Achieving a milestone in education...

‘Education never goes waste’ was what my mother told me when I was studying in Engineering College. She was the first graduate from her village, back in the seventies, whereas my father was the first post-graduate in his village then. And I got the tag of the first-generation engineer in my family.

I realized what my mother said after a few years when a company withheld a job offer for the want of my MBA degree certificate. Actually, I started doing MBA just to add value to my profile because in those days, pursuing MBA after Engineering was ‘the in thing’. Of course, finishing the MBA course was not a cakewalk. There were hiccups, as I met with an accident that made me bedridden for almost three months. I missed the project submission deadline due to which the course completion was extended by another six months. However, the obstacles made me more determined to complete the course and after recovering from the critical leg injury, I finished my project submission and subsequently got the degree. I experienced the value of that degree very soon, as I got the job offer immediately after completing the course. One of my colleagues who then wanted to do MBA from the top ten B-Schools couldn’t even start the course till the year 2014. Only when I told him about my registration for PhD he got serious again about doing MBA.

What is the scope for a non-academic professional after doing PhD was the frequently asked question when I was pursuing a doctorate, and frankly I didn’t have the right answers to it. But then I was and still, I am quite sure that the degree will help me bring ‘knowledge into existence for the very first time’. I experienced the same thing with my Mass Communication degree that helped me in communicating effectively in my corporate life. Also, coming from the background of working with NGOs, then placing students, and now handling complex sales, marketing and business development was possible for me due to the urge to dive deep in interdisciplinary domains.

The corporate-world might be eager to typecast you, but you can change its perception only by your good work. And learning helps oneself to be on the track of continual improvement. 2020 has been a year of learnings and a tough year for many of us. But I am privileged to achieve the milestone of completing a PhD in 2020, a task that I started in the year 2013. Again, it takes a lot of patience to do research in any topic without losing the sight, particularly when you have a lot of other urgent and important things to do in your personal and professional life. There might be setbacks in your career just like I had, you might not feel motivated enough to continue the research because the topic just doesn’t excite you. But then you cannot lose the focus when you have done most of the work and just a few more steps are left. It also happened with me when I thought that I could do better research on some other topic than the current one, but I quenched my thirst for knowledge by writing research papers on that new topic without impeding the present research. But it took more patience to wait for the final viva than the actual research and the COVID 19 pandemic added more uncertainty to it. But as the external examiner said during the final viva, “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet”, the feeling of getting the PhD awarded was actually sweet. And so, I coined the new acronym for PhD, Patience has Doubled :)

I thank all my friends, family, colleagues and well-wishers, whose support always motivated me to keep doing the good work. I hope to receive the same support from all of you in the years to come.

-Dr. Atul R Thakare