I originally wrote this post as a response to this article.
This is a great article, and an important one, but I would add something. You shouldn’t in any way take
this to imply that I think anyone who’s suffering serious psychological
stress because of a doctoral program should just “toughen up,” because
that’s not what I mean. But, I think there’s something to be said, in addition to the article’s recommendations, for preparing yourself for the reality of what a doctoral program is going to be like before
jumping in because “Yay, free tuition!” or “It’d be cool to be a
doctor!” or because you’re not sure what to do with your life because
you’ve always been in school and you’re not sure where to go next.
I’ve
experienced a lot of the stresses the article mentions and have known
many, many other people who have, but I also remember from my own
experience in grad school that there were a significant amount of grad
students in and around my program who had begun their doctoral program
simply because teaching for their tuition seemed like a good financial
deal and they were at a point in their 20s when they weren’t quite sure
what else to do with themselves. Four years of relative financial
stability sounded great! Hell, that’s why I accepted a position in my
M.A. program, so I get it. But you can get away with that with an M.A.
program in some cases. I did. Less so with a doctoral program.
I
was aware from the get-go how difficult my doctoral program was going
to be. I came in with a strong idea of what I wanted to study and what
my dissertation was going to be about. I knew (almost) from day one who I
wanted on my dissertation committee. I was prepared to put in godawful
hours for four years and had accepted that I would not be likely to even
get a decent-paying job at the end. It was still really hard. Many
people came in with absolutely none of those things figured out. I can’t
imagine how hard it was for them. Many of those people never finished,
and suffered needlessly (it seemed to me) in the process.
So, a
few things. First, if you want to take on a doctoral program for the
value of the knowledge and skills you’ll gain and the experiences you’ll
have while completing it, then go for it. Don’t sign up for the future
sake of some assumed employment that you hope to receive at a later date
and have that be your motivation. You’ll almost certainly be
disappointed in the kind of job market we’re facing now. I had a
stressful and ultimately great time in my program, but remained
realistic throughout about my likelihood of getting a tenure-track job
or even an adjunct job after getting the degree. It made a huge
difference, I think, in how stressed I was on a daily basis for those four years. Accepting that what I was doing then might
be the extent to which I ever progressed in the field helped me
appreciate what I was working on at the time and kept me from worrying
about the future overmuch. In short, if a doctoral program is just a
means to an end for you, you should probably avoid joining it.
I was lucky enough to get a tenure track job after two years of searching, and let me tell you it does not get
any easier. Worrying about committee service, teaching an absurd load
of classes, playing department politics, staying current in your field
and giving presentations, seeking out opportunities for initiatives that
will separate you from the rest of the pack come promotion time…well,
let’s just say that I’ve worked harder in the last two years at this job
than I ever did as a graduate student. It’s only because of the
mental structures I built as a grad student, the ones that helped me
learn to minimize stress and manage tasks reliably, that I can function
in this job without being miserable. Imaging a future tenure-track
position as a relatively relaxing paradise is
deluding yourself, and if the doctoral program is more stressful than
fulfilling the “real” job will be as well. To use an appropriate
metaphor, if you were in a psychologically abusive relationship with
another person, you wouldn’t expect it to suddenly become fulfilling and
supportive when you reached your fourth anniversary, would you? Why
would this be any different? It’s not.
Which leads me to my
last point: if you are struggling in the midst of a program, seriously
consider getting out. There’s no shame in moving on to something else if
it isn’t working out for you. I was able to get through because of my
aforementioned preparation and a certain degree of mental flexibility.
If I hadn’t been allowed to do things on my own terms, if I
hadn’t had a large amount of control over my schedule, over my course
content, and over the content of my research and the makeup of my
committee; if I had been paid less; if I hadn’t had a largely supportive
cohort of friends and a lot of great mentors, I would have quit. It
wouldn’t have been worth it. You need to know where your threshold is
and decide ahead of time on what you’re going to do if you’re driven
past it, not after you’re already at your wits’ end.
Simply
put: know what you’re getting into ahead of time and don’t be afraid to
back out if it’s not working for you. Certainly, all of the things
recommended in the article are useful suggestions, but you can also
better avoid falling into a psychologically abusive cycle in the first
place by honestly confronting the reality of doctoral programs rather
than embracing the romanticized and ultimately destructive myth of “the
scholarly life” that we’ve collectively inflated for so long. Nobody
does this on purpose, of course, but it’s an easy thing to do without
realizing it and it is at least partially to blame for the huge gulf
between expectations and reality that lead many grad students down the
dark paths described in the original article.
