At some point in your program, it’s likely that you’ll have an existential crisis. When this happens, you’ll begin to question your sanity for even getting involved in this whole “PhD thing” in the first place.

For me, this was roughly the spring of 2009. At that point I felt like I was in a very long, very dark tunnel. I was right around the halfway point in my studies with two kids, a wife, and a full-time job. Who does this to themselves? I don’t need a PhD. I can do almost anything I want to do in my career without one! I mean, what do I want to do? Publish papers in journals no one will even read?

Had I been not so far along, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have quit. I felt like I was too far in to turn back but too far from the end to see the “light.” I reasoned that if I quit, I’d hate myself forever. So the only way out was through. I focused on my love of learning and the reason that I, personally, had decided to embark on this journey: The prospect of contributing to changing an aging system and being paid to learn and write. In truth, a job in higher ed is probably a long way off for me since I truly love what I do in my school, but I like knowing that when I’m ready I’ll have the option.

If and when you begin a PhD program, you can be almost certain that you’ll question yourself at some point (or points) along the way. Try to keep in mind that you’re in a marathon, not a sprint. It requires moderate, sustained effort over a long period of time. Heck, if it was easy everyone would have a PhD.

Here’s the thing: You can always find a reason not to get your doctorate. A corollary of this is that there is never a good time to begin. There will be kids, bills, mortgages, and a myriad of other things going on. But the time will pass, whether you’re in grad school or not.

When the doctoral doldrums hit, consider taking a semester off to rejuvenate. Change up your schedule. Take an online class or something outside of your college.

Most important: Stay focused on why you started on the journey. You had your reasons.

“Academic alignment” is a phrase that I’ve been using with increasing frequency to describe our efforts to maximize our use of instructional time at my school. Ira is someone whom I’ve admired for some time and whose work always engages and excites me and, while I’m not quite ready to rip the clocks off the wall, his recent post on undoing academic time hit my Twitter feed at exactly the right time.

This year we have allocated larger blocks of time to 4 longer blocks; each is about 90 minutes long. In the past, the school operated on a 6-period day with significantly shorter class periods. In order to accomplish this, we took a look at our data, “faced the brutal facts,”¹ and committed to focus — at least in the short-term — on math and literacy. Each of our students receives 90 minutes of math and literacy every single day. Science and social studies are taught for 90 minutes every other day or for a semester².

I believe that the closest thing we in education will find to a “silver bullet” are time and instruction. Purposeful adjustments to those two levers can pay dividends that exceed any canned academic program. I shared the graphic below with the staff and challenged them to dream up ways to see less of the orange circle. Now that we have adjusted to our new schedule, the remainder of this year and beyond will see our focus shift to maximizing every student’s academic learning time during that 90 minutes.

Our priority will be on a common academic language that communicates a culture of high expectations and academic excellence. We will also identify and adopt school-wide systems that are aligned from classroom to classroom. I made the comparison to Starbucks. You can go into any Starbucks and, while they all look a little different and have their own personality, there is never any doubt that you’re in a Starbucks. They don’t change the latté recipe. A Venti is still a Venti. The menu looks the same. The customer knows what to expect and doesn’t have to re-learn the menu every time they’re jonesing for a caramel macchiato.

At the end of my presentation, I asked the staff to reflect on a simple question: What do we want to give to our kids? I’m truly motivated and ready for the work that we have ahead. It’s good work and it’s important work.

1. I don’t care for that phrase. Sometimes the facts are not pleasant, but the word “brutal” is just so… well… Brutal… [↩]
2. During our pilot year, some teams teach science and social studies on an A/B rotation and some flip classes at the semester. [↩]

The first thing you really have to do is start taking some classes and get familiar with the faculty. I had the good fortune to have had a good relationship with one of the Associate Professors on the educational leadership faculty. This helped immensely when I was getting started. The best advice he gave me was to identify a focus area as early in your program as you can and make sure that you tailor as much of your research as possible around this area¹.

I’m [obviously] interested in technology leadership. One of the “rite of passage” classes I was required to take focused on educational policy. Dry and dull, right? How are they connected? Well, I ended up writing my final paper in the class on DOPA, COPA, CIPA, and COPPA and how the relationship between these pieces of legislation and E-Rate funding are commonly misunderstood or misapplied. The benefit of doing this is that when it came time to really identify a research focus, I had assembled a solid body of literature on which I could draw for my Lit Review².

Once you’ve been accepted, it is also a good time to seek out the person who will be your adviser. In some programs, you may not have a choice. In others, you may have to choose within a certain window of time. The best advice is to get to know as many faculty as you can in your first two or three semesters.

Bonus Tip: Of all the books I read and was forced to read over the program, the best one — and the one I wish I’d owned when I first started — is “Complete Your Dissertation or Thesis in Two Semesters or Less.” I think this is an unfortunate title because it’s not something a first year PhD student would naturally pick up, but there is some very practical advice in the book for students at all stages of the program and even for those who may be pondering whether a PhD is for them.

1. This doesn’t mean you’re making a life commitment, but if you have a broad area in which you’re interested it’ll help. A lot. [↩]
2. The Lit Review you will have to write for your dissertation will usually be Chapter 2 of the final product. As much of this as you can get out of the way ahead of time, the better. [↩]

Here’s a confession: For the first year or two of my studies at CSU, I had no real idea what completing a PhD entailed. No one told me. It’s sort of like an exclusive club where no one really tells you the rules before you join.

Let me give you the quick and dirty on what my program (and I believe many others in the US) looked like.

The degree is 90 semester hours. That sounds intimidating until you learn that 30 hours usually come from your masters program and 15 hours are dissertation credits. That leaves you with about 45 semester hours of coursework to tackle. No small feat, granted. But if you’re going to do this you need to know what lies ahead.

Your 45 hours of coursework will be made up of a few different kinds of classes. Some of them will be research methods classes. These classes essentially teach you how to do valid research. In my program, I was required to take courses in both quantitative and qualitative methods. Some are very general and provide an overview of the methodological approach. In my opinion, these are good classes to take while you’re relatively new to the program because they will help you get your head around the kind of research you may want to do.

Other methods classes are more specific and deal specifically with a particular flavor of one of the methodological approaches. For instance, I took a class that specifically focused on narrative inquiry¹ Still others focus on quantitative strategies, including one course at CSU in which you can spend an entire semester learning the ins and outs of the ANOVA procedure.

Bonus Tip: Methods classes, especially quantitative methods classes, tend to involve less writing. The ones I took rarely involved a substantial paper at the end of the term. If you’re going to take two classes in a semester, I suggest balancing a content-focused class with a methods class.

Another subset of the classes you’ll be expected to take will focus on your major². In my program, these included courses with names like “Leadership,” “Teaching, Learning, and Professional Growth,” and “Educational Policy.” These are often very heavy on the reading and writing and you should think twice before taking two of them at a time while trying to work and actually spend time with your family.

As you approach the end of your coursework, you will eventually transition from being a “grad student” or “doctoral student” to being a “doctoral candidate.” I liked this. It made me feel like I was actually getting somewhere. I was frequently reminded in my program that about 50% of PhD students never receive their degree³. Some portion of those “drop outs” end up ABD⁴ because they make it as far as the candidate stage but can’t close the deal.

In order to become a candidate, you need to have completed most of your coursework and take what is commonly called a “preliminary exam.” These are different from school to school. I’ve also heard them called “comps.” Essentially, it is an opportunity to show your committee that you are ready to take on your own research. In my program, I had four weeks to write a research article from start to finish and then defend⁵ it. This basically meant that I had to field questions about what I did, why I did it, and how I could have done it better. For me, this was scarier than the dissertation phase because you have zero guidance and come into the meeting cold. At least with the dissertation, your committee will have seen drafts along the way and you can reasonably predict what they’re going to ask or tell you.

Once you’re a “candidate,” all that stands between you and your PhD is that pesky little paper called a “dissertation” or “thesis.” Here’s the rub: You are paying for the privilege of writing your paper at this point. You are no longer attending classes regularly, yet you are enrolled in those 15 credit hours I told you about at the beginning of this article. I have a hunch that this is where many ABDs lose their momentum since they are no longer accountable on weekly basis and are essentially on their own timeline.

Although there are always exceptions, the general rule of thumb is that your dissertation will have five chapters: Intro, Lit Review, Methods, Analysis, Conclusion. Before you will be allowed to actually do the dissertation, however, you have to “propose” your dissertation. My proposal consisted of the first three chapters of my dissertation basically outlining the problem, presenting a review of the literature, and describing how I plan to conduct my research. Once my proposal has been successfully defended⁶, I can go about collecting my data and writing chapters four and five.

Once all of that is finished, it’s time for the “Dissertation Defense.” This is a lengthier, two-hour-ish meeting in which you present your study to your committee (and, at CSU, anyone else who happens to want to come as they are open to the public). Once you’ve done your bit, the committee can ask you questions. After that, they send you out of the room and talk about you behind your back. At that point, the next thing you want to hear is your adviser coming to get you and calling you, “Dr. Such-and-Such.”

So that’s a pretty thorough description of roughly what to expect if you decide to take the plunge and start a PhD program. More to follow!

1. This is a flavor of qualitative research that, at its most basic, focuses on gathering research that tells a story. [↩]
2. for lack of a better word [↩]
3. http://guidetogradschoolsurvival.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/phd-completion-rates/ [↩]
4. “All but dissertation” [↩]
5. There’s that word again. Remember, “defend” really means “meet with your committee and discuss.” [↩]
6. Again with the defending? [↩]

As of last August, I am officially a PhD Candidate¹.

The bulk of my (non-work) time since I presented my prelim to my committee² in August has been spent working on what grad school folks refer to as the dissertation proposal.³ I completed this last month and am set to defend⁴ it in a few weeks. In the meantime, since I can’t actually start working on my research until my proposal is approved AND I receive approval from the IRB⁵, I figured I’d try to squeeze out a few blog posts. Since this PhD thing is what’s been consuming a significant amount of my time, that seems like the most relevant thing to post about at the moment.

In the interest of keeping me on track for a while with my blogging, I figured I’d put together a simple series of short posts with some advice and experiences that may prove useful if you are an educational leader considering embarking on a PhD program. I have no idea how many installments I’ll come up with, but feel free to ask any questions that you have as well.

Every school is different, but since I have been contacted by a few fellow educational leaders on the Twitter asking about the PhD program, I figured I’d hit the highlights. I can speak only from my own experience as someone who is nearing the end of his program so YMMV.

Expect the first installment tomorrow. I promise.

1. This is higher-edu-speak for “someone who has taken all of the classes that he or she can possibly take and passed his or her preliminary exam and now has no excuse not to sit down and write that darn dissertation he or she has been pretending doesn’t exist.” [↩]
2. Yes, you get your very own committee. At CSU, you are mostly free to choose your own committee. There have to be at least four members. More on that later. [↩]
3. Essentially, you write a plan of what you will do for your dissertation. More on that later. [↩]
4. The word “defense” sounds a bit intimidating, right? Again, it’s higher-edu-speak for what basically amounts to a meeting with your committee in which you lay out your plan for your study. [↩]
5. The “IRB” is the Institutional Review Board. Their job is to make sure that any research conducted using human subjects is done ethically and with minimal risk to the participants. [↩]