TP 14

I had a nice chat with a research fellow few days ago at a birthday party. He said that doing a PhD involves three phases (actually four, but we'll get to that later). The three phases - freely paraphrased - are...

1. You know everything. Everyone else is either stupid or wrong. You think you are the first one to see your research topic (thesis) clearly. Nobody has actually bothered to research that before, and you wonder why.
2. There seems to be nothing original that could be said about the topic. Those scholars were geniuses - how could they have said it so clearly? How could I have been so stupid? How am I going to get out of this mess?
3. You realize you can leave your small thumb print in the research area after all. You recognize it does not have to be anything spectacular (like new theory of relativity). You have a voice and you have been given a chance to use it. 

He also said that these phases follow the years spent for the study. Thank you for the tips my friend from the birthday party!

And the fourth phase? It is the major academic hangover after the dissertation is finished (and possibly published), and it might take years to recover from that. I'll have to start piling up so ibuprofen for the future...