The First Post:- Why yet another Ph. D. blog?

Journal of a mediocre researcher

After my profiles on ResearchGate, LinkedIn, Google Scholar, Twitter, ORCID…..I can’t wait to announce that I have finally put together a personal website and blog. It is primarily a platform to present my work and life as a mediocre Ph. D. researcher. It is sometimes to tell the world how proud I am about my academic journey, to boast about how I celebrate little wins, etc., and other times to rant about experiments that I could not do, to complain about having too much tea every day and so on. On the other hand, the webpage has been put up here for little self-promotion too. It will be a place to put down capsules of wisdom that crystallized during my research stint. That makes the site’s title Journal of a Ph. D. appropriate. As a first-generation individual from my family to have pursued the highest degree, I had my share of challenges along the way. I should pass on my wisdom so that successive generations would not struggle as much. After all, that’s what we always say-on the shoulders of giants 😇

Being helpful

It feels so good to be helpful. This site would become a place where my experiences and knowledge would become helpful to an upcoming generation of researchers. I hit roadblocks during my Ph. D days and was stagnant for several days. When there were no stones unturned, I started asking for help from people over the internet. I emailed professors/corresponding authors directly as a last resort. Quite often, I got positive responses. It feels so good when you feel your concerns are heard. I, too, get some questions sometimes, asking for specific details of some specific analysis I have carried out. I have taken time and energy to address their queries without disappointing them. In the end, we feel so grateful for being able to help someone. It would also be great to record my technical experience here. It is an attempt to organize my thoughts and experiences with the expectation that someone from a different stage of their research career or even a different part of the world might find it helpful someday. It is a way of giving back to society after enjoying the privileges of long years of education and training.

Putting together a website from scratch

Setting up a personal website like this is not a difficult task nowadays. This site has been made using Hugo’s static website generator with no HTML coding. Like Hugo, many other frameworks exist, using which you can make stunning personal websites. I have used the academic theme for Hugo for making this site. Once it is set up, a few lines of code will only take to host the site in GitHub. It is super easy. Why don’t you make one for yourself?!