I almost quit my Ph.D. A lab mate gave me the confidence to continue

From ScienceMag:

Just 2 months into my Ph.D., I was on the verge of quitting. I felt out of my depth, and my broken English left me struggling to keep up with my colleagues. At lab meetings, the conversation progressed so quickly that by the time I understood a question, the discussion had already moved on. My difficulty following my supervisor’s instructions led to me using the wrong volume of water in a sample, ruining an experiment. In a presentation, I talked about “gene dilution” instead of “gene deletion,” the silence that followed making me blush with embarrassment. I didn’t know how I was going to make it through my studies. But amid my struggles, a caring colleague said something that would forever shape my approach to science and mentoring.

I’d moved to Hong Kong from my hometown in mainland China full of excitement. I remember stepping off the overnight train onto the humid streets of the city with a small bag, a notebook of English phrases, and a single conviction: I was here to become a scientist.

But I immediately felt out of place. The laboratory was intimidating, full of shiny instruments I had only ever seen in textbooks. On my first day, my supervisor handed me a pipette and asked me to set up a reaction I had never done before. I pretended to know what to do, then slipped into the corner and watched a senior student until my shaky hands could finally imitate her movements. I often stayed in the lab until midnight, afraid of being left behind.

Most of all, I struggled with the language barrier. I was used to classes taught in Mandarin, but in Hong Kong—a highly international city—everyone spoke English in the lab. After the presentation that left me red in the face, just as I was contemplating leaving science, a senior lab member pulled me aside. “You are not here because of your English,” he reminded me. “You came here because you can think.”

His simple words gave me the courage to continue. I started to carry a tape recorder with me to every class and meeting, replaying presentations late at night to fill in the gaps. My English progress was slow but steady. By the time I defended my Ph.D., I could express my ideas clearly, and I had come to see my accent not as a hindrance, but as a part of my identity that I was proud of. My confidence had skyrocketed.

After continuing my training in Hong Kong, Canada, and the United States, I eventually returned to China to run my own lab. My students all spoke Mandarin, and I assumed they wouldn’t struggle as much as I had during my Ph.D. because they didn’t face the same language barrier.

But gradually I saw that they still experienced many of the same doubts I had faced at their age. They grappled with anxiety about career development, confusion about identity, and doubts about the value of knowledge in an era of rapid technological development. I realized my job was to teach them to think critically, solve problems creatively, and, most of all, give them the confidence to succeed in science and in life.

One afternoon, I saw a student struggling with a Western blot. The bands were smeared and uneven, and her shoulders drooped, just like mine used to. I remembered my clumsy hands on the pipette, my own confusion between “gene deletion” and “gene dilution.” I told her what my lab partner once told me: “You are not here because your experiments always work. You are here because you can think.” Her smile told me she was buoyed by these words.

Today, what I value most in my job is the transformation I see in the students who arrive timid and uncertain, but who leave with enough confidence to challenge me, their professor. Every time I walk into the classroom, I see a younger version of myself—hesitant, afraid, and eager to belong—and remember the bridge I had to cross to get where I am today. For me, helping others cross that bridge is the true reward of scientific life.

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