Shouldn't we have a World PhD Day to celebrate the resilience of PhD students?

Yes. Why not? After about 17 years of education which includes 6 years primary, 4 years secondary, 3 years diploma, and 4 years undergraduate studies, I am very much still a student! A PhD student in fact. One as the very name suggest, with Permanent Head Damage. Alright, not really permanent yet, but almost. From all the stress generated from failed experiments, demanding and un-understanding supervisors (luckily mine is still passable), having to constantly worry about thesis deadlines, more failed experiments, not having enough stipend coverage especially for those overseas PhD students, and some more of those experiments that just doesn't seems to work and your very thesis depends on it!

Tell me, how can anyone cope under such duress? Physical torture? None at all. But mental torture? Loads of it. PhD student still manage to graduate at the end of the day, and 'live happily ever after'. Either they are damn lucky to have issues/experiments etc that work for them, or they just endure every bits of failure?!

Resilience, I say. Passion? Passion erodes away exponentially with every failure you 'achieved', and failure in PhD studies are dime a dozen. Commitment? Maybe, but that would mean forcing yourself to go through the whole aching 4 years and enduring every bits of it. Isn't this resilience then? PhD students all over the world has their share of failures, but somehow managed to pick themselves up again. Yet, they fall and tumble, and they pick themselves up again! Break their legs, and you see them crawling their way to finish up their PhD even if it takes them a decade. Resilience...

Shouldn't then there ought to be a day in this calendar of ours, to celebrate the resilience of these PhD students? It is through this very period of their education that their mentality truly matures and strengthened. A coming of age of the mind, through the failures, stress, and unhappiness, and all these wouldn't be possible without resilience. And so I say, lets all celebrate! A toast to all the PhD students out there in the world, a toast on your resilience of being a PhD student braving not only the toxic chemicals but extreme and constant mental duress, and lets all hope we will still be sane enough to graduate at the end of the day.

And so, why shouldn't there be a world PhD day?