Tell me a story #2 - Reflections After Five Years in Academia

Something that you should know: I was asked to write this letter by my friend and former colleague Milos. It is meant to be an educational piece of value to young scientists reading his hobby website. It is also a small window into my experience as a PhD student and later postdoc at the SerVal group, SnT, where we both met.

In his attempt to persuade me, Milos (as any good editor would do) suggested a topic and a list of questions. Yet, I felt they didn’t quite capture the PhD journey I had lived. Fortunately, he also gave me the freedom to write about whatever I feel is truly worth sharing.

So, here I am, offering below some thoughts for young scientists who are considering whether to embark (or are already on) the boat toward a doctoral degree. At the end, as a small compromise, I’ll return briefly to the question I was initially suggested to reflect on, so stay tuned…

Decide how you want to spend your time!!

One of the advantages of doing a PhD, or working in academia more generally, is that you often have a degree of autonomy over “how” and “with what” you spend your time. This also includes “the activities” available to you which go well beyond just research. These might include teaching, grant writing, science communication, or getting involved in university interest groups, such as the doctoral student association.

But, time is limited to 24 hours a day to all of us, no exception. So, you need to optimize. Ideally, you’ll allocate your time to activities that not only help you achieve your future goals but also bring some level of enjoyment and fulfillment along the way.

For instance, if you’re coming from a system like in many Asian countries where the number of publications is critical, especially for tenure-track positions, you might want to prioritize that. On the other hand, if your goal is to transition into a tech role in industry, then being involved in industrial collaborations or applied projects might better serve your trajectory. Talk to your supervisor about this (remember, they can’t read your mind), and most of them will be happy to support your plans.

Personally, I realized I get easily bored if I have to stick to a single type of task for too long, whether that’s running experiments or writing papers. I need task variety to maintain a sense of novelty, challenge, and excitement. That’s why I chose to diversify my responsibilities: helping my supervisor with grant proposals, participating in science outreach for younger audiences, and organizing local events. Each of these required different skills and stimulated different parts of my brain. In the end, I’d estimate that I spent roughly 65% of my time on core research and 35% on these "extra" activities. This may have affected the number of papers I produced, but not their quality. And honestly, paper count was never the metric I was optimizing for.

So my message to you is this: there will always be more to do than time to do it. Choose what fulfills you and what helps build the future you want.

Find your allies!

These are the people in your group, other groups, or even outside academia who share two main qualities: they care (even just a little bit) about what you're doing, and they’re selfless enough to sacrifice their time to listen to you. Once you find them, don’t let them go. Ask them questions, interrogate them, learn from their advice, and be “shameless” about seeking their help. If you’re overstepping, trust that they’ll let you know.

I had many of these people, that I will be always grateful for sparing some of their time to listen to my problems and provide advice. However, one person that had a strong impact on the quality of the work I produced during these years (beside my supervisor), was my good friend and colleague Salah. He was about a year or so ahead of me in his PhD. Back then, I thought he was either a genius or spent 24 hours a day reading papers. The truth was probably somewhere in between. But what really mattered was that, even when he didn’t have the answers to my questions, he always tried to point me to useful resources. Most importantly, he challenged my thinking. He became my go-to person, especially for questions I felt were too small to bother my supervisor with, who, of course, had several students to supervise beside myself.

Like me, you’ll need people along the way who lift you up and challenge you. No one walks this path alone, so build your support system. The “self-made” story? It’s a myth.

You just have to look around…

I don’t need to explain here how challenging, difficult, and consuming a PhD journey can be. There are probably hundreds of blogs out there on this topic and if you’re still curious about the darker realities, just scroll through the Reddit community r/PhD. Instead, I want to focus on something else: the small sparks of motivation that help you not just get through one task at a time, but push you to improve, to reach higher, and to raise the bar. That drive is often what keeps research alive.

These sparks do not always come from within, but from observing those around you. In my mother tongue, Albanian, "envying" someone doesn’t always carry a negative meaning. It can also describe admiration. An admiration that inspires you to strive for the same, or better.

This came into focus for me while I was working on the Acknowledgments section of my thesis.

I once read a post by Iain Jackson on LinkedIn that said the Acknowledgments are the most-read part of any thesis. There’s no official statistic for this, but I’d completely believe it. It’s the first section I always read when looking through someone’s thesis. While the rest of the document is expected to be objective and neutral, stripped of adjectives or personal opinions, the Acknowledgments are the one space where the researcher gets to show their voice.

When I was starting to write my PhD thesis, I looked through theses written by past SerVal (my research group) members to get a sense of the structure and format. As usual, my first stop was the Acknowledgments section. Most followed a similar formula: thank your supervisor, your colleagues, maybe the funding agency, and then your family. In my opinion all were short, dry and straight to the point. Anyway, it felt appropriate for this kind of manuscript, so I was about to do exactly the same.

Until I opened the thesis of Milos Ojdanic, the author of this website. I jumped to the Acknowledgments, expecting the usual 30-second skim. But by the end, I had teary eyes.  In just a single page, he had managed to express his passion, gratitude, and dedication to research in a way that felt sincere to the core.  At that moment, I envied him and not in a bitter way, but in admiration. How could someone be so eloquent with words? I already knew he was well-read, and that surely contributed to his writing. But more than that, I admired that he had chosen, unlike most of the other PhD graduates, not to treat this section as “insignificant.” He made it meaningful! That was my call. I had more important sections of the thesis to write, but suddenly writing Acknowledgments became high priority. I wanted it to be a warm hug around my work, something that would reflect my journey honestly. So I spent a great amount of time writing it, rewriting and adjusting the flow. While it’s still not as good as Milos’s, I ended up with a version I was proud of. This might seem like a small example, but it gave me a lesson: that setting higher standards for yourself often starts with admiring what others around you have achieved. So, don’t hesitate to feel that kind of envy, even better: use it!

Seek the support you need

A PhD requires the development of a various set of soft skills beyond research: project management, presentation, communication, and more. And you can’t expect your supervisor to guide you through all of them. Sometimes, you’ll need to actively seek professional support. Yes, you read it right 🙂 I had three key moments where such support made a significant difference in both my work and well-being.

The first moment was in my first year, when my supervisor prof. Maxime Cordy, mentioned he had some unused budget and could cover one-on-one academic writing sessions with a professional writing coach (Did he think I was a terrible writer who needed some help? Maybe, but I forgot to ask about that through all these years). I had 4–5 sessions that taught me a lot, things I may have heard of before but had never truly internalized. Concepts like wordiness and reliability, the appropriate use of passive vs. active voice, and the principle of the “curse of knowledge.” If you have reached this step by reading, here is one book from my teacher’s recommendations that you also might find useful: The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker. I enjoyed and benefited from those sessions so much that a year later, I enrolled in a similar academic writing course offered by the university.

These experiences helped improve my writing, but like most skills, progress came with time and practice. At the beginning, I would draft 2–3 messy paragraphs trying to explain our research motivation then my supervisor would step in, take what I wrote, and condense it into one clean, precise paragraph in a single try. I was in awe. Again, the principle of positive envy kicked in. I wanted to reach that same level. Over time, I developed my own sense of style shaped by training, experience, and now conversing with ChatGPT 🙂 And I wasn’t the only one. Dr. Thibault Simonetto, my office mate of four years (we shared the same supervisor), had the same experience. So it's quite likely you'll find yourself in that position, especially early in your journey, but don’t worry! It’s part of the process for all of us, and it’s exactly where the learning starts.

The second moment was about overcoming stage fright. I used to experience strong physical symptoms before every presentation. It didn’t matter how prepared I was or how many breathing techniques I tried, my body still went into panic mode. Which is why past videos of myself presenting never make it onto my watch list!  Eventually, I decided to talk to a general practitioner, and in just one conversation, I learned my condition had a name: stage fright. Even more importantly, there were solutions. With some basic treatment and awareness, I can now say that while a few nerves are still there, I’m no longer overwhelmed before presenting.

The third moment was related to public speaking in front of large non-expert audiences. Our research center hosts an annual event to celebrate its partnerships. I was invited to give a five-minute pitch to an audience of around 400 people including researchers, business representatives, and journalists, many of whom had only a vague idea of what AI security research (my domain and expertise) involves. Thankfully, the center offered one-on-one coaching sessions to help us prepare. For the first session, I showed up with slides covering everything I had done during my PhD: use cases, experiments, metrics. Basically, I tried to impress. But it turned into a live demonstration of the “curse of knowledge.” These things, that were crystal clear to me, did not resonate the same with the coach. It took him a while just to understand what I was working on. Over the next sessions, I started stripping away unnecessary detail, simplifying the story, even abstracting it more than I was comfortable with. It was painful, as a researcher, to leave out all the cool technical parts. But in the end, the presentation became something that a diverse audience could actually follow. I learned more during those 3–4 sessions than I would have by reading hundreds of blog posts about giving presentations. I learned how to manage my breath, how to minimize slides so the focus stays on my words, how to pace myself on stage, and even where to look in the audience. 

All these three moments helped improve my skills and would not be possible if I did not accept some external support and practice. Sometimes just reading about things is not sufficient. You have to count on professional support. And often times universities offer such resources. It is worth distracting yourself from research for a short time and making use of them. It will be much more profitable in the long run!

Note…

I believe I’ve shared, as honestly as I could, the main experiences and lessons from my five years in academia. You’ve probably noticed, though, that I haven’t touched on one major topic: the relationship with your advisor. This is, without a doubt, one of the key factors that can make or break your PhD experience. And, like all relationships, it’s deeply personal. While I consider myself really lucky in this regard, I know many others are not. 

I left this topic out of this letter because there are already plenty of resources out there (for good reason) that cover it in depth, so please, go read them. And if you're curious, revisit the r/PhD Reddit community I mentioned earlier (just be prepared that most of the stories shared there lean toward the negative).

About That Original Suggestion…

If you are still here, reading my long thoughts, then as promised, I return to what I was initially suggested to cover: “Where Are the Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)?”. This is without any doubt an important topic, especially as STEM needs all young free thinkers it can attract. However, I consciously choose not to focus on it, and I feel that decision deserves a small explanation. Over the past five years, I’ve worked in a male-dominated academic environment (perhaps around 20% women, 80% men). Through my involvement in science communication and local associations, I was starting to get invited to local panels, talks, and interviews, almost all centered around the same theme: Women in STEM.

Over time, I noticed a pattern. The same titles, the same questions, the same answers.

• Do we have fewer women in STEM? Yes.

• Do we need more women in STEM? Of course.

• Why? Women in STEM bring XXX, with XXX being a list of well-documented benefits of more equal gender representation, particularly in STEM and more broadly in academia.

• How was your experience as a woman in STEM? I had a positive/neutral/negative experience.

After a while, I no longer wanted my gender to be the sole reason for being invited to speak. I wanted to talk about my research and the real contributions I was making. And if I’m honest, I had moments where I encountered positive discrimination that left me wondering: Was I chosen because of my work, or because of my gender? These thoughts created self-doubt. Moments I should have felt proud of were overtaken by second-guessing. I started to fear that my gender would overshadow my identity, that I’d be seen first as a female researcher, rather than simply a researcher. That feeling led me to a decision:  to avoid for now any engagements where the main focus is about gender, rather than my work or lived experiences. And that’s the simple reason you’re not reading about that original topic today. Whether this is the right choice, I can’t say. But it’s mine, and it feels right for where I am now.

That’s all! 🙂 My letter of lessons I’ve learned from five years in academia. I’m grateful to Milos for the invitation to share them (who knew I had so much to say?), and to you, the reader, for staying with me to the end. If even one sentence landed, lingered, or helped, then this was worth writing. And I’m glad you found your way to here.

Sincerely,

Salijona