I made an important decision last week......I have decided to go for my PhD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes....after a long deliberation with myself and after talking to a lot of friends and family I decided to go ahead with this decision. This is an important decision for me becoz I will be changing my field of interest from Biomedical Instrumentation and Image Processing to Biomechanics and Orthopedics......thats a big step for me...

The fact that there have not been any jobs up for grabs in my field also influenced my decision....over the past 3-4 weeks I had applied for only 3-4 jobs...not becoz I didnt get time but becoz i didnt find any jobs that fitted my criterial or vice versa.....there were a lot of jobs in orhtopedics but I could not apply for those as my background didnt match with their requirements. I had tried hard to find a job for 3 months and ended up with only 3 interviews over the phone of which only 1 resulted in a personal interview. That tells the story by itself......

I was against the idea of doing a Ph.D from the begining.....not becoz I didnt want to do it....but becoz I didnt want to do a PhD to just to stay in this country.....but now to find a job I needed a field change which would be possible only with another Master's or a Ph.D. My advisor offered me a fully funded PhD last weeek but with a field change.....it was a very lucrative offer as the project dealt with spine (which is the hottest topic in orthopedics) and with a software called Abaqus...which is the popular Finite Element Modeling software.

My parents said that they would support and encourage me with whatever decision I took and now after a week long....thinking and comparisons with other careers and jobs....i decided to accept my advisor's offer....thus I start my quest to be Dr. Battula...hehehehehhe...thats a distant thing as of now