I AM STILL NOT DEFINED Told Dr Razin Nafisah Ismail Ilyas and Dr Mohd Ridza Nur Farhana this afternoon that I still havent made my mark, I am still not defined. How is this so? As mechanicists and research engineers, we are defined by the problems we solved or by systems or procedures or algorithms we proposed; solved or proposed in a manner it reminds people, it was Airil who provided the solution (or the algorithm). Frankly, I havent got to that stage yet. What I have gathered for the past 7 years (after my PhD) merely the knowledge on computational mechanics and its corresponding numerical techniques, but that is all, I still havent applied them in a sense. Yes, I have produced some works but they are still far from the level that can define who I am for I am yet a Von Braun who sent people to the moon, yet a Lofti Zadeh who made the washing machine rinses by itself by founding fuzzy logic and yet a Zienkiewich or Clough or Taylor who established the most rigor numerical technique ever, that is FEM. But worry I am not because now its time for me to kick start making my mark. Yes, it took me that long (7 years) to know the necessary things and to establish the working group but they are ready and matured now. I believe, now, I finally possess the necessary depth of knowledge to proceed and to have a group of PhD students who I groomed myself from the beginning (from undergrad till master) in ensuring the similar capacities possessed by those registering in MIT or Berkeley or Imperial or Oxford or Cambridge, only wakes me every morning, always, with a butterfly in my stomach, wakes me with a feeling, YES ITS TIME. BUT REALLY, must it took 7 years for me to have all these facilities? Can I do it any quicker if I can turn back time, if I can get a second chance? No, 7 years what it will take as this field I chose to work on and the benchmarks I set to meet and pass beyond, require the best understanding as one can get, or at least, the best I can get. SO NO SOONER. But again, worry I am NOT because I still have 3 years to go and this agrees to the advice I gave to a young lecturer some weeks ago who just got back from his PhD. I said, Dont worry, PhD is nothing as it is just a training. It trains you to learn by yourself. So what important is whether you can learn by yourself or not after your PhD and it is your achievement after ten years of your PhD what will define you, not your PhD So I still have my time and please DONT GET ME WRONG, I am not saying I am NO GOOD. I am at my BEST at this point of time, at time I am approaching 37. BUT who knows what can happen because, at the end of the day, its not about how good you are now but HOW GOOD YOU WILL BE AT WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE that matters. When the time comes, how well you are DEFINED what matters. SO if I dont make it when I reach 40, if nothing defines me by that time, then I will admit, I AM NOT AS GOOD AS I THOUGHT AND, I WILL SETTLE FOR THE LIFE OF ORDINARY AND BORING UNIVERSITY TEACHER. We will see. Wallauhuallam
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 13:01:55 +0000
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