Not a few of the people that read this blog, do so with a very clear outcome in mind: to finish their PhD, to get that damned piece of paper saying that they’re doctors. In this struggle, we (yes, I did that too) often forget that the PhD is more of a process (a learning, a practice) than it is an outcome. In this adaptation of a poem by Wendell Berry, I take a stab at what it took for me to become a researcher. I write this as much for you as for myself – to remind myself that, in a sense, we never cease to be students, we remain always beginners in the new knowledge that we (and others) create with our research.