|
Being a loser in research
I hate to admit it, but I feel I am being unlucky in my workfield. I have no problems in my personal life as I have a loving and caring mother and a loving and caring boyfriend who is the best person I Can get. I am a Ph.D scholar working in India since 2013 and right now I am in an european country for the past 7 months, carrying out a part of my research, the last year of my Ph.D. In the last month I also had a surgery and I joined lab 2 weeks ago. As my lab back in India was not a well equipped one, and the syllabus of our masters was mostly theory based, when I joined here, The first thing which hit me, that even masters and bachelor students know more than me. From that time I felt inferior enough to talk with lab people, only when I needed something, I asked. And gruadually I was spotted as the non communicative one. I was working day and night to do some good work, but very few times did I get any thing positive in the most accurative way. Even my prof. once said you are being unlucky in which ever thing you are doing, that I dont know what to say. He tries to guide me as much as he can, and he's a very nice person in that respect. Considering that I am recovering still from the surgery, I can work only half hard as before. As much as I try, I am being loser in my results. Time is running out and I have only 4 more moths here, and not even 30 % of work is done. I dont know any way out. I am utterly depressed. I feel I can never do any good research work, and I am inferior to everyone. My state of mind is not good. I feel very low.
[ ]
Want to answer more questions in the Health & Fitness category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Mental health?
A person can be book and study smart and have degrees and yet lack wisdom. Your professor who said you were unlucky is one of those. He may have landed the position of professor but nothing in life can train you how to have wisdom...you either have it or don't. Unfortunately when he spoke to you like that, no matter how much he tried to help you after, all your subconscious heard and keeps hearing are those works of being an unlucky person. If thats the exact work he used and no other, I don't think he was good at expressing himself. Perhaps he said something different which you interpreted as meaning unlucky.
Either way, you subconsciously are making little choices all along the way from that point on, that in which your subconscious mind is trying to help you fulfill the role of being a 'loser'. The subconscious is not our awake mind and it doesn't use logic like we would when awake. The subconscious mind runs things in the background all the time, things that your conscious mind doesn't have to give a thought to like blinking your eyes and taking your next breath. These things and many others are in the control of your subconscious. For me, my subconscious is like having a second person inside me and often it feel it's like what people call their 'inner child' because often it seems to reason like a child. The SM (subconscious mind) believes that what you focus on the most often is something that you want, even if its something scary you fear happening to you but it hasn't yet, or a belief you have about yourself that some incidents in life seemed to make your conscious mind decide to accept as the truth til the day you die. Then the subconscious works hard to make you make decisions that make those perceptions become all the more true so they actually play out for real in life.
Secondly, you sound a lot like me when I was younger and so when I say you sound like you also have a low self confidence and have some fear or anxieties in socializing, actually speaking with people, I don't mean to say you will always be like that. I have changed and did for the most part in my twenties. YOu care more right now about what people might think of you for asking help and that is hurting you. You are afraid to admit something that isn't your fault in the least but would explain to them why you are having such trouble in lab. YOu feel it as embarassing. So what do you really fear?
So to help enlighten you on possibilities, I will take one of your paragraphs and make my comments in parentheses.
As my lab back in India was not a well equipped one, (this is not your fault that it was not but you are allowing it to make you feel bad about your lack of knowledge in a lab)and the syllabus of our masters was mostly theory based, when I joined here, The first thing which hit me, that even masters and bachelor students know more than me. (feeling inferior since masters and bachelor students know something you feel you should know) From that time I felt inferior enough to talk with lab people, (feelings are controlled also by the SM)only when I needed something, I asked. (this is you deciding what was something worth asking about that might not reveal your lack of knowledge around a lab.)
And now, heres the way you could have handled this and still could but you must not give in to your distorted thoughts on it:
(You addressing lab partners here giving them the truth.) Hey lab partners, I need you to know that the lab back in India was not a well equipped one, and the syllabus of our masters was mostly theory based. So joining you here, I find myself overwhelmed with my lack of knowledge around the actual use of a lab. It makes me feel badly that what I should know real easy by now is something that even masters and bachelor students know more than me. It's not that I am not capable of picking it up quickly but I am going to need all of you to help me often until I get it which shouldn't take long as I already know this all in theory, just not the hands on application. I thank you in advance for your help and being patient with me while helping me to catch up.
This is what should have happened but didn't because you felt bad about yourself. If you really think about it, the only thing that makes sense is that you are expecting the following response from lab partners:
What an idiot, using the excuse of a lab in India being not a well equipped one. You could have easily found a dozen others to go use or force them to update it, regardless if there wasn't enough money to do so.
You only know theory, not the actual doing of the experiments? THen you were not trained right. You don't belong here. You are not PH D material and won't ever be until you go back and start at beginners level because theory only knowledge, isn't good enough. You should feel inferior to us because of your lack of true experience in a lab. We are better than you and you can never expect to be as good as us. Give up on your Ph D and go home to India. Oh, and don't think we are willing to help you out and answer questions and show you how because we're not getting paid to be your teachers.
Sounds harsh, right? In what ever words your mind is playing inside your head instead, the effect is the same, you cripple yourself by feeling inferior or unlucky or whatever words cause you to not do all you can to change it. If you want to be a highly revered Ph D, whether at the current country you are in or when you go back to use it in India, you need to first get past the distorted thoughts that hold you back. You also need to stop focusing on the negative of what you don't know or what you lack and do what you can to get it so you can succeed.
Its not too late to ask for help and I'll get you are so intelligent that in the time left, you'll catch up without it being a struggle. I have talked on line with some friends I've made in India, well educated people. I was in awe of how wise and intelligent they were and had a better grasp of the English language than myself. I am not saying I thought they were stupid before. I had no idea what to expect of schooling conditions in other countries. I've only heard that Japan excells over the U.S. but had no idea of others and so was pleasantly surprised. It didn't make me feel badly that people who didn't grow up in the U.S. could write and understand my language as well or better than me. That's just a fact of how it is. No fault of mine.
By the way, your depression is one that can be gone without medical treatment as yours is due to a situation and not something you've suffered all your life due to a medical condition. SO once you start thinking positively about yourself, not embarrassed to reveal your current situation, you will find the depression disappears after a short while. If you find that you can not apply yourself and struggle with revealing your lack of experience due to the labs back in India, then you may need to talk to a school counselor about your feelings of being inferior and afraid to ask for help and thus being behind and overwhelmed. You may qualify for counseling outside of the school campus as well depending on whether you can snap yourself out of this mode or need extra support and reinforcing words from a counselor.
But even in the end, A counselor can only tell you what to do as I have done. YOu have to take what you've been told and apply it to your life. If you can not apply any of this to your life and make the needed changes, then you may be looking a a life long string of failures, and that only due to letting your mind have free reign with distorted, and unrealistic thoughts. A thought can be changed. The moment a bad thought enters your mind, acknowledge it but tell it to go because you know now you are not inferior and only need to ask for some help. I'll bet thats all you need and before you know it, you will be far ahead of anyone else.
TO ask now after so much time has gone by, you need to face fear. But fear will disappear while you are in the middle of revealing your circumstance. I had extreme fears as a child and through High school, so bad I could not do oral book reports, well not until I graduated and realized how my issues would affect the rest of my adult life if I didn't do anything about it. So I found repeatedly that whenever I faced a fear, that by admitting for example I needed help or didn't know something, that my fear of what the other person might think of me, just disappeared. There is a saying about taking a Leap of Faith but I feel that is wrong. Initially, the first few times until we've learned from the outcomes that our worst fears are unwarrented, we are actually taking a leap of fear. Yes, thats right, you leap into a situation fearing all the way, but based on the majority of good outcomes, you then learn to build a faith. I don't have a blind belief in lets say Spiritual matters. One hears of having to have faith there too. But for me, my faith wasn't truly solid until I had experiences that helped me build that faith. Faith is created, it isn't something that just automatically is already there like the sun and moon and stars. So tell your lab partners or teachers or whom ever you need to get help from about the condition of labs back in India. I'll bet it didn't even cross their minds that a college lab there might be under funded and under stocked and that your training thus far wasn't complete with lots of hand on doing. This doesn't mean you are less intelligent. ONce they know, they will be glad to help. You may have to tell them that the reason you said nothing until now when they ask why you didn't ask for help sooner, is because you felt they would ridicule you and think of you as inferior. But you finally got brave enough to ask due to the amount of time left to complete your training. You can't hide that part if they ask. They are human and have faced such fears in other situations too so they will understand how you feel and probably will think of you as brave to admit it.
]
More Questions: |