Unmeaningful words are meaningful

To reflect, is to look back at the past embrace it, accept it, and deduce wisdom and lessons from it. It’s something I’m used to doing regularly especially after intense and emotional events, yet in the context of this essay I find it complex to give meaning to my words especially when even I don’t believe in their worth.

Looking back few months ago before I came to Pécs, I had no idea what to expect. Everything felt blurry, uncertain and quite confusing. Few weeks in the city and I started to feel the difference in life style and general mood, and instead of feeling better and better about life in general I started panicking.

I’ve panicked because I realised that even though my stress levels have drastically decreased, and my general mood is improving as much, my productivity levels didn’t budge at all. This realisation made me question lots of decisions I made, including why I’m doing a Ph.D for a minimum wage scholarship, instead of focusing on my professional career as an analyst/developer?

I’ve always thought that I would thrive as a researcher given my curiosity and my eagerness to learn and grow. This was proven in my master’s thesis as I broke the limits of my knowledge and discovered cognitive abilities I didn’t think I had or were possible to accomplish before that time. That time was very hard to endure, not only because research is hard and require lots of focus and dedication, but also because at that time Tunisia was under lock-down due to the pandemic. So the stress was double and I don’t think I recovered from that yet.

However, as hard of a situation as it sounds, I liked it. I loved being in control of the things I learn, I loved writing about it, and I loved the results at the end. After graduation I worked for corporations and I felt miserable. I felt like a warrior in a garden, or a gardener in a war. I felt misplaced, misunderstood sometimes, and an impostor most of the time. Reflecting on this I realised that I was miserable because I knew that corporate work was suppressing my full potential. I felt that I was being slowly eaten by rust everyday I showed up to work. Thus to liberate my self is to liberate my potential. And a Ph.D was the way to go.

Somehow I still relate unleashing my full potential to my productivity. The more I do, the more I learn, the more I learn, the more things I can do. But even though this might have some truth to it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the productivity crisis I’m going through now is related to a crisis in my potential. I have to remind my self that my productivity crisis is only temporary, while my potential is forever lasting. I have to understand that my productivity crisis exists because I’m still adapting to this new environment, and still determining opportunities and threats.

Indeed, I still don’t feel free, and still can’t feel that I’m working with my full potential. But here I am, trying to fight my way through the tasks, the papers and the meetings. Planting the garden that will bloom in few years a dissertation to coronate my efforts. At the end all I can do is dedicate myself some more, and focus on the things I can control.