Done is better than perfect: overcoming PhD perfectionism
![Done is better than perfect: overcoming PhD perfectionism](https://cdn.statically.io/img/blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/files/2018/07/GettyImages-175973673.jpg)
I submitted my PhD thesis on the evolution of jumping genes in December 2016, four days before Christmas. It wasn’t perfect — in many ways, it wasn’t even good. By the end of my graduate studies, I had hoped to be a proficient programmer and an established scientist with multiple high impact papers. At the bare minimum, I expected to find evidence to support my hypothesis. Instead, my thesis was largely unpublished, my coding was preliminary, and my results were inconclusive. In my eyes, it was a failure. Read more