However, once we start the PhD program, we find that real life always deviates from our imagination. On July 20th, 2010, Xiaozi mentioned on my wedding that she struggled so much to get a decent score of Advanced Microeconomics. We have to exert ourselves to try to survive in all the mathematics, modeling and programming courses. Even worse, the student who is one or two grade higher than us would tell us that the terrible first year is actually the happiest period with least pressure during the whole PhD program. Then we realize that being a PhD student is not as cool as we thought.

The time we finally understand that we are not in the heaven, not in the earth, but in the hell is the day we begin to write our PhD papers. We are almost drowned in the sea of the literature. We feel that all the ideas seem to be already taken by others with much more advanced setting. Some papers are so difficult to understand that we believe they are written in some alien languages. When we search for one concept we don’t know, it always ends up with thousands of questions and we already forget the original one. We doubt whether our research is meaningful. The impact of our efforts is limited to an extremely small area. What we do is more like entertaining ourselves.

The darkest period comes with the approach of deadline. Time is not enough and there is always room for improvement. We are worried that the quality of the papers is not high enough to be accepted for defense. We are worried that no position is available after graduation, either over-qualified or too narrow research interest. I remember the last talk with Xiaozi before she handed in her thesis. It was on July 20^th, 2012. We complained about the frustrating situation and concluded that “If you want to live longer, don’t study PhD”.

Nevertheless, all the tough periods you suffered end when you are entitled as a PhD. It is the moment that we come here and toast for Xiaozi. You manage it after a so long and hard journey. All you did in the past is worthy. Congratulations!

Though the journey is long, we are not lonely since we have a group in which we have the same title, same feeling, same faith and same dream. We are PhD students. I think besides study, most time we spent together is for dinner. Here is a gift for you and hope it will remind you of us every day when you use it (礼物是一个大炒锅，因为最近一次聚餐，Xiaozi曾抱怨她的锅有些粘，煎鱼不方便).

By the way, the reason that I can clearly remember all the important dates as I mentioned is that I write blog. So for more information, please come to see my blog, which is definitely read by much more people than my PhD papers. （KIKI永远不忘推广博客哈，不过亲爱的K粉们的支持，是我一直以来的写作动力！）