I Want to Say Sorry to Myself

I am always pursuing for the truth, a truth of myself which is too far away all the time.

The first year of my PhD is coming to the end, with a large amount of regretful tears and self-blame. The only reason is that I have done nothing to plead myself, or in other words, nothing has made me prouder of myself in my research area.

I was always wasting the precious time on reading comics, watching cartoons or writing useless comments on animations. It was not only stupid, but also extremely stupid.

The more time I wasted in those trivial things, the less time I had in my own research area. Therefore, one year time was just like a pebble tossed into the river, creating nothing wonderful execept drowning towards the bottom.

I squandered my limited time, and I moved slowly in my research project, and then I was criticized by my tutor, while in the meantime, I hate myself even more. The tragedy went round and round. I became more desperate with myself, as a result.

I wanted to break the sorrowful loop, however it was harder than I could even think, just like Prof. Zhu said, “A leopard can not change it’s spots”. I regreted, but next day I would still repeated the stupid things, again and again.

Why did I come here as a PhD candidate at the beginning? Because I had dreams. I believed that whatever kinds of obstacles were placed in front of me, I would made great effort to conquer them. Sadly, at this moment, I undertand that I am the obstacle itself, which I cannot step over.

The dreams, however, not really died as I thought. They are waiting with special patience, with a belief that one day a stronger me would wake up again and went back to the top of the hill.

I have aldready known that a successful PhD worths not only a large amount of money, but also a great variety of oppurtunities and choices. Only the strong people possess freedom.

I want to make a good life for myself in the future. I want to take care of my parents without too much concerns on economic problems. I want to do things which can really please me and exert my talent on such areas.

Now I am a PhD. I should work hard as a PhD. I should live like a real PhD.

I need to read more and more papers.

I need to think about more and more ideas.

I need to write more and more codes and papers.

I need to show more and more useful works to potential audience.

Time is short and there is no leisure to feel annoyed about it.

However, I really want to say sorry to myself, for the time I wasted, for the lies I told, for the energy I consumed in vain, for the beautiful world I didn’t see with my heart.

I hope when I wake tomorrow, I can leave all the fragile weakness behind and straightly move forward towards my goal of publishing papers. I think I can do it. No, I have to believe that I can make it.