Finding joy in the doctorate
Dr Abigail Parrish
A doctorate, as Charles Dickens might say, can be ‘the best of times’ and ‘the worst of times’; ‘the age of wisdom’ and ‘the winter of despair’. In other words, it can be a bit of a rollercoaster! If you have developed your own doctoral project, as most students in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield do, then you probably start with an idea of what you want to research, and how, but what you end up doing might be quite different. You will have to get to grips with the literature, what other people have done and thought and said, and how and why they have done things the way they have. Once you’ve got a decent understanding of all that, you need to figure out how it relates to your project, and work out what you’re going to do. You may not really have much sense of where you’re going until you actually get there. In short, it’s a challenge!
So how do you keep going through all the challenging terrain you will encounter? How do you find the motivation to get up every morning and work on this big, amorphous project? I think the answer to that can be summed up in one word: joy. You have to find the joy in it. Because a doctorate is joyful, wonderful, exciting, as well as all the other things it might be. You are not just learning new things, like you might in a masters course, you are creating new things. The knowledge you create through your research will be something that no one else has done before. You will be linking concepts in new ways, trying new methods, developing new research instruments and finding out things that no one has found out before. You’re not just reading about your field, you’re putting yourself right in there and pushing at its boundaries. Sure, when you’re in the middle of it, it can feel messy, confusing, overwhelming, but when you figure it out: amazing. What a joy!
The research that I do shows how important this is. I work with Self-Determination Theory to understand what motivates people to learn a language, particularly in schools. This theory tells us about the importance of intrinsic motivation, and having intrinsic goals, for success, perseverance and wellbeing.
When we are doing something which is aligned with what we believe is valuable and important, we are more inclined to continue, to be motivated and engaged, and to thrive. Hopefully this is how you feel about your doctorate! We hope that your project is one that you think is important. If you feel that you enjoy it, and it’s fun, then even better — this might not be the case every day, but the more joy you find in what you’re doing, whether at a micro scale of individual tasks or a macro scale of the whole project, the more positive the experience will be. In terms of goals, ask yourself why you are doing your PhD, EdD or DEdCPsy. If the answer is because the doctorate, or the skills and knowledge you develop, are something you want for yourself, something you value and think is important, then great. If it’s more about doing what you think others expect of you, or for instrumental goals such as a better salary, you might find it harder to persevere when the going gets tough.
So, with all that in mind, if I were to give you one piece of advice as a doctoral student, it would be this: find the joy.
Dr Abigail Parrish is the Deputy Director of MA Education Programme
