Life after the doctorate

Hi all,

I haven’t been on here lately as a result of lots of things happening with regards to work and study, but while browsing I came across the post from 2011 about life after the doctorate. I’m not quite there yet but hopefully I can see some spark of completion on the horizon – having scheduled a few weeks off work to go to the peace of the Irish seaside and do nothing but think, write, eat, and sleep PhD, and perhaps take strolls on the cliffs where I can also think PhD. So I’ve kind of come on here as part of the psyching up process over the next few weeks.

Hopefully when I come out the other side of this trip, I’ll be closer to finishing, and closer to the unfamiliar world of life on the other side of the doctorate.

It’s something I have been thinking about a lot as I come towards the point of thesis submission, and the knowledge that my life is probably going to remain more or less the same before and after.

That’s not intended to be a negative point. On the contrary, for me doing the PhD has been an exercise (nay, a vocation) in building up a particular set of skills which in my present field (English for Academic Purposes) are not necessarily linked to career progression in the material or hierarchical sense. I would hope that I have become a better writer, a more critical reader, and a practitioner of research-informed teaching and teacher development. I have also developed in the ability to engage in, and interpret, dialogue with others, and then to present their stories in a less judgemental way once that process is complete. Perhaps too, I have learned to incorporate the values of doctoral research into my life, and so even though we complete our doctorates, the lessons live on with us just as much as those mornings of rising early to write and read.

A few months from now, I won’t have that enforced discipline of the past few years. Perhaps I can go to the cinema and the theatre again (the pub too) without thinking “mmmm, if I get home after ten and need to get up at six, that’s less than 8 hours sleep, so maybe I’ll just go to bed early -again.” Of course between now and then – there’s the small matter of getting everything finalised for submission, hoping it reaches an acceptable standard, and going into that daunting viva.

So whatever happens it has been an enriching experience, and one that has left me a little greyer, smarter, and more conscious of methodology, methods, ethics, panels, paradigms et al. I guess after 6 years I’d have been greyer anyway, even without doctoral studies, but possibly not smarter!