In November 2023, I defended PhD thesis after long years of struggling to finish it. I am proud of this achievement, but it took me longer than expected. Let’s summarise this journey.
Beginning
After completing my Master’s degree, I quickly got a job in the petroleum industry in Poland. After working for about three years at various oil and gas sites I felt that I was missing something. Then came a chance to get PhD funding from Norway. Without hesitation, I jumped onto that opportunity. My new academic journey started in January 2013. At this time, in Poland, it was required to complete three years of advanced coursework along with doing thesis research. Additionally, I was assigned as an adjunct (Assistant Professor) on my campus to teach several introductory courses. And the clock started ticking. I was enjoying part-student life again. I had made new friends. Everything was great, except the hard exams.
Middle
After three years I completed my coursework, ended my job as an assistant professor, and started part-time work as a reservoir engineer in a local geophysics company. For the rest of the day, I was supposed to continue with my PhD research and complete the thesis. But here the problems started. My research progress was restarting every few months. I was jumping from idea to idea, with my supervisor rejecting each one. Until I was active on campus it just got by, but later I slowly started to lose motivation. Contacts with my supervisor decreased, until the point that I was seriously considering quitting. The only problem was that I received funding, which I would have to return. That is how the next two years passed. Then I made a career change and started work as a full-time Python developer. And with every drop of last strength I still had in me, in the evenings I was creating a draft of my thesis.
End
The next years were filled with stagnation and occasional bursts of motivation, when for a week or two I was pushing research and writing further. Luckily with unexpected help and patience from my supervisor, I finished the research, completed several iterations of correcting and improving the thesis, passed the required exams and was ready to end it. It took me ten years from my first step on campus to defend the PhD. Several times I wanted to quit, even after having 95% done… I wish everybody an easier journey.
Note for future self
My research was heavily based on computational results. Initially the complete optimisation run of simulations was taking about two weeks. At later stages I optimised the process, so it ended after only one day, additionally I was running multiple optimisation runs at once. Anyway I took too much time on running them. Each time I discovered the bug, I had to rerun everything. I should have been more mindful about each step to not repeat myself so many times, or design better process to avoid it.
Secondly, I got strong writer’s block and had to conquer my inner enemy. It was much easier after my research idea was finally accepted by my supervisor, and when I did not have to fight two enemies at once. So a good relationship with the supervisor is a must-have, plus an agreement about PhD direction.
Finally, a PhD is just another challenge that life gives us. Not the first, not the last. There is so much to do outside of it.
About thesis
Title: Optimization of low salinity water and CO2 injection on example of the Skarv reservoir.
Short summary: Create an optimisation framework to combine two methods of improving oil recovery (low salinity water + carbon dioxide) that is using metaheuristic evolutionary algorithm, reservoir simulator, and Python programming language in order to enhance oil recovery from Norwegian oil field.
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