Planning I Interviewed My Mother\'s

¶ … Planning

I interviewed my mother's friend Millie, who got a Ph.D. In educational psychology at the age of 45. I asked her why she did it. It was a lot of work, and she had a very good job as a social worker for special needs students. She said she had a master's in social work, and that she had specialized in mental health when she lived in California, but she felt that her position as a social worker in education wasn't terribly challenged. She also said that she was still very interested in psychology. However, in education, she said, the social worker doesn't do much with mental health. Mostly she helped parents deal with bureaucracies to get supplemental help they might need, such as social security assistance, or food stamps, or housing. While she knows these things are important, it wasn't what took her into social work. So she enrolled back in graduate school at the age of 42, while she had a child in middle school, to get her Ph.D. In psychology.

Millie feels she had a slight advantage over some of the other candidates preparing for the qualifying exam. She had some coursework she needed to take to fully qualify herself, and she felt that doing so much of that work so close to the time of the test helped keep information current as well as fresh in her mind. It was no burden to her to read up on the current literature. She also said she was lucky in that she had to master statistics and do a research project to get her master's degree. She said that some of the other candidates hadn't had to do that. She really felt that having that preparation at the master's level prepared her well for the Ph.D. program.

The one place she really had to work hard was with the language requirement. Although her program only required one language, the standard language for Psychology is German, she said. She found German difficult, and ended up hiring a tutor to help her with the study. The emphasis on the test was in translation, which she said is easier than speaking or writing. She had to brush up on statistics and research methodology, because it was some time since she had taken those courses or used them, but felt that her master's level work made it much easier for her.

I thought it was interesting that Millie was not at all intimidated by entering a Ph.D. program at the age of 42, but she was confident she could do the work. Her husband is an economics professor, and maybe that helped, since she had the moral support of a spouse who had not only done it himself but who guided other graduate students.

However, Millie found getting her dissertation proposal approved a daunting task. Millie wanted to look at the diagnoses of special education students classified by schools as "behaviorally disordered," looking for patterns of consistency and inconsistency. She recognized that this diagnostic category presented some difficulties, because there were no I.Q. Or achievement tests that could define who did and did not have a behavioral disorder. While there are some normed instruments, they were based on subjective judgments.

She had to work carefully to make sure the administration of the school district did not feel threatened by her research, because she needed their full cooperation as well as signed releases from the parents of any child whose diagnostic information was evaluated. She also needed the district's cooperation at many points. For instance, to get a randomized population, she needed to use their data base so she would have a balanced representation of boys, girls, ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds. She finally had to eliminate socioeconomic background because the students diagnosed as behaviorally disordered were far more prominent among the economically challenged.

One advantage she says she had came from changing fields. She had read so much current research she had a good idea of how to write her proposal.

Millie said that the single most important thing for her was to have a dissertation advisor who made sure she got a good start with her research design. She heard from a friend at another school where the advisor let him start with a sloppy design. He ended up having to leave his first topic and start in an entirely new direction. He lost a year's time of work he could not use.

Millie reported that defending the dissertation was stressful at first but really not difficult, because her advisor de sure she had done things right before she ever got to that point. The defense was more like a discussion among almost-equals. They suggested a couple of places where she might publish the final results.

There are a couple of important lessons for me from Millie's, and her friend's, experiences. Her friend got into trouble with his dissertation partly because he did not come into the process knowing much about either statistics or research design. Millie felt that she would have realized her proposal wouldn't work, but her friend did not.

Second, Millie is a very organized person. She talked to other people who had earned Ph.D.'s, and set herself a realistic timeline. She didn't put unrealistic expectations on herself, but she didn't allow herself to dawdle. Since she was in education, she planned her work so she could do more of it during the summer.

However, she also had to work within the framework of the school district that provided the data. This data wasn't available to her during the summer, so she had to plan carefully. She was a frequent visitor to her advisor's office. She asked as many questions as she could, and discovered that sometimes a question she asked would trigger a recommendation from her advisor that she hadn't thought of, such as ways to follow up with parents who don't respond to a request to use their child's educational data. I don't have as strong a background in statistics and research design as Millie. In addition her husband knew a great deal about both. He also knew a lot about getting students through Ph.D. programs, so it was almost like having two advisors.

It seems from Millie's example that it might be much easier to complete a dissertation while living close to the campus. This allowed her to lay materials out in front of her advisor.

Third, Millie had outstanding support from friends and family. Her husband already had a Ph.D., and her daughter was a bright young lady who understood the importance of education. They did not seem to resent it when she had to put in unexpectedly long hours.

It seems to me from looking at Millie's experience that the initial preparation is absolutely crucial. I may need to do what she did and hire a tutor - both for languages and for statistics. It seems that Millie's fairly complete understanding of the statistical methods that applied to her field made the dissertation process much easier for her.

It's also very clear that no one gets a Ph.D. By him or herself. While I will be the person who gets the diploma, it's clear that I won't be able to do it without the help of numerous other people. I will have to gather data from some place. I will need a very carefully thought out timeline. If I need to get permission to use data from many individuals, as Millie did, that will take a considerable amount of time.

A also need to think carefully about expenses. Millie had to mail out three hundred permissions to use data to parents. Many of the families had moved or were otherwise hard to find, so she needed to start with a large number. She estimated that she only used about 40% of those she initially tried to contact. Once she established who she would use, she had to mail questionnaires to them, and provide stamped envelopes for their return. People entering Ph.D. programs may not realize that there can be hidden personal costs to completing their dissertation research.

Overall, what Millie had was a detailed plan. She didn't just have a plan to get into graduate school and then to graduate. She had a plan for each step of the way. She found out what coursework she needed and chose courses that would make her studying for comprehensive exams easier, not take her off in a different direction. She got help where she needed it - in her case, a German tutor. That was another hidden expense that people might not think of.