This is a short overview of how I ended up getting a PhD focused on computational social science, and how far it is from where I thought I would be.

Throughout middle and high school I think there was a small mismatch between what I really enjoyed and what I was better at. While I enjoyed science (and to an extent math), I think I was more gifted in the humanities. Even during my time during the international baccalaureate in high school, I spent less time studying for them (and less time overall) but did really well. I think my highest grade was in english, outdoing my predicted score given to me by my teacher.

My high school was also kind of a mess in the math and science departments, which left me severely behind in math: I never took any sort of geometry, and was apparently supposed to learn some level of calculus but never really did. I also never took chemistry, I was supposed to take some in 10th grade but the teacher (a diehard physicist) taught us the bare minimum and then went straight back to physics. However, despite this I still somehow arrived at the University of British Columbia wanting to major in Biochemistry. However this all changed during my first chemistry class. While this has been changed since then (for the better), at the time my only option was to take chem 111, which was designed to “catch up” students by a crash course of high school chemistry, then all of first semester college chemistry (chem 121) in the same time that those who already took chemistry in high school got to take chem 121. This seemed to be somewhat punishing us by making us learn basically 3 semesters of chemistry (1 at the college level) in 1 semester, while those who had taken chemistry had the relatively easier (not easy, its still college) task of just 1 semester’s worth of chemistry in the same time period.

That coupled with the fact that I also had to struggle through Calc 1 ended up with me dropping chem and having to reevaluate my life (or so it felt). I also had the added stress of being in the faculty of arts and wanting to transfer to faculty of science, where I thought I would have a better chance. This proved basically impossible for someone in my situation due to my abysmal performance in calc 1, and I was stuck with trying to find a major in arts that I liked. I did get lucky that my schedule was a more science-y one, and that my parents pushed me to take CPSC 110: intro to computer science in my second semester, which I ended up really enjoying.

However, I did have one small problem: getting into the Computer Science major at UBC is a herculean task, where you need an A average to have a chance at getting in, and because of my performance in Calc 1 and 2 this was never going to happen. Thats when I learned of the Cognitive Systems major, which combined Computer Science, Psychology, Linguistics, and Philosophy and I decided to aim for that. I was able to get in (again not a guarantee there were 60 slots in arts and who knows how many applicants). This allowed me to focus on trying to get as many computer science electives as possible due to the way the major was set up, and also basically cherry pick all the interesting sounding classes from the other disciplines.

When I was in my last year I started thinking about what I wanted to do in the future, and realized that I wanted to pursue a career in Computer Science but with my lack of internships (somewhat due to the Covid Pandemic) and how hard it was to get into some CS classes, I would need more school. This led me to enroll in a masters of computer science and the University at Buffalo. I didn’t end up getting an internship again and started reaching out to professors to see what research I could do (trying to earn some money and build my resume). I really enjoyed the research I was doing and continued through the next school year (and part time afterwards while I searched for a job). This research was exactly up my alley, approaching the social sciences from a computational perspective.

The job search process continued to be tough, an I applied to about 1000 jobs unsuccessfully and only getting two interviews. I did get an internship through a family connection doing data analysis (cleaning, distributions, etc) but this got repetitive rather quickly and I got bored. I didn’t stop partially out of a sense of obligation of not wanting to jump ship first, and that I didn’t have anything better to do. However, at the push of my advisor I applied an accepted a PhD position at the University at Buffalo.

This isn’t to say that I would have jumped on a PhD with just anybody or in any area of Computer Science, I did think rather carefully about who I wanted to work with when initially applying to research assistant positions, and got lucky with how nice and supportive my advisor is. Also, I would encourage any readers considering a PhD to try working between undergrad and starting a PhD if at all possible, it gives you something to compare against. Ideally this should be in your field, or at least somewhat related. When you’re comparing studying what you like with flipping burgers or something then the choice may be easier. For people like me it may push you back to school, but for others it may have the opposite effect.