Beyond Research

As a PhD student, we mostly tread paths that are not trodden by others and it could be daunting, lonely and scary- but then again we as a community, we are huge and even though we might be solving different problems, the approach to moving towards our goals and growing not just as an academic but as a human is exactly the same. Our struggles with balancing workload to anxieties of cultural change to constantly feeling lost while exploring the unknown have actually been around for generations; because of this, it is also very easy to find motivation and inspiration if only we looked in the right directions. Sometimes they come from your advisor’s words and sometimes from your family but one the easiest ways to find them is on the internet. Blogs of other PhD students, talks at academic conferences, motivational TEDx videos and sometimes just Netflix!

I have noticed that in the recent times, there is an increasing non-technical support (let’s say “human support” for the lack of a better word) in esteemed academic organizations like IEEE, ACM etc. This is quite inspiring to me personally and has encouraged me to list few such articles that might be interesting to others too. They are not in any particular order or category nevertheless significant in their own way.