An incredibly hard, but good, problem to have
Multiple PhD admissions offers!! MULTIPLE!!!
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t expect multiple offers. I’m human, after all. Of course, I’d hope to get multiple offers! What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would feel to have multiple offers. How does one even begin to make a choice? Especially when the Pro/Con lists keep balancing themselves out?
My answer: get as much information as possible.
I’m reaching out to current and former students of my prospective programs and faculty advisors. I’m booking flights and hotels for Visit Days. I’m looking at Apartments.com and Zillow, weighing renting vs buying (a story for another time). I’m poring over program websites and Reddit posts and talking everyone’s ears off about my dilemmas.
I’m doing everything I can possibly do to get as many data points as I could because this decision will dictate the next 5 (potentially 6) years of my and my husband’s lives. This is an incredibly big investment of time, effort, and lost income, and I want to get it right.
And oh boy is getting it right so hard when this process is deeply personal and incredibly subjective.
Because what if the perfect professor that everyone loves, you actually cannot stand? What if you thought you could handle your new dreary/snowy days, but then it sends you to a seasonal affective disorder-induced spiral?
Or, worse of all, what if you regret choosing X over Y?
So, yeah, catch me at the Visit Days with a notebook full of questions, a bunch of extra meetings, and four layers of clothing. And maybe—hopefully—a month from now, my next post will be up with my answer to this very hard, and very good, problem I have.
Doing all the things: HCI research! NSF CSGrad4US Fellowship! Actual rest!
I blinked and April turned to almost-October. Since my last blog post, I:
Met Dr. Kai Lukoff and joined his Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Santa Clara University
I’m part of the FocusMode project, which studies how humans experience adaptible and adaptive interfaces. I contribute to this research through study design and UI/UX feedback. (Dr. Lukoff has been so supportive in enabling me to practice non-coding skills in preparation for my next chapter.)
Submitted my NSF Computer and Information Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program (CSGrad4US) application
With a lot of help and morale support from family and friends 💖
In July, I was awarded the Fellowship!! 😭✨✨
The mentorship program started this month, and already I have benefited so much. I’m so fortunate to be guided by Dr. Colin M. Gray through my programs search, worries, and applications.
Attended my sister’s LLM graduation at Georgetown (#GoHoyas!)
Sang my heart out during my karaoke birthday party, surrounded by love and a delicious potluck
Traveled to Japan (specifically: Sapporo, Noboribetsu, Furano, Biei, Otaru, Hakone, and Tokyo) with one of my closest friends
Despite Typhoon Shanshan, luggage delivery was smooth and we got to go on the elusive Hakone Ropeway!!
This was also my longest international travel to date (16 days), and it included an indulgent 3-night stay at a ryokan with kaiseki breakfasts and dinners. We highly recommend Hakone Suimeisou!
Because it was such a long trip, I was able to really practice my Japanese speaking and listening skills. I actually received “発音が日本人っぽいですね!” (“Your pronounciation is like a Japanese person’s!”) instead of “日本語は上手ですね” (Nihongo was jouzu desu ne / “Your Japanese is good”, which is stereotypically regarded as a patronizing compliment)
Made significant progress in therapy
Truly rested, instead of my stress-ridden version of “rest,” which pressured me into “doing it right” by resuming several hobbies, traveling a lot, and “fixing” my life. Yep, significant progress in therapy
At some point during my 7-year career, I developed the need to squeeze productivity out of every second of every day. It took a couple of months to come down from those very high expectations. It took another couple of months to start identifying which expectations were mine and which were the product of a society that benefits from the physical, mental, and emotional sacrifices of the everyday person.
However, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m “cured” from burnout. In fact, I’ve come to the realization that “burnout” is a more than just feeling lethargic, unmotivated, and exhausted. Burning is an extremely a painful experience, and burning out is to burn—to be enflamed, to hurt—continuously until there is nothing left to burn. The fact that I felt this way at 27 years old haunts me, especially since I know so many of my peers feel the same way.
This depressing thought put me in a spiral for a couple of weeks until I suddenly thought about Chaparral’s natural fires and how it is a necessary part of that ecosystem.* Maybe my burning out is a natural fire that had to occur for me to become more resilient in the face of new challenges and environments.
I think about this metaphor a lot now, because it gives me comfort and reminds me to be patient with myself. After all, a forest doesn’t grow overnight. ;)
* There is not a world in which I would ever, ever, romanticize the unnatural forest fires. I am purely speaking about the natural fires that occur at intervals that the Chaparral ecosystem has adapted to. I am not referring to the unnatural pace and frequency of these fires, that even Chaparral cannot adapt to.
Career Break Day 1 (Spoiler: I April-Fool’s-joked myself by working a lot.)
Today is the first day of my break! KW (my husband) walked Poppy (my Pomeranian) in the morning so I could sleep in and enjoy a leisurely, restful day. Only KW held up his end of the bargain. Not only did I get up early (8:30 am), but I also worked a lot.
(Insert appropriate sad-faced meme here.)
As you may know, I am dedicating part of my break to applying to PhD programs. Since that blog post, I have been completely consumed by my desire to be a PhD student. I have dedicated entire afternoons to cataloging schools, programs, and faculties of interest in Notion. In the evenings, I read papers to find my research niche. I have also gone down the rabbit hole of PhD content on YouTube (shoutout to Dr. Andy Stapleton), Apple Podcasts (shoutout to How to PhD), and StackExchange.
At this point calling me obsessed would not be an overstatement. It is all I do and think about.
Yesterday, after four straight hours of staring at admissions pages, I decided to nap and, you know, actually take a break during my break. I made the couch cozy and put in my earplugs. As I tucked myself in, a powerfully poignant sentence entered my brain. It felt like being visited by the Muses.
Obviously, I had to get up and write it down. Obviously, I had to keep going. Who knows how long the Muses will keep their hands on my shoulder? I have to take advantage of this opportunity!
And so one sentence became four, then ten, then sixty, until a 350-word personal statement was completed.
Did I go back to my intended nap? Nope. Instead, I
Discovered my research niche (“How do emerging technologies like AI affect human-to-human and human-to-tool interaction and relationships?”)
Updated my CV
Completed the “3 Papers I Wish I’d Written” exercise
Debated whether I should respond to a call for committee members for the Society of Women Engineers (I chose not to)
Started my application for CSGrad4US
The only thing that got me to stop working on PhD- related things was my friend’s birthday celebration. (Happy birthday again, Saumya!)
In hindsight, with a Sunday spent like that, I was a fool to expect a Monday would be any different, especially since most of my Mondays have been filled with work for the past seven years.
But there I was anyway — getting up at 8:30 am and patting myself on the back for at least sleeping in one extra hour than usual, believing that today would be a day of relaxation.
April Fool’s! I got myself good.
Giving myself some credit though, today is more relaxed than yesterday. I napped (a whopping 90 minutes!), watched several episodes of Abbott Elementary, and indulged in homemade 6-layer bean dip and chips.
Granted, today is still probably far from what my friends imagined it would be when they texted me, “Happy Day 1 of your break!”
Good thing I have many more Mondays and tomorrows to try again. :)
I’m taking a career break. Kinda.
My first day as a full-time employee at Cisco is July 17, 2017. I remember the exact date because it was precisely one month after my undergrad graduation. Since then, I’ve worked diligently and accomplished a lot, especially in the past 3 years:
2021:
Combine software engineering + design as a professional career —> Became a UX Engineer
Get into an interdisciplinary graduate program at a top university —> Accepted and enrolled in M.S. Integrated Design, Business and Technology (IDBT) at USC
2022:
Get promoted to Senior —> Promoted to Senior UX Engineer
Speak at a tech conference —> Ioniconf 2022
2023:
Host a workshop at a major event —> HackDavis 2023
Adopt a dog —> Adopted Poppy
Get a graduate degree —> Graduated from my M.S. IDBT program (with straight A’s!)
Get married —> Married KW
I am overjoyed and so grateful to have achieved all of these, but I am also tired.
Fortunately for me, Cisco has a long-term (12-month minimum, 24-month maximum) leave of absence program. This leave is unpaid, but I retain my health benefits — which is a key benefit in the United States — and can resume working for Cisco provided I secure a position before my leave is up.
Even more fortunate, my manager fully supported my decision to take a break. After weeks of back-and-forth paperwork, I’ve been approved for a leave of absence from April 1, 2024, to June 1, 2025. (So, technically, it’s a 13-month break, but the last month is meant for me to try and get back to work at Cisco so I don’t count that last bit.)
As I write this, I’m only 5 work days away before my leave begins. A fog I didn’t know was there has started to lift.
Yes, I’m tired.
Yes, I need this break.
But most of all — more than travel, sleeping in, and a hobby that doesn’t involve screens — I need a new goal.
Before I continue, I want to acknowledge the incredible privilege displayed here.
I am completely and painfully aware that my ability to wax poetic about North Stars and go without income for a year is impossible for most people. It can seem shallow and tone-deaf amidst the suffering in Gaza, the dozens of company layoffs, and a society still trying to recover from a global pandemic that claimed millions of lives.
I make no excuses for myself and do not expect you to excuse me.
All I want is to share this story because I feel compelled to. I will not kid myself into thinking this is ultimately in the service of others, that in my sharing I hope someone in a similar struggle will find solace. No, I know this is a selfish act, and I admit it.
I am writing this because I want to, and that is reason enough for me.
— A text I sent my sister
Depending on your current phase of life, you’ll think this line of thinking is either cute or problematic, considering I felt this as a 28-year-old.
Me? I think it’s hilarious that this was how I started telling my older sister about how I would use my one-year break to research, prepare, and apply to Ph.D. programs because I think a grueling five-, sometimes six-, year commitment is precisely the next thing to chase after a seven-year software engineering career.
I’ll say that again because I can’t believe the ridiculousness either.
I have decided to use my once-in-a-lifetime break to work on a demanding and difficult goal (to be accepted into a Ph.D. program) resulting in an even more demanding and difficult journey (as a Ph.D. student).
I am never going to beat those workaholic allegations.
If you’d like to read about how I got to this point, please open the accordion below. Otherwise, feel free to skip it. (Tl;dr: I’ve been chasing the same dream since 2013 and it’s time for something new.)
-
In 2013, I was a high school senior who naively wanted to be Angela Montenegro (yes, the fictional character from the TV series, “Bones”): equal parts computer science genius and artist, always leading with her heart, and impeccably dressed.
While most of my peers chose to major in Computer Science because they have been coding since their Neopets days, I chose it because I saw it on TV. Did I code before college? No. Did I know anything about computer science outside of the fictional programs Angela created? No. Was I convinced I chose the right major? Absolutely.
How did it turn out for me? Bad, and then really good.
Most of my computer science class grades were B’s and C’s, but not for lack of trying. I tried incredibly hard. I went to lectures, discussions, and office hours. I poured hours into coding assignments and studying for exams. I stayed up late and woke up early to do it all over again, day in and out, for all four years.
When I understood the theory, I struggled to finish the coding assignments. When I breezed through coding assignments, I couldn’t wrap my head around the theory. None of my classes ever felt easy, and I found myself crying a lot. (It didn’t help that I couldn’t find community in computer science and that I juggled multiple time-intensive extracurriculars, but those are stories for another day.)
I was advised multiple times to seek a different major or path forward, but I was stubborn. I believed the vision I had of myself as an interdisciplinary software engineer so strongly that quitting didn’t feel like an option. I persevered and graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and multiple full-time position offers.
As it turns out, industry work was more my speed.
At Cisco, I rotated through four roles, won a regional hackathon, contributed to multimillion-dollar architecture solutioning, defined the UX Engineer role, started an org-wide accessibility initiative, and was promoted to Senior just in time to meet my naive five-year plan.
More importantly, I was living the interdisciplinary software engineer life I had wanted. It was great to be so accomplished at such a young age, but then I had to answer a small but mighty question: “What’s next?”
The idea of becoming a professor entered my mind. (Most definitely while I was watching one of my brother’s Ph.D. life vlogs.) But there were two huge obstacles: (1) my not-great undergrad grades and (2) my lack of research experience.
I truly thought that dream was over until my brother offhandedly mentioned he might stop at his Master’s degree because he can teach at certain institutions with that.
The dream can continue, hurrah!
I applied for and was accepted into USC’s Master of Science in Integrated Design, Business and Technology program.
The curriculum was a great introduction to a whole lot of new things and a bunch of amazing people. But I was always torn between work, school, and life. I had code releases, weekly readings, wedding planning, group meetings, design reviews, pull requests, dog fostering, et cetera, et cetera.
I was so busy just trying to finish my tasks that I didn’t realize they weren’t fulfilling my actual desires.
With my career break looming, I feel inexplicable freedom. With no responsibilities to school or work, everything feels possible. Everything, including a Ph.D.
I know this may seem foolish, especially when I have little to no experience with research. But just like how computer science felt right despite having no history with it, the Ph.D. path feels like the right next chapter for me.
I can see myself as a professor so clearly that I have no choice but to see it through. I feel like I owe it to myself to explore this possibility and give it my best.
So here we are, five days away from a one-year career break and about five months from when Ph.D. applications start to open.
What am I going to do next? Well, what I think an industry professional with not-great undergrad grades and zero research experience should do:
Ask a bunch of questions. To Google, Ph.D. students and candidates, professors, and career counselors. Heck, even ChatGPT.
Read. A lot. Publications, books, blogs, and any resource with insights into research areas and the Ph.D. journey.
Somehow get research experience.
Rest. After all, this is still a break. :)
All while doing my best not to succumb to the part of me that is afraid I am barreling down towards failure because I do not fit the typical Ph.D. student profile.
Wish me luck!
“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”