I love summer. I’m back to being a full-time parent right now. We are busy as a family: birthdays, rodeos, going to state and national parks, swim lessons, rock climbing lessons, piano lessons, family reunions, camping trips, building a deck, etc.
I’m not required to work on any schoolwork this summer. But I find myself feeling like I should be writing papers and doing research.
I heard something recently from a podcast talking about what grad students wish they’d known about doing their PhD. When you’re a PhD student, you are working on your PhD. You get to decide what that looks like. But it’s really easy to do the research and the work that you think you are supposed to do, instead of the research and work that you really want to do.
Right now, my plan is not to continue working in academic research beyond my PhD program. I’m not looking for a tenure-track research job. I want teaching and educating to be a bigger focus, and when I do research and write things on my own time, I would prefer to write to a different audience than one that is purely academic.
I could worry about getting lots of publications. I could worry about going to lots of conferences. I could worry about building a longer and longer C.V. But that only enables me to get jobs that I’m not necessarily interested in.
People ask me what I want to do with my PhD. I usually say I want to teach college classes, which is accurate, but more importantly, I am getting a PhD because I want to get a PhD for its own sake. I want to complete a dissertation. I want to be a teaching assistant and teach my own classes. I want to write academic papers while in graduate school. But then I’ll graduate (hopefully) and do something different.
When you’re in the academic world, it is so incredibly competitive. Publishing is very competitive. Jobs are very competitive. But it’s okay if I’m not at the top of my program. I don’t necessarily need to enter myself into the competition. Other people can win awards and publish papers–and I can figure out what I want my PhD to look like. I can focus more on what I want to do and what would be the most meaningful work–within the constraints and requirements of getting a PhD.
That’s not to say that I can do whatever I want. I do have requirements I need to complete. I do want to do work that is helpful to other people. And if a graduate student does want a tenure-track job in philosophy, they probably do need to do a lot of research and get published and win awards. But I don’t need to impose restraints and requirements on myself that don’t exist and won’t actually help me with my long-term goals.
So here are some questions I can ask myself when determining what to do with my time:
- Is this required?
- Do I really want to do it? Why?
- Is this meaningful or helpful to others? How?
- Will this help me with my long-term goals or values?
If the answer is no to all of those questions, I should focus on something else.
Heather Hoyt 