Doctoral Study as a Transformative Experience

This post is a piece I just wrote about an issue I’ve been mulling over for years.  It’s about how getting a doctorate is not just another in a long chain of degrees.  It’s a transformative experience, and prospective doctoral should prepare to strap themselves in for the ride.

Doctoral Study as a Transformative Experience

David Labaree

            When students enter a doctoral program, they often think it’s going to be a continuation of their previous education, moving seamlessly from bachelor’s to master’s to doctoral study.  Well, it’s not.  Really, it’s a whole nother thing.

            A key reason for this is that you find yourself shifting from a lifelong role focused on becoming a sophisticated consumer of knowledge to a brand new role as a producer of knowledge.  You’re suddenly switching sides – from novice to expert, from student to teacher.  That’s a very different mindset. 

            One of the reasons that doctoral study stretches on for so many years is that it takes a long time to adjust to this new way of looking at yourself in relation to your field of study.  My Michigan State colleague Michael Sedlak and I used to teach an introductory proseminar for all doctoral students in the College of Education, and on the first day of class Michael would tell the assembled students, “Welcome to the NFL.”  You’re suddenly in the bigs, and life is different there.

            As part of this role transition, you are not just geometrically ramping up your mastery of a field; you’re also becoming a different person.  You may not notice this happening, but the people around you will.  I know from experience.  During the four years that I spent working on my doctoral dissertation, I never noticed that my marriage was gradually falling apart.  My now ex-wife had to tell me.  It was a shock.  Who knew?  I was so caught up in my new role and so immersed in my research and writing that the rest of the world became a blur on the periphery. 

            Over my years working with doctoral students at Michigan State and Stanford, I saw this happening to them.  Marriages have a tough time surviving graduate school; divorce is rampant.  One explanation for this is the way that the dissertation becomes an all-consuming task for a doctoral student.  It isn’t just a piece of work that you’re doing; it’s the center of your life for a long period of time.  This is one of the reasons that doctoral students so often marry each other, even though this creates big problems on the job market, where finding two jobs in the same university is a big ask.

            There’s also another factor that intrudes on personal relationships, and that is that the way doctoral study turns you into a different person from the one you were before.  You’re going from novice to expert, from learner to researcher, from scholarship as part of your life to scholarship as the center of your life.  And while you’re going through this fundamental transformation, your partner or spouse is not.  As you’re entering into the scholarly profession and becoming the kind of scholar you had always seen from afar, the civilians in your life are getting left behind.  They don’t understand – for good reason! – the arcane world that you’re beginning to feel as your natural home.  I can recall my then-mother-in-law asking me when I was going to finish that “paper” I was working on.  When you think about it, spending four years writing a long academic paper is a bizarre way for a grown man to be spending his time, instead of getting a real job that would help support his wife. 

            So one of the things that prospective doctoral students should be asking themselves is whether they really want to enter into this extended process of professional apprenticeship and personal transformation.  Maybe it’s really not worth it for you if the very real costs outweigh the potential benefits.  Do you want to become that person and leave your former self behind.?  It’s not for everyone.