someone who is quite low-tech, I feel especially fortunate to have people around me from whom I can learn new things. They may seem like small things, but they have made my PhD life so much easier, particularly because these are not always the kinds of things I can ask my supervisors about.

In Vietnamese, we have a saying: “Học thầy không tày học bạn” — sometimes, we learn just as much from our peers as we do from our teachers.

I have also discovered a rather amusing little secret: one way to work more effectively if you are not exceptionally smart (it's me 🤫) is simply to stay close to smart people, observe how they work, and just copy them. 🙃 🤭

And I believe that if you dare to ask — even what might seem like the silliest question — there will always be someone willing to answer. All you need is the ability to temporarily forget what embarrassment feels like. 🤭

I am genuinely grateful.

I still do not know exactly where this journey will take me.

And I definitely do not know what my next regression will decide to do next Monday.