A summery after switching my major

Six months have passed since my changing of major from robotics to bioinformatics, it time to make a summary of what happened in these six months.

The first conclusion is that the difference between robotics and bioinformatics is bigger than I thought. In the past, I used to think that differences among many majors are trivia and can be omitted, and one can switch to any major when he or she wants. Actually, at least for a lot of engineering disciplines, there is much background knowledge to remember and to understand before you are going to make impacting research. For example, it is not enough to make important biological discovering only with good machine learning skills. Actually, one need biological knowledge to give himself directions. It is a petty that my experience in robotics is useless in bioinformatics and what makes things worse is that I have not taken any biological course in the past years.There is a long way to catch up even the common knowledge in this field.

The second conclusion is that time management is of extreme importance for a PhD student. Before I start my PhD study, I was trapped in writing proposal and conducting project and other administrative things, which bothered me very much. I wandered that one day I can be free to do research if I start my PhD study. However, life gives me a lesson that the quality of one’s life

mainly depends on how you manage your life, not on what life provides you.One will always have many things to handle and we should make a schedule to ensure that every important thing in life will be take care of. In the past months, I did a bad job to manage my life and I have to pay for it, which hurt me and the one who I care most.

Third, since it is my own responsibility to manage my life, I need to find a way to overcome the language barrier between me and my group partners, which makes it difficult to discuss with them and learn knowledge from them. One way is that I start to learn Cantonese now, the other is to enhance my English speaking and listening. This is critical for me because it is impossible for me to do research by myself.