How a Ph.D. is like riding a bike.

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: ROBERT NEUBECKER


 "I sat in my supervisor’s office, red-faced and anxious, words tumbling out faster than I could control. ⁠

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"For half an hour, I vented everything I had been holding in for months: the stress, the doubt, the sense that I didn’t belong. I was in the third year of my Ph.D., and a creeping fear had taken root that I wasn’t cut out for academia. ⁠
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"I expected some kind of judgment or disappointment. Instead, my supervisor listened patiently, then calmly offered a line I’ll never forget: 'You are here to learn to ride a bicycle, not to invent a bicycle.' ⁠
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"That one sentence landed softly, but it cracked something open."⁠
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In a recent Working Life essay, Ehsan Hamzehpoor writes about how a Ph.D. is like riding a bike. Click the link in the bio to read more.⁠
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