Stepping Out Onto the Tightrope (or Part One of "How I Found Myself to be a Doctoral Student")

During the fall of 2008, while I was finishing my masters degree in Higher Education at Penn State, I decided that rather than taking a break from school I would try to move directly into a doctoral program.  I was motivated by a number of factors.  First and foremost, I had a pretty strong internal commitment to completing a doctoral program before turning 35 year old.  This was a fairly arbitrary commitment, but I knew that it was something important to me and I wanted to be able to leverage my doctoral degree for a significant part of my career.  Combining this intrinsic motivation with some restlessness in my current professional position was a recipe for  getting serious about doctoral programs.

As I began to talk to people (family, colleagues, professors, etc.) about my doctoral aspirations, reactions fell into three basic categories.  Here they are, and how I talked myself through the feedback:

1.) “You should work more before you get into a doctoral program.  You’re too inexperienced for that.”

This is probably the feedback that held me back the most.  I am indeed a fairly new professional (less than 5-years in the student affairs field), and I questioned my timing for two reasons.  First, what might it mean to be finished with my doctorate at 32-ish years of age and have a work history limited to entry- and mid-level positions?  Is it really possible to be “over qualified”?  I came to grips with this by saying to myself, “My work and my education are only two of the many parts that make up who I am.  There’s more to me than what you see on a resume.” I decided not to worry about this.

My second concern was how I would look to admissions committees. Clearly I would be at a disadvantage when compared to more seasoned applicants with much more professional experience.  In the end, I decided that applying to grad school was not something that is limited to one chance.  If I was not ready to take this next step, one of the gatekeeping mechanisms would let me know.  Being turned away at this point would not deter me from pursuing a doctoral program later.

2.) “Why do you want to go right into another grad program?  Take a break and recharge your batteries.”

This was tempting.  Making a major life decision while you are in the midst of completing a masters thesis is probably a bad idea.  That being said, I was really excited about the prospect of staying in school for my doctorate.  I had enthusiasm for it, and I figured that if I stuck while the iron was hot I would have (basically) good scholastic habits and be in the right frame of mind for academic work.  From a personal perspective, I want to make some serious progress towards this degree before my wife and I have kids.  What good am I to a toddler if I’m preoccupied with transcribing qualitative research data?  It will be a relief to get the degree and put the process behind me.

3.) “A doctoral degree isn’t going to necessarily be worth the investment for what you want to do.  Do you even know for sure what you want to do?”

Well, to be honest I am still working through this one.  I know I want to work in higher education.  Having my doctorate will open some doors (or it won’t), but I’m fairly sure few doors will be shut in my face because of it.  We’ll see about the fiscal sense that investing in a doctorate made further down the road . . . I’m not going to stress out about it today.  That $4 latte at Starbucks wasn’t necessarily my wisest financial decision either, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t get something out of the experience.

For my next post, I will be writing about the application process, the dreaded GRE, and how I decided where to apply.