On Lose Yourself

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment

It's been a while since I have updated, some 20+ weeks have passed - so many things have happened that there isn't sufficient space to update all - DK went missing 2 weeks ago and then came back out of nowhere (what a tense 3 days), my grandmother spent over 2 months in the hospital battling her late stage Parkinson's, my paternal grandparents are struggling in COVID ravaged India, Israel and Palestine had a brief war, Elon Musk continued to manipulate the cryptocurrency market, Lebron lost in the first round. So much and so many has happened, and its hard to summarise, but I can't help but feel Eminem's Lose Yourself has probably never been more appropriate to describe my current situation.

But recently, as I rack up more late nights in the lab, or as I try to push for that extra set of reps at the gym, I switch to Eminem for guidance - especially Lose Yourself. Funnily enough, I usually listen to it when I have something big coming up stuff like my high school graduation speech or my Stanford Interviews, not as something mundane as another day in lab or the gym.

Snap back to reality, ope, there goes gravity

Even almost a year later since my acceptance, I still am awe that I am at Stanford - on most days, I feel like an imposter that's simply hacking it before he gets found out. I know thats unhealthy, but honestly, what do you do when you have professors like Surya Ganguli, who earned 5 degrees in 5 years, or people like Kyle Loh who became a professor at 24?!

But recently, I have discovered my biggest fear is that I just hack it through my PhD, instead of living and working through my PhD. I was talking to Saad one day, and he said "That's what a PhD is right? it's meant to challenge you in every direction, to push you to become a better scientist."

And one thing I was not ready for at all is that in order to build something stronger, you sometimes have to break everything down to the foundations and start over. I resisted this feeling at the beginning of the year, I thought that my 3 years of research experience was more than good enough to get through this, but man, was I ever so wrong. It was just enough to get into one grad school, but nothing more.

Maybe as the weeks go by, I am becoming more and more comfortable with my deconstruction, mainly because, I know that my current self is not good enough to be hired later on as faculty. I remember last year, when my team placed 3rd in the CHBE Senior Design Competition, and I was feeling frustrated about my professors being unfair, my dad simply said, "You weren't good enough to win, get used to it."

But how do I reconcile this feeling of not being good enough and the fact that I have to rebuild myself?

Back to the lab again, yo, this whole rhapsody

I was talking to my mom one day a couple months back, and I said something like "Yeah, I put in a lot of hours in the lab, Mark will be happy." I remember her furrowed expression, and her immediate reply, "You can't talk hours during your PhD, remember this is yours, not Mark's not anyone else's."

Up to that point, I was very wishy-washy - Luke and I would shoot the shit about working for Wall Street, or I would join a startup for the LoCHAid, or I would do something else, anything else but my PhD.

I realized that I was simply running from this PhD, once I realised just how hard it is. One of the annoying criticisms that I got when I was younger, was that "I tend quit when it gets hard," and as much as I hate to say it, it is true - I did quit chess, I did quit the guitar, I did quit playing the clarinet, I did quit swimming mentally several times as well, giving a half-assed effort in practice.

But, you know what, this time around, something about being older and being able to see my younger self in a more objective light, I realized that I do want to destroy that feeling of mine wanting to quit. I am here for the long haul, and if I can't get over this hump, there's no way I can get over the massive mountains of the future. I have one goal and that is to become faculty.

I have started to treat that every day I'm in lab, it's one day closer to my goal, and every day I am not, its one day further away.

His soul's escaping, through this hole that is gaping

But is that the right way to approach? - Mark often tells me in his experience, the way I work, has led other grad students to burnout. But may it pure arrogance or a strong self-belief, I don't think I will burnout, and if I do, its more that I gave up than I actually gave everything I had. In that sense, if I did give everything I had, and still couldn't finish it, I would be sad, but at least I will be happy.

I grew up seeing my dad give everything to his job - no matter how difficult it was. He's the person the company calls when things are not working out, and he goes and turns malfunctioning distribution centers around where everyone else fails. I have never seen him complain and never seen him give up, and I remember that he would come super late at night, often with a cake or sandwich for me he picked up from the company lunch.

Maybe because I know my dad hasn't ever given up, that gives me the source of my strong self-belief in my ability to work. But that's not just it, is it?

Best believe someone's paying the Pied Piper

The legend of the Pied Piper is that he led the children away because he wasn't paid. But in that metaphorical sense, we are all thankful to that person who chases out the rats. For my dad, it was my mom who kept him anchored through his crazy late nights, pushed him to come to America, helped him when he's down.

In the same way, I am on this path because of my mom - as I had stated before in this blog. Being able to call her on a daily basis, and simply just talking to her goes a long way to refreshing myself to go tackle the next day.

And of course, going home is another thing - its been a long time since I last went home - over 7 months. It's time I go back, and I plan to do so at the end of August.

So here I go, is my shot, feet fail me not, this may be the only opportunity that I got.

There's no easy way out, and I'm in too deep into the tunnel but to keep pushing forward. It's not just me who is on this journey, I have a kerosene lantern shining brightly with the dreams of my grandparents, the dreams of my parents, helping me along, encouraging me.

And I don't expect to have all the answers any time soon, and I don't think I ever will. But that's ok, as long as I keep going for this is the only opportunity that I got.

For to lose yourself is to find yourself - I am very sure that DK would agree with that!

I plan to update more regularly now - this was an exceptionally long break!