Like the question says how interested are/ were you in your PhD topic? Was it something you were really passionate about or what were your reasons? and did you regret it?
Like the question says how interested are/ were you in your PhD topic? Was it something you were really passionate about or what were your reasons? and did you regret it?
Comments
Very interested. Yes, due to curiosity and eagerness to know the answers. No.
I wasn’t super interested in the topic in the beginning but it grew on me. Now I like it quite a lot and I don’t regret it at all.
I’m a decade out from my biomedical PhD.
When I started it, I was interested in the big picture behind the research question. It felt like useful knowledge on a global health scale and that meaningfulness (vs triviality) and scope (children’s health rather than seniors) of the work appealed a lot to me. I didn’t know enough about the science of the topic itself or technologies we used to be interested in the thesis project I actually undertook, but when it was described to me I thought it sounded interesting. I really enjoyed it!
Career-wise, I’ve kept many things (both unexpected and expected from PhD day 1), left certain elements behind, and picked up new interests. But stuck with opportunities that had the same usefulness and scope, and feel very lucky to have had that from grad school on.
Not interested at all until the end, but after the topic grew on me a lot, still working on it
I wanted to do exactly what I was doing. I think it’d be difficult for me otherwise. But I think it’s not uncommon for people to do completely random things in their PhD. Like, I’m big on aging research. But I met many people who are kind of in the same area of research yet they have no interest in aging. I don’t think they get the best outcomes and it’s better to be invested in your topic.
I was very interested while doing my PhD. I completely jumped ship for my postdoc though (from yeast genetics to regenerative neurobiology). 25 years later I still occasionally search PubMed to see what has transpired in my old field.
I can’t say what I started my PhD topic in was my life’s goal at the start- I was primarily interested in doing an astronomy PhD and happily would have accepted another topic if that’s what had been my only option. I will say though my experience is that the topic becomes much more interesting once you’re actually doing the research- you understand the intricacies of the problem all the more, and it really grows on you, to borrow a phrase from someone else.
So I don’t think you need your life’s passion to be your exact PhD thesis topic… but I do think you need to find it of interest to you.
Not 100% interested, but wouldn’t do it if I totally wasn’t either. It was one of the options on the table, and I did it because I can do interdisciplinary research and apply a variety of skills. I also did it because of the country and university. I don’t regret it.
I was very interested. I think the answers you get to this question are going to be dependent on whether someone (1) pursued their own topic or (2) worked on a topic that was part of a bigger project for a PI.
I think there are pros and cons to each approach, but personally I’m very happy I found an advisor willing to let me puruse the topic that I picked myself.
Quite
Loved it, loved it then, love it now. I picked some thing I’ve been interested in since I was a kid, though.
I landed on my topic as I come from quite a pure Maths background but a supervisor I reached out to showed me some ways to do very theoretical maths that has important applications, so it caught my interest and as I’m doing a masters dissertation before i start my PhD, I’ve started liking the area much, much more.
Very. Isn’t that the whole point of a PhD? That’s like asking if you like soccer to a soccer player. Well, I guess some of us have other motives…
At first I didn’t really get it. Now I find it very exciting and am interested in everything around the subject.
Not very interested at all. It was what was available and would allow me to finish. I was not going into academia anyway so it didn’t matter. It had no impact on my subsequent career or life in any way.
At the start I was into it, but by the end I couldn’t stand it.
This is probably field dependent. I’m in humanities and hired by the university, not a PI. We design our own research projects and I don’t know anyone who has gotten sick of theirs but I know people who’ve changed it slightly. Mine is a project I not only love but will keep on with the research method in future projects.
6-7 out of 10. It’s adjacent to what I was originally hoping to do, but this is what we have funding for and I’m enjoying getting to work on it. I’ve ended up doing more engineering/theoretical work as opposed to the experimental chemistry I’ve done before/wanted to do, but it remains in the same realm of my interests and I’m viewing it as a way to add more tools to the toolbelt.
I did an interdisciplinary project and I loved it. My program was in the humanities, and I strongly think there is no point in doing a PhD in the humanities if you aren’t passionate about your topic — the job market and the pay is bad enough that you need something to motivate you!
I told my supervisor that I didn’t learn anything in one year and my life was becoming miserable, so either I changed program or I quitted because continuing would have been a dead end for me and my career. In the end I moved to another topic as a compromise.
Lol what kind of a question is this. If you are doing a PhD on a topic that you do not live and breathe you’re gonna have a bad time.
I decided on my PhD topic before going to grad school and got admitted and given wonderful scholarships because the schools I applied to were enthusiastic about the topic. The subject is somewhat passé now.