The two-year ResMA journey was short but full of adventures. During this journey, one of the greatest experiences is to conduct an honor project supervised by Prof. Abdellah Fourtassi and Prof. Asli Özyürek because this is not just a wonderful academic training but has contributed a lot to my personal development.

Get over covid depression

The covid period was not easy for everyone, especially for an international student who wishes to pursue a career in academia. Still, as a research master student, I was extremely lucky to do internships in different research groups, though most of which were online due to the covid policy. This was reasonable but a little disappointing, as the sense of belonging degraded through the online communication. At that time, I was trapped in an illusion that the only thing to strengthen such attachment was to make progress in research as much as possible. As a result, the (bi-)weekly meetings became the “assessment meetings” of academic assignments and before these meetings my old friend defeat and anxiety always haunted me whenever there was no progress on my project.  I can clearly remember that there was a period when I started to ask myself every day: am I qualified as a research master student with the countless model tryout failures? Looking back now, this thought was so naïve that largely ignored the uncertainty in research subconsciously (even by purpose because that was the only buoy I could grasp in a wild sea), which amplified obstacles in research, as always.

              *Fig: My illusion- I was like a robot, fearing to make mistakes in case to be recycled.*

Luckily, the honours project became the turning point. I felt much supported from the Honours Academy and two research groups. It was their support that had created my mental resilience, made me realize the possibility to slow down to sip the joy of exploration and cherish the moment of making progress, even just a little. I can never forget how surprised I was when I heard Mitja, a PhD student in Abdellah’s team, also my daily supervisor, said “We surely don’t expect you to get the results in such a short time. It’s definitely OK to discuss the obstacles you have met.” This was the first time that I realized that it is ACCEPTED to make mistakes! All the stress dissipated in a second! Instead of drifting in the wild sea, grasping the buoy closely, I felt being supported by a safety net, and became more motivated to take adventures in exploring new research ideas!

    *Fig: Maybe a little bit exaggerated but it exactly depicted my feelings when I heard Mitja’s words!*

Obtain courage to pursue my passion

Conducting interdisciplinary research is never easy, especially for those lacking in-depth theoretical background in one of the disciplines (like me!). I can clearly remember how depressed I was when struggling with the complicated mathematical formulas and the non-existing assessment meeting deadlines, feeling like even the sky was grey every day, which is true though because of the rainy weather in the Netherlands 😊 Such uneasiness was attributed to the past laziness (i.e. taking few mathematical courses) and impossibility of diverting research fields. Indulged in past ignorance, I enclosed myself in a self-made fence, seemingly stiff outside but fragile inside.

However, the honors project experience has set an anchor for my life to pursue my passion actively. Since I started the research master program at Radboud, I was constantly asked “Why do you take the risk instead of following the path that others have explored? Is it really worth?”, whether for resigning the economically stable job (this is a thing in Chinese culture!), or for starting the honors project in a country without knowing the daily language. My answer was always the same “Definitely!”. Looking back now, the internal reasons are quite different though with the similar answers. While the former stems from the impulse to challenge an institutionalized life path, which is actually passively rebellious to gender performativity, though appearing as if taking control of my life; the latter comes from my passion in cognitive modeling to actively pursue every opportunity to work on such an interdisciplinary project. To be honest, this motivation was quite primitive and vague at the beginning of the project, only coming from a faint voice echoing: just have a try and see what would happen. Only months later that I can reconfirm now it is indeed the passion for cognitive modeling that drove me to a new country to conduct a new project. More importantly, stepping out from passively attributing the obstacles into unchanged facts, I realized that it indeed made a difference once transcending my own boundaries by actively reaching out and changing the situation instead of passively waiting for the potential change at some points of life. Indeed, with a lot opportunities to communicate with researchers in cognitive modeling community and get a glimpse of what the PhD life is, my fear of working on interdisciplinary research was gradually replaced by excitement of getting exposed to new perspectives from other disciplines. For instance, I started to seek other opportunities to present our work, even just a trivial progress. I also gained the courage to face my weakness in mathematics and decided to pursue another master in artificial intelligence at KU Leuven.

                                  *Fig: My life was rekindled during the project*

In the end, my sincere gratitude goes out to everyone who makes this journey memorable. It has been a dear experience being surrounded by all these passionate researchers who helped me get over the impractically high expectations towards myself and most importantly, guided me to the vigorous research community and made me realize the importance of actively reaching out. They are my role models who have rekindled my passion for research and made me determine to pursue a career in academia, no matter how hard it would be.

That’s a long road, but I am ready!