Comments on: Two People Who Aren’t Pursuing Doctorates

By: Maria Droujkova

Maria Droujkova — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 23:46:13 +0000

I almost did not get mine at some point. It was a combination of being stuck on the dissertation, my husband working two jobs, my kid going through a gifted weirdness spurt… And the most important thing: I totally, totally did not want to search for academic positions. So I was subconsciously sabotaging the progress toward the time when I “had” to interview in academia. Once my husband helped me see that problem, and said, “Why don’t you just continue doing what you love, where you are?” – everything became unstuck. I got a coach for a couple of months to help with the logistics, simplified my framework enough to wrap up in reasonable time, and did the thing. The point is, a lot of yes/no about such a decision is in how you frame the experience. A lot of it is in the mind.

By: David Wees

David Wees — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 17:46:14 +0000

I am also not doing a PHD, although I seriously considered it….

…until some calculations showed me what a horrible financial move it would be for me and, more importantly, my family. When I realized I would be consigning my wife and two children to at least 6 years of poverty, a PHD became much less important to me.

Now, I am working on doing as much of the learning I can do that might be related to a PHD, including being involved in a (hopefully) high quality research project.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 22:29:39 +0000

My own experience, personal and vicarious, suggests that the most undervalued factor in considering a research degree is whether or not you have a research question. The Ph.D. students I saw that had a research question had drive and focus, those that came attracted by the methodology, the mystique of the PI, a compulsion to stay more years at university, or a sense that they were fulfilling their destiny as a latent intellectual leader, were prone to floundering painfully for a few years.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with loving a research methodology; that love alone isn’t enough to get you through a research program.