On that day, I took the doctoral entrance examination for the Materials Science and Engineering program through the collaborative track with NIMS. The format of the exam was actually quite straightforward: a presentation on my master’s research results and my proposed research plan for the doctoral program. The total duration was 15 minutes for the presentation, followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers.

Honestly, preparing a 15-minute presentation was not particularly difficult. Most of the content from my master’s research had already been presented in previous student seminars (as described on the previous page), so I only needed to add the latest results and the final conclusions. However, for this exam, I felt that the most important point was no longer the quality of my master’s data, but whether my doctoral research plan appeared realistic and feasible within three years—especially considering the graduation requirement of publishing three first-author journal papers.

Despite that, the moments before the exam were still nerve-racking, similar to how I felt before student seminars. The difference was that this time, the examiners consisted of all the professors in the program, not just four to six people as in regular seminars. The atmosphere felt more formal, more serious, and more intense. Still, once the presentation started, it felt like going through a process I was already familiar with.

After the exam ended, I immediately returned to reality: finishing my master’s research and making sure that all the data were sufficient for graduation. Fortunately, the exam results were announced relatively quickly—around mid-September.

In the end, although the research proposal I wrote for the doctoral program did not become my actual doctoral research topic at all, the process taught me an

important lesson:

not every plan has to unfold perfectly. What matters most is flexibility, the willingness to adapt, and the ability to keep moving forward.

Thankfully, I was able to complete my doctoral program on time, fulfill all the requirements, and even publish three first-author journal papers within three years, with a total of four first-author papers over five years of study (two years of master’s and three years of doctoral study).