Propose and Defend: Reflections and Thoughts on My Academic Journey

“Words can be like x-rays if you use them properly. They’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Writing is an art. In fact, as a graduate student, writing was a lot of things. When I am writing for graduate school, my mentor always reminds me to make sure I know what the story is and how it fits into the bigger story in the literature. Writing is an art in that sense and we all have a story to share. Even though I hated hearing that over and over again, it always served as a good reminder, and I genuinely believe that it has made me a better writer. When we share our respective stories, we can make them go through many readers or generations, making our words be like x-rays.

My grandfather was a college principal in India and an author. Everyone in my family claims that I have taken on after him, since writing is one of my favorite activities of all time. For many years, I have kept my writing to myself. Then, I had the thought about sharing some thoughts, but I never actually got around to it. Now, at 29 and two years post-PhD, I think I finally am getting around to this!

My parents moved to the United States in the late 1980s, and I was born in the suburbs of Chicago, IL in 1994. My younger sister was then born a few years later in 1999. We moved once to another suburb when I was in middle school. In 2012, I began my undergrad at Saint Louis University as a neuroscience major and Spanish minor with aspirations to go to medical school and teach. I quickly realized that I care about the brain and wanted to learn more about what it is, how it works, what it can do, what we know, what we want to learn, and everything in between. After about 3 semesters, I decided that my future would be in graduate school. In May 2016, I graduated from Saint Louis University with a major in neuroscience and minors in health care ethics and medical humanities. In May 2021, I graduated with my PhD from Texas Christian University.

Today, among other roles, I am a brother, son, grandson, husband, son-in-law, brother-in-law, writer, educator, researcher, and believer. I have found myself to be an avid lover of coffee, teas, board games, writing, board games, painting canvases (but I am not a talented artist, full disclosure), learning, reading, and biking.

I share this background of who I am since it plays a role in the posts to my blog. I wish I had started this while in graduate school, but, hey, better late than never, right? This blog is called Propose and Defend. One of the most stressful parts of graduate school is being able to propose a huge project and then defend every detail of it, which can be a document as long as a book. However, what we propose does not always go according to plan, so what we defend can feel or look a lot different. Even so, we make it to the defense and celebrate the milestone. That idea of planning and seeing things not go according to plan is never ending, even after graduate school. My hope is to share life experiences, reflections, key moments of grad school, the life part of a work-life balance, and anything else that comes to mind that ties to this idea of propose and defend. I have no thought out schedule or agenda, so I’ll post periodically and broadly around a few themes.

-Hindsight: Reflections from my time as a graduate student and lessons learned along the way

-Current: Thoughts on my journey as a clinical researcher and educator in my job

-Research: Summaries and critiques of fascinating research happening in psychiatry and psychology

-Bookworm: Analyses of books, to keep up with my hobby of reading for fun

So, family, friends, academics, colleagues, scientists, students, readers, near and far: Welcome! I am glad you are here reading my website and blog and hope to have you stick around as well. As a disclaimer, all thoughts and views are my own, and I am happy to chat with anyone about anything. Feel free to contact me through any of the ways in the Connect tab!