After nearly three years of dashing through my postgraduate study, I am taking a look back at what I have managed to achieve throughout the period. Taking a long stroll along the time-machine...
2008, December: My official registration as a postgraduate student. Resigned from my work, and go back to university again.
2009, February: My supervisor has given me my very first official task for today. And that is "Try to write a conference paper for an international conference that is to be held in August 2011." And so I did.
2009, April: Surprisingly, and happily of course, the paper submitted for the conference proceeding has been accepted, with some minor corrections and modifications required.
2009: May: I am desperately searching, searching and searching for any funding or scholarship available for local post graduate studies. At that time, the government has not revealed the new masterplan and budget for postgraduate students. Unlike now, students are offered with multiple choices of scholarships even before ones completed the bachelor degree. At my time, you knock door-to-door for money to study, not money looking for you.
2009, Jun: Assisting my supervisor in applying for research funds. We submitted few research proposals. Some are rejected, and some are pending for further assessment. Luckily, we managed to secure quite a feasible amount of funding.
2009, August: Flying to Putrajaya for the 1st time in my life to attend an interview session with a scholarship funding body. I get 25 minutes to present my research proposal in front of 3 professionals. They will assess and see whether I am qualified for the award or not. Towards the end, the answer is? "NO". Right after the interview, I fly to Langkawi for the presentation of my paper in an international conference. It is my first experience presenting to international audiences, and most of them are professionals in the field. It is indeed a valuable experience for me.
2009, September: Flying to Taiwan with fellow teammates, representing my university and Malaysia for an international competition in Taipei, Taiwan. The competition is mainly dealing with earthquake building modeling and testing. Although we didn't manage to win any major prizes, we do bring back awards in best presentation and best poster category.
2009, September: Coming back from Taiwan, my supervisor sent the same team of us to an international exhibition competition held in KLCC. We will be displaying and exhibiting our inventions, 2 of our best inventions for the year. We managed to secure a bronze and a sliver medal for both the inventions.
2009, November: Having a paper published in conference proceeding, my next target is to try publishing in international journal. I sit down in front my my laptop, thinking real hard and planning to get a journal article done. I start-off writing, and believe me, it's harder than it sounds. Word by word of typing, and deleting seems so normal. Write, and rewrite, write and rewrite. Do you believe it? It takes almost few hours just to get a paragraph done. I guess that's pretty normal if you plan to get your paper published in an indexed international journal. If you as the author finds your paper not good enough, what would we expect reviewers or outsiders to react? Feeling that I am wasting my effort and time, I stop writing.
2010, April: I am writing for 2 different papers targeting for two different conference. One in Pahang, in which my supervisor will be presenting while I am planing to attend the one in Shah Alam. Both papers got accepted.
2010, July: This time, my supervisor is giving me a bigger challenge, and that is to participate in another exposition solo. The team consists of me, and him. I nod, and join in. Praise the Lord, we manage to get a bronze medal for this product.
November,2010: Having 3 conference papers published, I am thinking to myself. "Hey, aren't you giving it a try to publish in journal?" I opened the half-typed file, which was left behind months ago and continue writing. I decided to submit it to a good journal, an indexed-journal based in Turkey.
...months of waiting, and waiting, and correcting...
Finally by today, I got 2 papers published in international-indexed journals, 2 more currently under review, 2 being accepted by worldwide distributed flagship/professional journals. Around 7 to 8 conference papers published, and another one has just been submitted to a world conference to be held in Portugal this year.
Thanks be to God, I have been appointed as journal reviewer for 3 international journals. Currently I am trying my very best to get more paper published, and hopefully will be able to join and serve as a journal editorial member of my choice.
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