I didn’t start my PhD in 2019 with a grand dream or a childhood passion for biomedical sciences. I started with a central question that immediately made it clear how little I knew:
How do Ehrlichiae cause disease?
At the time, I knew nothing. Not a little nothing. Like full blank brain, zero context, no clue what an obligate intracellular pathogen even does kind of nothing. But somehow, that question became my life for almost six years.
Here I am, five (almost six) years later, graduating with a PhD. Do I have THE answer?
No. 😭
I didn’t uncover one perfect explanation that ties everything together like a neat little bow. Research doesn’t work like that.
Science is more like: You open one door → and behind it is a hallway with 400 more doors, and every single one says “unknown mechanism” on it.
So no… I don’t have THE answer. But I’m proud that I have SOME answers. Small pieces. Tiny clues. A few hard-earned “okay so maybe this is how it works…” moments that add something real to the bigger puzzle.
And honestly, that’s what a PhD felt like: not solving the whole mystery, but contributing a meaningful paragraph to a story that’s still being written.
The part nobody claps for
Somewhere in the middle of these six years… I lost my spirit a few times. Not in a dramatic movie-scene way. More like the quiet kind: where you stare at your results and think,
“Do I even care?” “Why am I doing this?” “Am I passionate, or am I just trying to survive?”
There were definitely moments when I convinced myself I wasn’t doing science for curiosity anymore. I was just doing it for the degree. For that piece of paper. For the official permission slip that says: Congratulations, you suffered enough.
But now that I’m finally at the finish line…
I hate to admit it, but…
I do care. Like I actually care. And that’s almost embarrassing to say after pretending I didn’t for so long 😂
Because the irony is — the closer I got to the end, the more I realized something horrifying:
I still know nothing.
Not literally nothing, obviously. But the real PhD experience is discovering that knowledge is infinite and you only get to hold a tiny handful of it.
This degree doesn’t feel like a final answer. It feels like proof that I’ve officially entered the world of: “I know enough to understand how much I don’t know.” Which is the most PhD sentence ever.
My research is still in its extremely nascent stages. It scratches the surface of something insanely complex — not just about Ehrlichiae, but tick-borne diseases in general.
I genuinely hope future researchers keep digging. Bigger studies. New models. Fresh perspectives. Better tools. Emerging technologies that didn’t exist when I started.
Because tick-borne diseases are not a small problem. And the more we understand how pathogens like Ehrlichiae work… the better we get at answering the other half of the question:
How do we fight back?
How do we diagnose earlier? Interrupt transmission? Prevent severe disease? Protect both humans and animals? That’s the part that matters most.
So yeah, I walked in May 2019 knowing nothing. I’m walking out in August 2024 knowing more — and realizing how much more there is to learn. I’m proud of the journey. And honestly? I’m proud that I cared.
TSIAN 