Encounters with PhD Doubt

Your PhD is a mighty journey. Like all other journeys in life, it has its ups and downs, twists and turns, rewards and failures ... and more often than not, regular encounters with existential self-questioning. Almost every PhD student I know has entertained the idea of dropout at some point. I find that this most often this stems from the intense frustration with research and subsequent loss of self-confidence. I have noticed some common threads of thoughts in the process of my colleagues; what is the problem that I am solving? Is it tangible and real? Are my results convincing and strong enough? Is anyone going to use this research in practice?

Getting trapped in this situation, as described by this Thesis Whisperer post, is a phase in PhD no one is immune from. No matter how well you are doing,being prone to this dilemma seems unavoidable. According to Thesis Whisperer, the way out of this is simpler than it looks. You just have to walk through it - ignore the frustration and keep reading, writing, and experimenting. Train yourself to trust those who endorse you and remember that you are not the first to have faced this and definitely you are not going to be the last one. If others have found their ways out of this, you can too.