Member-only story
From Equations to Exposures
Why I Left My Engineering PhD for Photography
It was dark.
Darker on the inside than it was on the outside.
It was the night of the 21st of December 2023.
Days after I finished my final exam in my first semester as a PhD student in engineering.
My average that semester was 97%.
This was my first semester.
There were 11 more to go.
Those four months from September to December were hell for me.
While I was excelling from an outside observer’s perspective, I was burning from the inside.
I have never really enjoyed engineering.
I was good at it, though.
I was excellent as a student who solved homework and aced exams, but I never felt connected.
You may ask why I applied to a PhD in engineering if I didn’t want to.
Well, honestly, I don’t really know.
I fell into their trap. The societal trap.
I was doing things to please people around me.
I was doing things to keep my image intact in the view of my family and friends, while crushing my soul.
