My Decade of Dissonance: On Finishing a PhD

For the better part of a decade, my PhD was a dark cloud that lingered over me. If I had a spare moment and wasn't working on it, I felt guilty. If I wanted to dive into a new topic that genuinely excited me (like reinforcement learning), or write a blog, I always felt I shouldn't because I should really be doing thesis (but I still did it anyway). For years, it shackled me. Finishing it was one of the most defining moments of my life, not just because a project was complete, but because the journey reshaped me. It took me far too long, but it left me with an immeasurable sense of personal and professional growth. If you read this and all you come away with is a guide of what not to do, then the blog has still done its job. This is my story of becoming Dr. Salty.

As usual, the footnotes like you see here 1 will contain fun extra notes. These footnotes are slightly more boring 1 and will contain definitions and additional information. Let's dive into it.

Contents

⚡ The Spark

☁️ The Dissonance & The Dark Cloud

🔁 The Reset & The Rediscovery

🤝 The Breakthrough

🌤️ Epilogue

💡 Key Messages

⚡ The Spark

My journey into research began with a moment of what I would call academic romance. I’d just finished my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, physics, and applied mathematics and had taken a summer internship program with Defence Science and Technology (DST) in their sonar systems team. My project involved measuring the effects of fluid depth on vibrating plates in large water tanks. I picked up a classic textbook, Vibration and Sound by Philip M. Morse 2, and dived into the world of partial differential equations. Using Mathematica (a crowd favourite amongst the UWA physicists at the time) I managed to apply the book's mathematics to model the plate's resonance frequencies, mode shapes and frequency response functions. I compared my calculations to the experimental data, including laser vibrometry for the mode shapes, and was excited to see the theory and experiment align. This was the moment of academic romance, seeing pure mathematics embodied perfectly in real life was a profound experience 2. I decided to continue the research through my honours thesis.

After graduating, I did what every other engineering student was doing, desperately applying to about 40 graduate positions and internships. I landed a high-paying internship in the mining industry, working a fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) job for BHP Billiton. I remember feeling relieved. I was going to have a career after all. But over the 3 month internship, the lifestyle and the work began to suck the life out of me. I was fresh out of the university bubble, uncertain about what I wanted to do and what my passions were, but I knew that this was definitely not it. I went to see my Honour's supervisor to discuss the possibility of a PhD, as I’d been offered a scholarship. I remember being in his office, he echoed my own fears, telling me how he’d seen the spark leave his students' eyes after years of FIFO work. I decided to turn away from the FIFO job at BHP and applied to do my PhD, continuing my research with DST.

☁️ The Dissonance & The Dark Cloud

I entered my PhD with optimism, but I quickly ran into two major problems. Firstly, my industry supervisor at DST, while a brilliant scientist and mentor, had become disheartened with the organisation. Secondly, my main UWA supervisor, did not have as much time for me as I had anticipated. It began to feel as though I was doing a PhD that nobody cared about. The work felt like it lacked purpose.

After my first year of candidature, an opportunity for a summer internship came up at Woodside Energy in their artificial intelligence team. Exciting graduate positions in Perth were scarce, so I applied. I got the position and I took 3 months off from my PhD to complete the internship. I was suddenly in an environment where people cared deeply about what I was doing and wanted it done to a high standard, fast. I loved it. I spent the next two summers working there and secured a graduate position. I was then faced with a choice: abandon the hard-won graduate role to finish my PhD full-time, or abandon my PhD. The sunk cost fallacy prevented me from choosing either of those options so I did what any sane person does and thought I will do both at the same time.

I started my full time industry career in artificial intelligence and robotics, and was very quickly engulfed by it. Years started to go by with very little progress being made on my thesis, it was always the thing to get put on the back burner 3. In hindsight, it's easy to say it was a mistake to try and do both simultaneously. But at the time, I was focussing my energy where I was experiencing growth. At my new job, I was working with NASA and Boston Dynamics engineers on robotics and learning at the fastest rate of my life. I felt like I was finally unlocking my potential, a feeling that at the time PhD had yet to give to me. I couldn't give that up. So, my PhD was relegated to the background. It became the dark cloud. A source of constant, low-level guilt.

I was living a double life, trying to build my new career in robotics while chipping away at a thesis my heart wasn't in. My first big reality check came when I submitted a journal article to the prestigious Journal of Sound and Vibration (JSV). I had published a few conference papers at this point and underestimated the difference in quality and standard at the journal level. Not surprisingly, it was rejected. I remember reading the rejection email and instead of just getting to work and methodically addressing the reviewers' comments, my coping mechanism was pure avoidance. I pushed it from my mind and pretended I never even submitted it. Looking back, this was a clear sign that I was not ready, or deserving. Even in my own heart I did not truly believe I had done anything novel at all. Have you ever heard of imposter syndrome?

2022 came around and I submitted yet another draft of my thesis. My supervisor's feedback was that it needed a significant expansion of the analytical modelling. I did not want to hear it at the time, but he was right. My early thesis drafts, as well as the journal article that was rejected by JSV, were simply not up to the standard of a PhD or a Tier 1 journal. It started becoming painfully clear that to get this done, I needed to make a much more significant investment of time than I had hoped. Wishing to stay in industry, I felt that I did not need the publications and just focussed my effort on the thesis so I could just graduate. So for the next year I worked hard at the mathematical modelling, and had gotten results that aligned well with my experimental and numerical simulations. I redid my entire thesis, confident I now had all the core components in place. However by this point, I believe my supervisor had lost faith in me. I was the boy who cried wolf (or completed thesis?). He barely reviewed my work, and even suggested I downgrade my PhD to a Masters by research. Whilst I could not blame him for losing faith in me, I truly felt that I had significantly enhanced my work now and that all the components of a PhD thesis were there. I felt I had done enough, but he did not see it that way. The impasse with him left me feeling like there was no way forward.

🔁 The Reset & The Rediscovery

At a loss, I reached out to the graduate research coordinator for advice. He was incredibly helpful, but one piece of advice stood out.

I went to dinner with a close friend who had finished their PhD, Thiru, who had recently agreed to give me a full, in-depth critical review of my entire thesis. At dinner I asked him what he thought, if he thought I had done enough to finally earn my PhD. Thiru has an affinity for maths (and cigars), and I was expecting him to start the critique by dissecting the mathematical approach I had taken in my modelling, perhaps between clouds of cigar smoke. But instead he looked me dead in the eye and said:

He was 100% right. I had not been working as a scientist who was charmed and enthralled in their work, I had been working as a man who just wanted to cross the finish line. How could I convince my supervisor (or anyone else) that what I was doing was valuable, if I didn't even believe it myself? Thiru was right, it was a beautiful problem, solving and working on the fundamental mathematical constructs that explain the world around us. I took a week off to reflect, before starting to work 40 hours a week on my thesis, driven by a new-found purpose. I did 90 minutes every morning before work, 90 minutes in the evening, and the entire weekend, for many many months. Thiru even sent me 6 hours of voice memos, detailing his gripes and advice for my work and thesis, which I grew to enjoy listening to at 530AM every morning. It was the most disciplined and driven I had ever been in my life. I was locked in.

I learnt how to write like a scientist, how every sentence in my academic writing should be either a claim, evidence or a warrant 3. Following the graduate research coordinator's advice, I began to use the results from my thesis to prepare two full-length articles. I learnt the differences in authorial voice and tone between writing a thesis and writing journal articles. I then identified the journal for submission, Applied Acoustics, the #2 ranked journal in my field. I noticed one of the editors was Australian, so I found her number and gave her a call, asking for just two minutes of her time. She then proceeded to speak with me for 40 minutes, giving me invaluable advice not just on the submission process, but also on getting to the finish line for my PhD. Her generous gesture had a well timed impact on me, and imbued the confidence that had slowly been building within me.

I decided to navigate the entire submission process independently from my supervisors. I knew that this is not how it is suppose to be done, but I felt that at this point they had lost faith in me over the years and with that, their willingness to support me had dwindled. I needed to prove to them that I was serious. The first journal article was accepted with minor revisions. Reading this was the most rewarding and powerful moment for me over my entire candidature. After years of doubt and imposter syndrome, this gave me confidence and validation that the work I had done was indeed valuable and novel. You always remember your first huh? My second journal article was not quite as smooth sailing as the first. The first reviewer recommended acceptance with minor revisions which was great, but the second reviewer rejected it, saying I needed to resubmit with substantially more novel work, claiming it was too similar to my first paper. This time, I had the confidence and the resilience to face this. I strongly disagreed with the reviewer about the similarity of the articles, but his review made me realise that I could have done a much better job of explaining the differences between the two articles. I had learnt to write like an academic, but navigating this rejection through the journal review process I now needed to learn to write like a lawyer.

I carefully constructed my response to the reviewer. I learnt how to write a respectful, but systematic rebuttal that dismantled the critique using direct comparisons and itemised evidence to prove my article's novel contribution beyond any doubt. The reviewer responded with a simple sentence.

I reacted to their slightly condescending and reluctant acceptance with a smile. I now had the core elements of my thesis peer reviewed and published. The last and final hurdle was to finally get my supervisor's blessing to have the thesis sent out for examination.

🤝 The Breakthrough

Expecting the worst, I was gearing up for a battle, preparing and already resigned to the fact that I would probably have to submit my thesis independently, which was it's own particular can of worms. Then, one day I was at an away day on the UWA campus for my industry job and I thought:

I walked through the engineering building, reliving all the memories of my time there and noticing how nothing seemed to have changed. I walked past rooms with tutors teaching classes of students, and laughed to myself about the time the graduate research school had phoned me inquiring as to why I had done 120 hours of tutorial work in a single fortnight when the limit for a PhD student was 16 hours. This was yet another contributing factor to why it took me almost a decade to finish. I knocked on his door and entered his office. Surprised to see me, he asked how I was. I just opened up.

I told him the story of Thiru urging me to find the love for my work again, and how that I finally had. I told him about my two freshly published journal articles. I told him about the immense effort I'd put in and told him how badly I wanted this. To my complete surprise, his demeanor changed. He told me he could see the focus and the work I’d put in. He was impressed that I had successfully navigated the entire peer-review process on my own. He said, "This Thiru sounds like a very good friend." The feeling became even more surprising as he turned from the gatekeeper between me and my freedom, into the driving force pushing me over the finish line. Within two weeks, he had provided detailed feedback on my thesis, contacted and secured the identified examiners, and submitted the thesis for external review. It was surreal. Given the work had already been published, the external examiners passed the thesis with only minor revisions. After years of struggle, the final hurdle felt surprisingly easy. It was a mere formality.

🌤️ Epilogue

Years ago, Thiru had gifted me a book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." 4 I tried reading it back then and couldn't get past page 10. In the midst of my final push, I picked it up again and finished it in a week. For the first time, I felt like I resonated with the identity of a "scientist". Perhaps Thiru knew (even when I didn't) that I would always get there...even if it was eventually.

Looking back, my frustration with my supervisor has now been replaced by gratitude. He never gifted me anything. He held a standard he knew I could—and should—reach. If he had let me pass with my earlier, subpar work, I would not have gone through the immense growth that I did. I wouldn't have learned resilience, rediscovered my passion, or earned the confidence I now have and will carry with me for the rest of my life.

The dark cloud has finally lifted. As I look forward, I feel a profound sense of freedom and excitement for the next chapter. The journey was long and arduous, but the discipline, skills, and maturity I gained are invaluable. I am, at last, ready for what's next. 4

💡 Key Messages

Here are my key takeaways.

• You Must Be Your Own Biggest Advocate - No one will ever care about your work as much as you do. You have to be the primary driving force. If you lose the passion, you have to be the one to find a way to reignite it.
• Seek external feedback and mentorship. When I wasn't getting feedback internally, seeking it from colleagues, other academics, and the journal review process was crucial. It provided both critical guidance and the validation I needed to keep going.
• Build Your Network (and Don't Be Afraid to Use It) - A simple phone call with a kind editor changed the trajectory of my submissions. A heartfelt conversation with a friend changed my entire mindset. Build genuine connections, and don't be afraid to ask for help.
• Resilience is a Muscle - My first rejection crushed me. My later ones empowered me. The only way to build resilience to failure and criticism is by facing it, again and again. You learn that it's not a verdict on your worth, but a roadmap for improvement.
• Embrace the Personal Connection - After years of formal, stalled communication, a single, honest, face-to-face conversation resolved everything. Never underestimate the power of dropping the guard and connecting on a human level.
• Imposter Syndrome is Real, But It's Not Reality - For years, I doubted if I was a "real scientist." It was only after publishing, after earning the validation of my work through the journal review process, that the feeling began to fade. It's a feeling, not a fact. Let your work speak for itself.
• Find the Romance in Your Work - This might be the most important lesson. You can't sustain a decade of effort on pure discipline. You have to find that spark, that genuine curiosity and love for the subject, that makes the struggle worthwhile.