Ask Doctoral Advising

Taking risks means that we might sometimes fail. Those of us who decide to take the time and spend the money to pursue a doctorate are taking a risk.

For some, it means walking away from a full-time job with benefits (and possibly a guaranteed future) to spend more time working on this new academic challenge. There is no guarantee that we will find the job we hoped to find once we completed the degree. And for those who will face a pile of student loans to repay, the pressure to find the right job might be enormous. Is it a failure if we do not find the ideal job? Do we set unrealistic expectations of what we think an advanced degree will do for us? Is the expectation about the future job, or the learning along the journey?

For others, pursuing a doctorate means trying to balance the demands of a full-time job with the requirements of taking classes and later needing the discipline to persist at that dissertation until it is complete and approved by all necessary parties. It might mean your life is totally consumed by work and study – that family and friends might very well take a back seat for awhile. Are we risking those relationships when we let ourselves be so consumed by our pursuit of a degree? Is it a failure if we are not able to balance all of our competing responsibilities and our life during this process?

Taking a risk to pursue a doctorate might mean that you might not get an A in every course you take, even though you might have had a 4.0 in pursuing undergraduate or master’s degrees. Is it considered a failure if you get a B in some of your courses? Do you just look at the final grade in a glass and your grade point average, or do you step back and think about how much you might have learned in those classes? Do you think about how much you now know, how much you grew during that exploration and learning process? Is the risk here that you might not get the A you are accustomed to getting or is it that you might not learn enough to justify the time and money you are spending? Is the risk that you might be really stretching intellectually as you embark upon this journey and you are not sure you are capable of that much stretching? Or is the risk that you might not choose to stretch yourself very far? Are those failures if you cannot stretch or choose not to stretch?

Is there a risk that we might be so narrowly focused that we fail to appreciate the whole learning experience? Is it a failure if we do not complete the degree in the time frame we had initially envisioned? Is it a failure if we do not make the most of the opportunity to learn what our instructors have to offer?

Are the risks worth it? Every learner has to define those risks and clarify those definitions of failure for himself or herself.