The posting below gives some excellent - and at the same time humorous - advice
on completing your PhD. Yeah, I know I and my educational colleagues are Master's students at this point, but I still think it's relevant.
It is Chapter 2 - The PhD, in the book What They
Didn't Teach You in Graduate School: 199 Helpful Hints for Success in Your
Academic Career by Paul Gray and David E. Drew. who are professors at Claremont
Graduate University in California, one in information systems and the other in
education. Between them they were students in 6 graduate programs, taught full
time at 7 universities, and mentored over 50 PhDs, many of whom are now tenured
professors. Copyright 2008 by Stylus Publishing, LLC. Cartoons copyright 2008 by
Matthew Henry Hall. Published by Stylus Publishing , LLC, 22883 Quicksilver
Drive Sterling, Virginia 20166-2102.
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7. Finish your PhD as early as possible. Don't feel that you need to create the
greatest work that Western civilization ever saw. Five years from now the only
thing that will matter is whether you finished. If you don't finish, you are
likely to join the ranks of "freeway flyers," holding multiple part-time
teaching jobs.
8. Be humble about your PhD. You don't need to flaunt the degree. Everyone has
one. Many of your colleagues, both in your institution and outside it, will be
put off if you sign everything "Doctor" or "Jane Jones, PhD" In fact, the main
use for Doctor is making reservations at a restaurant. When you call and ask
for a table for four for Doctor Jones, you will get more respect and often
better seating.
9. Remember that a PhD is primarily an indication of survivorship. Although the
public at large may view your doctorate as a superb intellectual achievement
and a reflection of brilliance, you probably know deep in your heart that it is
not. It represents a lot of hard work on your part over a long period of time.
You probably received help from one or more faculty to get over rough spots.
Your family, be it parents or spouse, stayed with you over the vicissitudes of
creating the dissertation. You stuck with it until it was done, unlike the ABDs
(All But Dissertation), people who complete all the other requirements but bail
out before they finish their dissertations.
10. A PhD is a certification of research ability based on a sample of 1. The PhD
certifies that you are able to do quality research. Unlike the MD, which
requires extensive work with patients followed by years of internship and
residency, the PhD is based on a single sample, your dissertation. The people
who sign your dissertation are making a large bet on your ability to do quality
research again and again in the future.
11. A PhD is a license to reproduce and an obligation to maintain the quality of
your intellectual descendants. Once you are a PhD, it is possible for you
(assuming you are working in an academic department that offers a PhD program)
to create new PhDs. Even if your department does not offer a PhD, you can be
called upon to sit on PhD examining committees either in your own or in
neighboring institutions. This is a serious responsibility because you are
creating your intellectual descendants. Recognize that if you vote to pass
someone who is marginal or worse, that PhD in turn is given the same privilege.
If candidates are not up to standard, it is likely that some of their
descendants will also not be. Unlike humans whose intergeneration time is 20
years, academic intergeneration times are 5 years or less. Furthermore, a
single individual may supervise 50 or more PhDs over a 30-year career.
12. You must have the PhD in hand before you can move up the academic ladder.
The world is full of ABDs. We talked about them briefly in Hint 9 and will
again in Hint 161. ABDs may be much abler and more brilliant than you but they
didn't possess the stamina (or the circumstances) to finish the degree. In our
judgment, being an ABD is the end of the academic line.
13. Be aware that the key danger point in any doctoral program is the one where
you leave highly structured coursework (Phase 1) and enter the unstructured
world of the qualification examination and the dissertation (Phase 2). Here are
two strategies to help you navigate Phase 2:
1. Stay in touch with your professors, especially your adviser. One of us
insists that students come in for a meeting each week, even if nothing
happened. Just the fear of not being able to report anything stimulates the
mind.
2. Meet regularly, ideally every week, for lunch or dinner or afternoon coffee,
with two or three fellow graduate students who are also struggling with Phase
2. Compare notes and progress.
14. A special note for the part-time student working on the dissertation.
Although all PhD students used to be on campus and often worked as teaching or
research assistant part-time, in many fields today that attract midcareer
students (for example, education) the norm is to work at an off-campus job
full-time and on the PhD part-time. Others, such as computer science students,
develop an idea for a start-up company (e.g., one of the founders of Google)
and drift from full-time to part-time. We applaud part-time PhD students. This
hint is addressed to these students.
If you are working on your PhD part time, you will find it difficult enough in
Phase 1 to tell your boss that you can't attend that nighttime budget crisis
meeting or tell your spouse that you can't go to your child's soccer game
because you must be in class. It is even more difficult when you're in Phase 2
to tell him or her that you won't be there because you must be home, in your
study, staring at a black computer screen trying to get past writer's block.
As a part-time student, you need to find ways (in addition to suggestions 1 and
2 in Hint 13) to be physically present on campus. You can do so in many ways,
such as spending time writing in a library carrel (1). Physical presence is
important psychologically. If you never visit campus and become caught up in
your work and family activities, you face the danger that your uncompleted PhD
program can begin to seem like something you used to do in a faraway time and
place.
15. Avoid Watson's Syndrome. Named by R.J. Gelles, this syndrome is a euphemism
for procrastination (2). It involves doing everything possible to avoid
completing work. It differs from writer's block in that the sufferer
substitutes real work that distracts from doing what is necessary for
completing the dissertation or for advancing toward an academic career. The
work may be outside or inside the university. Examples given by Gelles include:
* remodeling a house
* a never-ending literature review (after all, new papers are being published
all the time and they must be
referenced)
* data paralysis-making seemingly infinite Statistical Analysis System (SAS) and
Statistical Package for
Social Sciences (SPSS) runs
* perfectionism that doesn't let you submit until you think it is perfect (and
it never is perfect)
If you suffer from Watson's Syndrome, finding a mentor (see Hint 5) who pushes
you to finish will help you get done. For many, however, particularly those who
always waited until the night before an examination to begin studying, the
syndrome is professionally fatal.
16. Celebrate your PhD! When you hand in your signed dissertation and pay the
last fee that the university exacts from you, go out and Celebrate! Celebrate!
Celebrate! You've achieved something marvelous, and you are one of a very small
number in the population who can say you are a PhD. A rough calculation shows
that about 3 of 400 adults in the United States hold a PhD. Attaining a PhD is
a big deal! Honor that.
A PhD, like life, is a journey. It marks the end of one stage and the beginning
of what lies ahead. Don't fail to appreciate the moment of your accomplishment.
Yes, other big moments await you. But like almost every PhD, you never had a
moment this big, and it will be a long time before you have another one that
matches it.
Notes
1. The library is a large building filled with books and journals. It functions
sort of like Google, but deeper.
2. This hint is based on R.J. Gelles, "Watson's Syndrome," Inside Higher
Education, June 19, 2006,
http://www.insidehighered.com/workplace/2006/06/19/gelles
