It’s my first time being here, I actually don’t know why exactly I want to share my life experiences. Probably because I started to feel lonely and have no one to talk to.

I would like to start from high school. I am from the developing country where things go pretty bad compare to the west. When I started my high school I had problems with chemistry and I talked about it with my parents and they got me a tutor and she was amazing and over some time I became the top of my class.

Later I graduated with very descent grades and luckily got accepted to UCL foundation program with a full scholarship. I was extremely happy, I was struggling a lot, but I managed to finish it and got accepted to a bachelor degree there. I finished my first semester with pretty bad grades and my scholarship was cut off. I have to admit that at that time I could easily get distracted and I spent a ton of time on other activities, such as sports, girlfriend, video games and so on.

I had no choice but come back to my country with shame on my face. I was quite desperate, but I knew that chemistry is my destiny and I always believed that I could do it.

Due to application deadlines I could only apply to one Chinese university and it required one year Chinese language courses before starting my bachelor.

Here we go again, this time I finished these courses and finished my bachelor in pharmaceutical engineering, I also had to postpone my graduation for one year as again I just didn’t pay enough attention and basically didn’t take one required course.

I was a very mediocre student in all the classes besides highly chemistry related and therefore my GPA suffered. I also should mention that I was studying with other international students and some of them were from my country and we became very nice friends. I couldn’t get into any high level universities for a master, and as a result got accepted into another Chinese university for a master in Chemical engineering.

I had to go to a completely different city and I basically was alone as that school didn’t have many international students and its been always difficult for me to make friends with a very different background. And I guess because I had nobody to rely on and nothing could distract me, I became a top student in my class and had a very intensive research experience.

These 3 years of my master degree completely changed me as a person and I saw nothing but going for PhD and academia eventually. I applied to around 20 programs worldwide and got rejected from 19, I believe the main reason was my low bachelor GPA and not a very famous master degree university.

However one very distinguished professor accepted me and now I am pursing my PhD, I absolutely love it, even though its extremely stressful.

In total I wasted 4 years of my life, but now I don’t regret it. I am writing it just to share something with other people, I am pretty lonely and I guess over some time it made me feel sort of anxious.

I started smoking without any particular reason or influence. I am not trying to make you feel sorry or anything, I am actually very happy that finally I am working on something novel and my work is recognized.