For my second event report, I decided to do something a little different that I hope will fulfil the event requirements for this report. However, to truly understand my thought process, I should probably give a little bit of background knowledge of what I’ve been up to the last several weeks. Since the previous event report, I have not had much time to think or look for any other career fairs, primarily because my current job, my research assistant position for several professors, has required “all hands-on deck” pretty much every week since Report 1. I have been working on several projects with and for Drs. Hagen, Dinh, Li, Burgess, Fox, among others, and that work reached a head this week with the upcoming FLAIRS conference deadline. As I have been working these last several weeks, I haven’t had much time to consider much past the next model I need to run or which evaluation metric needs to be revised, but sitting down now to consider this report, I have come to a realization that I think has been brewing for the past several months: I am interested in and want to purse a postgraduate degree.

With this understood context: For this report, I decided to do two things: 1) I wanted to look up potential postgraduate degrees I might be interested in at USF and then 2) I wanted to look up a TEDTalk related to pursuing a postgraduate degree. With that in mind, let’s dive into some things I’ve learned, some things I’m considering, and questions I still have:

For post graduate degrees at USF, I believe I have identified two possible programs I am very interested in; one that is more reasonable, USF’s Masters in Data Intelligence (MSDI) and one that is a bit of a stretch, USF’s PhD in Big Data Analytics. Both of these programs explore Data mining, structures, machine learning, and ethical decision making, and both of these programs are offered in person on USF’s campus. Both programs require the GRE, both require mathematics and computational programing skills, letters of recommendation, and candidate interviews. The primary differences I have been able to find is the knowledge required to enter each program varies based on topics and levels (with the PhD obviously being more rigorous than the MSDI).

Seeing what programs I would potentially be interested in, I turned to YouTube and searched for possible TEDTalks that could give me some guidance on navigating the postgraduate world and found the TEDTalk: Things about a PhD nobody told you about by Laura Valadez-Martinez (2016). In this video, Valdez-Martinez outlines 7 things she wishes people had told her before and during her PhD program, and lessons she learned by overcoming these challenges. These are the notes that I took during her talk, and the takeaways I took from each challenge and lesson she outlined in her experience:

Challenge	Lesson
Getting stuck while at the PhD level is significantly different than undergraduate. Getting stuck at the undergraduate level often means stuck on an essay or assignment, but getting stuck at the PhD level can mean stuck on ideas, methodologies, concepts.	Give yourself time to think. Read a lot, yes, but pause, understand it, take a walk and digest. It’s more important to understand the foundation before trying to tackle the high concepts.
There is always more. More books to read, authors to find, methodologies to try. Its like opening doors. Each door you open is like a whole new world of knowledge [My old mentor used to call it “Going down the Rabbit Hole”]	Sometimes the best thing you can do is leave something out. You can’t include everything, and if you try to, you are going to lose your original purpose. However: Sometimes you need to read it or do it to figure out what’s important, i.e. what needs to be included and what can be left out.
PhDs are difficult, and they are meant to be. You will feel unmotivated often — PhDs are a marathon with occasional and frequent sprints. You need to work hard and continue working hard.	You can always find something small to accomplish. Whether it be for your PhD (writing a paragraph, fixing a chart, formatting a guide) or in your day-to-day life (Baking a cake, painting a picture, brewing some tea). There is importance in Tiny Progress
You are going to forget things, and you’re going to forget things often. You will get confused and you won’t remember why you made the decisions you made.	Keep a research journal. Write down your decisions, why you made them, and NEVER save changes over the original [This is another piece of advice my old mentor gave me, she would keep copies of every major change in her project, even if it meant keeping 100s of files until a project was done, as you never know when you’re going to need that paragraph you deleted]
You are going to question if what you are doing even matters, and because of societal expectations of people who these levels of education to contribute to society, you will feel inadequate	Unfortunately, you need to just develop self-assurance. Read the original documents, depend on yourself to interpret information and data, read journals in your field. You need to show yourself you can depend on yourself
A PhD is a lonely process. Many postgraduate students suffer from depression.	It’s important to be connected. Get involved with your department, talk to your cohort, get involved in projects, and connect to your supervisor. But it’s important to find connection outside of academia and remind yourself that there is a world outside of models and statistics and theories.
What is the right way?	There is no right way.

A lot of what Valdez-Martinez resonated with me and, as you can see above, reminded me of advice and wisdom I got from my mentor years ago–things that I hadn’t realized stuck with me until now. This TEDTalk and this overall reflection have solidified my desire to pursue this to the end of whatever road it leads me on, and my next steps on this are probably going to be to talk to my current supervising professors and ask them on their perspective on my options. I would like to talk to Dr. Hagen about her insights on my work ethic and performance to see what levels should would recommend I pursue, I would like to talk to my Calculus professor, Professor Connelly and ask him about his perceptions on my mathematics capabilities, and finally I would really like to talk to Dr. Dinh about my work with her and her recommendations.

Before I end this, I would like to credit Dr. Dinh for being an inspiration of where I would like to see myself, as the way she has conducted herself in our project, her willingness to admit when she doesn’t know things and her eagerness to discuss and learn new topics has been both inspiring and comforting. I would describe Dr. Dinh as a very intelligent and capable woman and seeing her learn something new almost every meeting we have has been very grounding for my perceptions on my perceived and actual skill level. If nothing else, I am just grateful for having been a part of her project and getting the opportunity to learn more closely under her.

Works Cited

Valadez-Martinez, L. (2016, December 13). Things about a PhD nobody told you about | Laura Valadez-Martinez | TEDxLoughboroughU [Video recording]. TED Conferences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAKsQf77nHU

PhD in Big Data Analytics | USF Muma College of Business. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2025, from https://www.usf.edu/business/graduate/phd-data-analytics/

MS in Data Intelligence | Industrial and Management Systems Engineering | University of South Florida. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2025, from https://www.usf.edu/engineering/imse/graduate/ms-data-intelligence.aspx