How to Become a Scientist? My Study/Career Path (PART 3/3).
At the time when I decided to continue my studies from the Bachelor's to the Master's and several years of experience working in academia, I knew I would continue to my PhD later on. And I knew I was more than capable of doing it. And so I started the journey to apply for my PhD without a clue that this journey would be one of the longest and most frustrating journeys I would make. After the first rejection, I felt disappointed, but not ready to quit. Unfortunately, the first rejection wasn't the last one. And I can tell the level of frustration was unmeasurable after all that work I did to get in. According to the Excel sheet I collected during this journey, I contacted 28 group leaders and had a meeting with 15 of them, applied to 10 different universities around the world, and finally got into one - the one that is better than many of the other ones I got rejected. Regardless of the frustration, the whole process taught me a lot. First of all, I learned that almost every...