Ask Doctoral Advising

“I could never run a marathon” is a common comment I get.
My response “You could if you trained”
Of course, no one should just decide to run or walk 26.2 without training.

What happens during training is building endurance and resiliency.

Train your body to get used to running faster during short runs, which helps during long slow runs.
Train your body to endure over the miles of a long slow run.
And you do this gradually. Your body adjusts to the stress and training over time. You can run faster, with less gasping for air. After training for longer miles, 10 mile runs are stressful, but you are not exhausted the rest of the day.

It is generally recommended that a long run for the marathon is about 20 or 22 miles, not 26 miles. How does one accomplish those last few miles the day of the race? Endurance and resiliency.

You train your body to endure the physical stresses of a run.

And when you get to the point of wondering if you can accomplish the miles in front of you, you dig down and keep on going. That is resiliency. Drawing on the reserve that comes from physical training as well as the mental training.

Throughout your coursework, you are training. Learning new knowledge. Learning different ways to connect ideas.
Being in school is so much more than learning content. Hopefully, one is open to the challenges of developing critical thinking skills, of finding articles in the library, of communicating with others, of learning how to navigate the institution, and navigate the doctoral degree. These are things that are difficult to perfect.

Through the entire process, you continue to practice and engage ALL that you have learned. Small pieces build on each other. One looks back and realizes how easy it is, for example, to find an article in the library, when the first effort was so frustrating and didn’t make sense.

And sometimes you get to a point “I cannot go on”
It is the wise person who discerns the ‘cannot’ and the ‘don’t want to’ and when it is determined that moving forward is possible, one need to draw on the internal fortitude that the endurance training and thus resiliency has provided.