Academic Gatorade
Last year I began running to stay healthy. After a few months, I set a goal to run my first 5K. I changed both my diet and running schedule to help achieve a more robust speed, endurance, and distance in my workouts. When I would return from workouts, with energy depleted and legs feeble, I would think to myself: is all this running worth the effort? Then I would remember my purpose for running, and the thoughts of quitting would subside. When I was physically exhausted, I drank Gatorade. Why? It rejuvenated me to keep my training goals, even during the most rigorous workout. As purpose kept me running toward my first 5K, academic gatorade will restore energy to achieve your academic goals.
Course work, colloquia, research, and life can contribute to mental and emotional dehydration. As a result, your purpose and passion to become doctoral wilts and academic life becomes stagnant. You miss the important nuances, theories, and connections in your courses and field of study. Academic life becomes a burden rather than a purpose-filled journey. Do you feel this way about your academic journey? Academic gatorade can help.
What is academic gatorade? Academic gatorade is rediscovering your purpose for earning your doctorate. Staying healthy was my original purpose for running. When emotional and physical exhaustion would occur, I would loose energy to achieve my goal of staying healthy. When I rediscovered my purpose for running, my feeble legs and depleted energy became stronger, and I ran with more energy and purpose toward staying healthy and running my first 5K. Oh! I crossed the finish line in my first 5K in July of 2008 in 33:48 minutes. Likewise, rediscovering your original purpose for wanting to become doctoral will rejuvenate your passion to cross the finish line of graduation.
Ah! The refreshing taste of purpose!
Here are some questions to help make your academic journey purposeful:
Why are you earning your doctorate?
How has your professional and academic background prepared you to contribute to your field of study?
How do your research interests relate to your course work?
What is inhibiting you from having a purposeful academic journey?
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on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Becoming Doctoral, Doctoral Advising.
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September 7th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Hi, Jon.
Great post! And great advice. You bring to light good questions for the doctoral learner to consider. In order to stay motivated, it is good practice for the learner to revisit the questions you raise, especially, “How do your research interests relate to your course work?”
Your second question, “How do your research interests relate to your course work?” also is important, but I’d go one step further and ask, “How can I apply my research and professional interests in my coursework?
Other Gatorades to the doctoral learner may be to have a support system of fellow doctoral learners to ask for ideas, to receive feedback, to laugh with, to vent frustrations, and to share resources.
Congratulations on your 5K!
September 8th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I like your second point about how to serve more Gatorade to learners. Like a kaleidoscope, each learner’s perspective, academic background, and professional experience contributes to the richness of understanding his or her field of study. As a result, these experiences and perspectives create the conditions for learners to pursue purpose. A Postmodern epistemology would certainly support your idea. Would you mind sharing an experience where your direction of thinking was changed because of a different perspective than your own?