To My Younger Self

I haven’t posted in more than two months, almost three. Here’s what I did: I defended and filed my dissertation, and officially became a Dr.

The Weeks Before the Defense

In my program, the convention is to send your committee a full dissertation draft between two weeks and a month before your defense. So for most of July, that’s what I was doing: writing. At the same time, I was working on a lengthy fellowship application and taking a two-week NeuroAI summer course I’d committed to months earlier.

On top of that, I was scheduled to give a practice talk for my defense at a lab meeting on July 22, before the draft was even finished. That meant splitting my time between writing and making slides. The first few weeks of July were, genuinely, a lot. The World Cup was also on, which didn’t help.

The feedback from that first practice talk was humbling. It was thoughtful and constructive, but also the kind that made me realize just how much work was still left.

In the last week of July, I finally sent the draft out. It was a little later than I’d originally hoped, but my committee was incredibly supportive — encouraging rather than demanding, and never making me feel like I was behind.

It made me appreciate how much it matters who you choose for your committee. You want people who are knowledgeable and rigorous, of course, but also kind — people who challenge you without making the process harder than it needs to be.

Early August was when I could properly focus on preparing for the defense. I did more practice talks with senior researchers in the lab, who were incredibly generous with their time. They listened closely, helped me identify the parts I was still struggling with, and gave really useful feedback that made the presentation much stronger.

Another underappreciated part of getting through a PhD: having colleagues and friends who genuinely want to see you succeed, and who are happy to make time for each other and help each other out.

My talk changed a lot between that first run-through on July 22 and what I walked into on August 7. Taking feedback with a genuinely open mind — actually changing things, rather than just nodding along — made a bigger difference than I expected.

Even with all that preparation, I still didn’t feel ready. I’m not sure you ever do.

I felt unprepared enough that I kept the date quiet.

Defenses in my program are open to the public, and plenty of people invite friends and family. I didn’t. I just didn’t feel confident enough in the talk to make the defense into a bigger occasion or invite everyone I knew. The program circulated the announcement within the lab and program, and I left it at that.

Defense Day

The night before, I tried to get to bed early. Instead, I spent hours tossing and turning. Friends had been generous with advice — various tricks, various remedies. I appreciated all of it, but none of it worked.

Eventually, I got back up and did a little more preparation for the Q&A, going over possible questions I might get asked. I ended up with maybe two hours of sleep. The adrenaline carried me through the rest.

The defense was scheduled for 1:30pm on a Friday. I’d deliberately chosen a Friday afternoon, hoping the end of the workweek might make the whole thing feel a little more relaxed. I picked up some snacks and drinks for the defense, went to the room early to set everything up, and practiced a little more while it was still empty.

Then people started walking in.

Once I started, the presentation itself went more smoothly than I’d feared. I could handle the occasional question that came up along the way. The part I’d really been dreading was the Q&A, because you never know what’s coming.

What if someone asks something I don’t know the answer to, when I’m supposed to be the expert?

What if there are too many questions at once and I can’t hold them all in my head?

What if I just make a fool of myself in front of everyone?

There were a few challenging questions. I was so nervous I don’t even remember exactly what I said. I could feel my face turning red. I just kept my brain running and forced myself to say something, anything, grounded in what I knew.

And then, after what felt like a lifetime, the Q&A was over.

After the Q&A, the audience was asked to leave the room. The committee had a few more questions — just for me this time. Then I was asked to step outside while they convened.

I was surprised to find my labmates still there, waiting in the hallway. We stood around and chatted while the committee discussed. It was a strange kind of waiting — trying to act normal while having no idea what was happening on the other side of the door.

About ten minutes later, one of my committee members came out and asked me to come back in.

They congratulated me on passing.

I said thank you.

We took pictures.

The feeling was hard to place. I knew I had passed. But the adrenaline was still running, and somewhere in the back of my mind I already knew this wasn’t the end. There would be dissertation edits based on committee feedback, another round of revisions, and the actual filing, which was still weeks away.

It wasn’t relief. It wasn’t joy, exactly.

It was mostly adrenaline, with everything else still pending.

I was grateful, though — for my committee, and for the lab, who threw me an after-party that evening. I don’t think it really felt real until a day or two later, when I finally calmed down and let myself take a weekend off.

After the Defense

The week after the defense was a strange one.

The best way I can describe it: like winning the lottery, but trying to keep everything the same until the cheque clears.

I knew I still had work to do — roughly 35,000 words to revise, a lot of formatting to sort through, and plenty of loose ends before the dissertation was ready to file.

I couldn’t let myself get too comfortable. I knew that.

But it was hard.

The defense was over, and everyone around you is congratulating you, telling you you’re done. You feel light. You don’t want to do anything. You just want to sit with it.

In the weeks that followed, I worked through the committee feedback — things to clarify, sections to expand, a few arguments to tighten — checked all my formatting against the Graduate Division’s guidelines, and reached out to co-authors for permission to include our work in the thesis.

I also ended up spending a considerable amount of time on the acknowledgements and dedication.

From starting undergrad in 2011 to finishing my PhD in 2026, it had been a fifteen-year journey through different countries, universities, labs, and stages of my life. I had crossed paths with so many people along the way, and I wanted to thank everyone who had been part of it.

That was never going to be possible.

Fitting over a decade of gratitude into a few pages is harder than it sounds.

The dedication page was optional. I went back and forth on it. I wondered if it would be too much, too self-indulgent, to dedicate it to myself.

But the more I thought about it, the more it felt right.

As a first-generation college student who learned English as a second language, it took me a very long time to get here. I’d always loved learning, and somewhere along the way, doing a PhD became something I really wanted for myself. But there was never a clear roadmap. It took years of exploring, changing directions, and taking a few detours before I eventually found my way here.

I figured I deserved one small gift to myself. But I kept it as simple as possible.

I wrote:

To my younger self.

Making It Official

After finalizing that one giant document, it was time to wait.

Wait for my committee members to formally approve the final version. Wait for the Graduate Division to check the formatting.

I braced myself for it to take a while.

It didn’t.

My committee approved it in less than a day — again, I can’t overstate how much that kind of support matters. The graduate office was just as fast: they reviewed the formatting within a day or two and came back with no edits needed.

On September 8, I got the email.

This is your official notice that you have met all Division of Graduate Education requirements for filing. Your degree will be dated September 11, 2026, the last day of the quarter.

That was it.

Done.

The dissertation is now publicly available online — four years of work, out there for anyone to read.

It’s been more than a week now, and I still haven’t fully registered that I’m Dr. Fung yet. I’m not sure when it will sink in.

But I think that’s okay.

Getting the title was never meant to be the end of anything. There’s still so much I want to learn, and plenty more I want to do.

For now, though, I think my younger self would be pretty happy to know that we took on the challenge and saw it through.