My PhD Life

 

Hi everyone.

My name is Bella. Here I want to share my Ph.D. and lab life.

I am a student in the major of pharmacology, department of Korean medicine, Dongguk University Gyeongju Campus, South Korea.

My bachelor's degree was in biology education in the department of teacher training and education, University of Jember, Indonesia. It's about the basics of biology and how to be a good biology teacher. My thesis was about antagonism bacteria and I made a popular science book (more details: Potensi Bakteri Pseudomonas spp. sebagai Agen Pengendali Penyakit Layu Bakteri). It's so interesting but I prefer another specific thing in biology, biotechnology.

I took magister of biotechnology, University of Jember, Indonesia. Since I love research, this major was a fit for me. I did some research in cassava, first about drought response and second about allelopathy in cassava. I started my hard days as a researcher. I did not get enough guidance from my supervisor, nor have a senior. As you know being a researcher is common to be competitive especially with different supervisors or even different labs in one building. But luckily I met a chance to join the research exchange program at the Prefectural University of Hiroshima, Shobara Campus, Japan for six months. I worked so hard so I could publish a paper from that program that I used for the final defense examination. 

Since I finished my thesis examination, one of a professor was interested in me and asked me to work with him. My daily life as an assistant professor started so. After 2 years of helping my professors, I got a chance to register for my doctoral degree. I was about to focus on continuing in Japan. However, the chance that came to me was leading me to here, South Korea.

Here I am with another different major from my bachelor's and master's degrees. The same basics things I learned before and could be applied here are bacterial culture, plasmid isolation, RNA isolation, and PCR analysis. A lot of things in this new field that make everything seems so hard. 

"It's hard. It's really hard but I hate to easily give up on the decisions I made. Even I am exhausted every day, fight with my anxiety, still, I will come every morning with no late and stay overwork times. Because I do believe, every great dream comes after the struggling life".

Have a nice day in #PhdLife and #LabLife