In the very first chapter of Career Stories, we bring you the journey of Urjita Joshi, a postdoctoral scientist in the vaccine development team, at a European pharmaceutical company. Urjita reminisces about some of the pivotal moments during her PhD journey, which helped her become the person she is today.
When did you realise that you wanted to pursue a PhD?
After my post-graduation, I took a break for almost 6 months, after which I started an internship at ACTREC in a lab working on Cancer Biochemistry. This was a phase when I was exploring options for research and deciding whether I wanted to do a PhD at all and had no clue what I was going to do ahead with this internship. I had absolutely no expectations from this internship, especially after my break and a hectic postgraduate course. I had applied all over the world for all kinds of positions. When I started this internship, I just wanted to get out of my house, from the monotonous phase of job hunting on numerous websites and get back behind a bench to start thinking like a scientist (and not a salesperson, selling my profile to grab a job!). I wanted to check if I still enjoyed it. And, I was pleasantly surprised, by how much I learned (theoretically and technically) and how fast my brain got adapted to looking at research with a new perspective and enthusiasm. It was this small internship that gave me the complete realisation that- yes I love research and I want to pursue a PhD!
Could you share some of the happiest moments during your PhD?
Definitely, it has to be, when I got a spectacular image of an immune cell eating an extracellular particle inside in a live mouse liver tissue! This was a part of a small side project that I had started on my own. Right from conceptualisation, literature survey (to prove that this was not as bizarre as it sounds), narrowing down upon the best and the most cost-effective techniques, to finding the right collaborator and equipment… until I finally got that one image- was all my brain- child. It was extremely challenging physically and mentally to trouble shoot and co-ordinate a million things all by myself, but it was extremely empowering to see the image that had been captured. I had to overcome not only usual scientific challenges, which is a part-and-parcel of PhD, but in this case, I had to continuously keep motivating myself with extra vigour, because nobody really believed in my vision until they saw it on screen that one fine day.
Could you share some of the lessons learnt during your PhD?
I learnt that that there can be nothing as depressing and yet, as rewarding as the journey of a PhD student. I have seen the worst of me and the best of me in the 4 years of my journey! But the one thing that was constant was- making peace with whatever comes your way. I learnt to accept failure and disappointment as well as soaring success and recognition. I realised that I could not afford to be caught in losses or gains, because then I would never be able to move ahead in my journey. So, the subject, field or technical knowledge should not be how one judges a good PhD. One should of course choose a subject or field of their interest, but what one does ahead with that choice, is much more important. It is easier said than done, I know- I also learnt it the hard way! But realising it already, is a huge step.
