Why Many Ph.D. Students Will Never Finish
And, many that do never find joy
Many of you just began your doctoral journey. Some of you are already second-guessing your decision to seek a doctoral degree, and here is the scary truth.
According to the Ph.D. Completion Project, almost half of you will never finish. And, for those of you that do finish, you may struggle to find joy or fulfillment in your subsequent work.
We all know that the doctoral journey is supposed to be an intellectually stimulating and challenging experience. Attrition rates, however, nearing 50% are unacceptable.
Over ten years ago, when I was a doctoral student, I remember many instances where I almost gave up. One example stands above the rest.
It was my very first class, and I was unable to follow the discussion. So, I chose to remain silent. I had made different connections, and I had gotten something completely different from the readings than anyone else. For the first time in a long time, this experience triggered feelings of inadequacy. Apparently, I had missed the point, and I suddenly felt like a fraud.
I was in the midst of an emotional and psychological storm, and I didn’t even know it. As a result, I had no clue how to weather this storm.
Many Ph.D. students who find themselves in situations similar to mine (i.e., in the storm without recognizing it and, thus, not mounting a healthy response) never finish.
I survived, and I did finish. But, I am just now, nine years later, finding joy in my work as a tenured Associate Professor. Nine plus years to find joy — not so with you. In a few minutes, I will reveal a 3-step hack that will help you master your emotions and do far more than just weather the storm.
The Emotional and Psychological Storm
Financial uncertainty … large workloads … competing obligations … no work-life balance … issues of comparison … concerns about how you are perceived by your peers … the desire for perfection … pressures to perform … uncertainty about your future …
The stressors associated with the doctoral journey are many, and, as a director of a doctoral program. I have seen the corresponding emotional exhaustion wreck the health of far too many students.
What about you? Are you experiencing feelings of inadequacy and limited self-worth? Are you experiencing heightened levels of stress and anxiety?
If so, you are not alone. Recent studies by Research Policy and Nature Research have shown that 50% of doctoral students experience emotional and psychological distress, and one-third are at a high risk of developing a mental health disorder such as depression.
These studies probably understate the problem a bit. In general, according to the American Institute of Stress, about 33% of people report feeling extreme stress, 77% of people experience stress that affects their physical health, and 73% have stress that impacts their mental health.
According to the American Psychological Association, physical symptoms of stress include fatigue, headache, upset stomach, and shortness of breath. Psychological symptoms include irritability or anger, feeling nervous, a lack of energy, feeling as though you could cry, and sleeplessness.
My body tries to tell me something is off and sends signals of distress through excruciating headaches and shoulder and back pain.
So again, what about you? What is your body telling you about your emotional and psychological state?
Subconscious — Concealed Beliefs
In my example above, I suffered from another common sign of psychological distress among doctoral students known as “imposter syndrome.” I began questioning my abilities that day, and I felt like a fraud.
My silence or hesitancy to speak up, a hesitation that continues to this day, stemmed from the worry or fear that someone would find out that I did not belong.
It turns out that the feelings that surfaced that day were merely the conclusions that I had made about myself long, long ago. I’m not smart enough. I’m incapable.
These conclusions formed when I was labeled a troublemaker as a young child because I was so bored and acted out in elementary school. The experts interpreted this as a learning disability and put me into special reading courses where I was separated from my friends.
The conclusions were later confirmed or reinforced in my mind when my high school guidance counselor unknowingly squashed my dreams by suggesting that I consider going to the local community college to learn a trade.
Does any of this resonate with you? Well, the famous psychologist, Daniel Goleman, says that the “inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy.”
We are at their mercy because, as Dr. Bruce Lipton, the stem cell and DNA scientist, found in his research, about 95% of what we do in our day-to-day life is controlled by our subconscious. This means, as stated by Gary John Bishop:
The path you follow through life is one dictated by your deepest, most inconspicuous thoughts.
Like me, you have made conclusions about yourself. And, if you are honest with yourself, you may have been at the mercy of those conclusions (i.e., true feelings) for far too long.
These conclusions tend to act as self-imposed limitations that rise to the surface and rule the day when we are under the most stress.
When they rule the day, we might engage in self-sabotage or quit. Or, as in my case, we might choose to suffer and live in a constant state of self-doubt (i.e., no joy) and engage in poor behaviors that numb or distract us from the pain of our true feelings (e.g., substance abuse, overeating, overspending, unhealthy relationships, labeling ourselves, etc.).
Your unconscious or subconscious, according to the psychiatrist and author of Letting Go David Hawkins, will only allow you to have what you believe you deserve. Pause for a moment and give this idea the deep thought it deserves.
I hope you paused for a moment and are starting to see how your true feelings and conclusions — your underlying belief systems about what you can have and what you deserve — are directing your life and how you show up and perform daily.
So, what have you concluded about yourself? Are you unknowingly at the mercy of your true feelings? If so, your doctoral journey may be in jeopardy. And, your joy is most certainly lacking.
Developing & Tapping into your Emotional Intelligence
For most of the nearly 50% of doctoral students that never finish, it is almost certainly not a matter of willpower or intellect.
Instead, it is a lack of clarity about what they have concluded about themselves; likewise, for those who have finished their degree but are struggling to find joy in their subsequent work.
You may not have given it much thought, but, as a doctoral student, you were sifted for your intellectual ability (i.e., the admissions process).
Doctoral education is the height of educational achievement. And, at the top echelons, as stated by Daniel Goleman, “a high IQ becomes a “threshold” ability, one needed to just get into … the game.”
To stay in the game, however, you will need to develop and tap into your emotional intelligence (EQ). This is where you will have to dig in and do the deep thinking and hard work to unearth how you have limited yourself.
Self-awareness — recognizing a feeling as it happens — is the keystone of emotional intelligence … People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives. — Daniel Goleman
The rest of this article will reveal a 3-step hack that will help you master your emotions and create the conditions for success.
Step 1: Dig Deep & Unearth the Conclusions You have Made About Yourself
Like so many others, are you struggling to finish your doctoral degree and find joy in the process, or your subsequent work?
If so, as intimated by the author of “Personality isn’t Permanent,” Dr. Benjamin Hardy, you are going to have to face some uncomfortable truths about yourself and take ownership of your life.
Your struggles, as Hardy argues, may be the direct result of “buried trauma keeping you trapped in your past, shutting down your confidence and imagination.”
For most of you, this trauma is planted in minor incidents and conversations, more so than dramatic, life-altering events. “Incidents and conversations that limit your view of who you are and what you can do.”
It took a while for me to uncover my own trauma. As covered above, it was my placement in special reading courses as an elementary student and the separation from my friends, coupled with how I was treated by my teachers.
My conclusions — I’m not smart enough. I’m incapable.
So, again I ask you, what have you concluded about yourself?
Take a long, hard look at those times in your life when you struggle the most, as directed by the author of several New York Times bestsellers on dealing with the self Gary John Bishop. What feelings rise to the surface? What are the automatic, reactionary thoughts that you have when suffering setbacks?
Bishop asks, what do you say to yourself about you in those situations? He argues that you must be crystal clear about
What that thing is, how it feels, how it influences [your] moods and [your] outlook, and the potentially devastating impact it can have when it is left to rampage its way through your life … Awareness of this mechanism will allow you to live a life outside of its grip …
Don’t rush this step. Dig deep and do the hard work of unearthing what you have concluded about yourself. Once you have done so, can you go back and connect it to its origin (i.e., a minor incident, conversation, or a dramatic, life-altering event)?
This, step 1, is the hard, foundational work of achieving self-awareness.
Step 2: Adopt a Growth Mindset
Now, what should you do with your newfound level of self-awareness? Well, let me ask you another set of questions.
Do you think that your personality (i.e., who you really are — your “true” self) is something that must be discovered? Or, is it something that you can decide for yourself and cultivate or develop over time?
These questions reflect the differences between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, as studied by psychologist Carol Dweck. In Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck writes:
As you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another — how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road.
The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
The truth is that almost all of us operate from a fixed mindset. In the TED Talk “The Psychology of Your Future Self,” Dr. Daniel Gilbert says, “human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.”
So, like me for so many years, you may have fallen into the trap of a fixed mindset. This trap is the forfeiture of your ability to choose or decide for yourself the life you want to live. Have you have resigned yourself to the “misguided hunt” to discover your true self? For most, this turns out to be an “indecisive journey to mediocrity,” as communicated in “Personality isn’t Permanent,” by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. He goes on to state:
Instead of focusing on what you can do to enhance your life, you’ve merely tried to discover or understand why you’re disabled or limited. Instead of improving yourself, you’ve submitted to simply accepting yourself for who you “really” are.
Have you fallen into this trap? Here is one way to know that may resonate with you. Have you taken any personality tests in an attempt to better understand yourself? Meyers Briggs? The enneagram?
If so, what labels are you now applying to yourself? Do you use any of those labels as an out when confronting difficult situations?
Well, let me illustrate using my past. I took a personality test, and it told me — I am an “introvert.” So, guess what. I suddenly had an out — an explanation for why I tend to choose silence and avoid unscripted interactions.
So, from a fixed mindset, there is little-to-no value in doing the hard work outlined in step 1 above. Even worse than that, this label boxes me in. It stunts my growth, preventing me from seeing alternatives.
Your labels, as communicated by Dr. Benjamin Hardy in a recent article for the Harvard Business Review, leave little room for change and growth.
Stop clinging so tightly to your labels. You are not a finished product. The choice is before you. Will you continue to conform, or fall, to the level of your labels? Subconsciously, will you continue to be ruled by what you have concluded about yourself (see step 1)? Or, will you adopt a growth mindset and start creating your desired future self.
This, step 2, will give you the mindset that you need to interrupt the influence of your underlying belief systems and have a real and powerful say in how your doctoral journey, and more importantly, your life goes.
Step 3: Let Your Desired Future Self Be the Guide (i.e., Prospection)
People tend to align their actions with how they see themselves. Behavior change requires identity change. — Nir Ayal
To interrupt the subconscious affirmation of unhealthy labels and the conclusions you have made about yourself, awareness coupled willpower is not enough.
Rather than saying what you’ll not do when those feelings arise, according to Gary John Bishop, “it is important for you to say what you will do to interrupt the drift of your automatic.”
Developing such a plan for what you will do may require imagining a different future that includes an identity change.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. — Buckminster Fuller
In a Harvard Business Review article, Dr. Benjamin Hardy stated it this way:
It’s much easier to default to the present than to imagine a different future. But if you don’t take the time to imagine who you want to be, then you’ll reactively become whatever life drives you towards.
Put simply, your behavior in the present is largely shaped by your view of your own future. If your future is clear, exciting, and something you believe you can create, then your behavior in the present will reflect that.
We are all in a constant state of becoming. So, let your desired future self be the thing predicting your current behavior — not your past.
In other words, you can be drawn forward by your desired future self (i.e., prospection). So, who do you want to be? And, what is your future self telling you to do right now?
You must continually ask yourself these two questions. Even amid self-doubt (i.e., emotional and psychological storms), let the answers be your behavioral guide.
Your behavior signals back to you the type of person you think you are, solidifying your identity and eventually becoming your personality. — Dr. Bejamin Hardy
