Getting your PhD might be one of the most rewarding experiences in your life. However, it will be difficult, and fraught with second-guessing and hardships. You may start wondering why you even decided on achieving it at all. However, there are ways to keep in mind why the process is worth it, and how to keep your sanity while doing so. This is a one-week, 4-part overview about why a PhD is hard to get, why it is worth it, how to stay motivated, and how to keep balance in the process.
Why PhD’s are Difficult to Complete
Doctorate degrees are difficult to complete for a number of reasons, and every PhD candidate will come across a low point in the process of achieving their degree. Whether it be because you are having difficulty with an adviser, are encountering criticism about your topic, or are experiencing self-doubt about the value of your work, you will find yourself wondering why you ever decided to to re-enter academia.
So here are a few pit-falls of PhD research that you might encounter:
- You may have difficulty with an adviser, colleague, or some other person. People will be people, and will not always get along. You might respect a colleague immensely, but still vehemently disagree with some of their stands. In the university, many have undergone many years of study and are all experts in their fields – and they know it. Handling egos and compromising – or choosing not to – is unfortunately just part of the process of learning about the university system.
- You feel like you can’t come up with anything original, and what you write isn’t good enough anyways. PhD research is one of the highest levels of research in the world. You are amongst the ranks of some of the most brilliant minds in academia, and an heir to thousands upon thousands of years of academic tradition. The saying, “nothing is original anymore”, seems all too applicable to you, and even more so when your research depends entirely on appropriating previous research in an attempt to come up with something new. Then, the standards are so ridiculously high you find yourself working over a single sentence again and again to no avail.
- You think your research doesn’t even have any practical application. You feel like you’ve gone from studying an important problem, to a sub-problem, to a sub-sub-problem, and you think that in the end your work has become so obscure it is next to useless. PhD research is ridiculously specific. There are a hundred experts in a hundred, tiny obscure fields. In order to come up with anything original, or anything that you can accurately test, you have to be so particular the point has been lost.
- You are committed to five years of near pennilessness. PhD candidates make so little it makes their monetary value seem almost laughable. You are not even likely, except for the few and far between, to earn much prestige and an above-average salary. So why do it at all?
See “Why Getting a PhD is Worth It, Or Why It Isn’t,” Part 2 of the PhD Process