How a Ph.D. is like riding a bike

From ScienceMag:

I sat in my supervisor’s office, red-faced and anxious, words tumbling out faster than I could control. For half an hour, I vented everything I had been holding in for months: the stress, the doubt, the sense that I didn’t belong. I was in the third year of my Ph.D., and a creeping fear had taken root that I wasn’t cut out for academia. I expected some kind of judgment or disappointment. Instead, my supervisor listened patiently, then calmly offered a line I’ll never forget: “You are here to learn to ride a bicycle, not to invent a bicycle.” That one sentence landed softly, but it cracked something open.

As a first-generation university graduate, I had always felt the pressure to lead the way, to live up to expectations no one else in my family had ever faced. To get into grad school, I focused on presenting myself not as a trainee ready to learn, but as an already successful, accomplished researcher, fully formed and self-sufficient. I internalized this mindset, too.

But after starting my Ph.D., I was hit by wave after wave of academic challenges—not to mention the culture shock and financial stress of being an international student. I barely passed my first-year classes. I had a string of scholarship applications rejected in my second and third years. My research group was full of productive postdocs and graduate students steadily publishing papers, but my research stalled. My attempts to generate and pursue fresh, innovative ideas hit wall after wall. I felt I was running an endless race with a late start, trailing far behind everyone else.

Friends and family encouraged me, reminding me how far I’d come and how many challenges I had already overcome. A professional adviser at the university urged me to stop comparing myself with others and helped me see that just being a Ph.D. candidate was already a meaningful achievement. But the shadows of self-doubt always returned. I still felt I was falling short in fundamental ways.

My supervisor had supported me from the very beginning. Still, I hesitated to share my struggles with him. I didn’t want him to see me as a failure. But after 8 months of quietly carrying that weight, and repeated encouragement from my family, I finally spoke up.

My supervisor’s words redefined graduate school for me. I realized that my focus on chasing productivity and conceiving new, groundbreaking projects was misguided. The competitive environment of academia had distracted me from the real reason I was a Ph.D. candidate: to learn how to do research and how to thrive.

Embracing that mindset helped me realize I could—and should—lean more on my supervisor and senior colleagues. I began to run my ideas by them and seek feedback early on, which helped me make progress. I worried less about publishing and productivity, and every project, whether it failed or succeeded, became a meaningful step forward and a story worth sharing in my presentations. Two years after that pivotal meeting, I completed my Ph.D. with loads of hard-earned experience, a strong network of supportive colleagues, and a CV I was proud of.

I went on to do a postdoc where—to borrow my supervisor’s analogy—I mastered my riding skills while also gradually gathering the tools to ultimately invent my own bicycle. Instead of focusing solely on productivity, I worked closely with my postdoc adviser to develop and refine core skills such as lab techniques, grant writing, and leadership. Along the way, my research moved forward meaningfully, too. I made a discovery—the early framework of a new bicycle—that laid the foundation for the next generation of graduate students in the lab to improve their own riding.

Now, I’m about to establish my own research group. I feel ready to design and invent my own bicycle—or maybe even more than one. Just as important, I’ll make sure to remind my trainees that their job, first and foremost, is to learn how to ride.

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