Teena, this is the best question on this list for a long time. I'd come at in from two ways, as someone also recently completed later in life:
1) I believe that the experience of time between roughly 90% and 98% of any project's overall duration is drudgery. The last 2% you can do on adrenaline and a deadline in shorter projects, but not necessarily a 3+ year one. The ultimate PhD cliche is the marathon metaphor - being 4 km from the stadium does not allow you to sprint with the roar of the crowd, or to change your race strategy. You're locked in. I experienced most of my last stretch in irritation, frustration, and self-loathing, but didn't feel the same way a month after I'd finished.
2) You will have seen some quite different responses to your question on the list. They show that it is true that some PhDs are more like drudgery than others, and this will depend to a large degree on the disciplinary orientations of your supervisors (and yourself) toward positivist models of knowledge. If at the end of the process, on due reflection, you feel that the PhD process hampered your own knowledge development and modes of learning and sharing, then you can be your own kind of scholar and supervisor in the future. That is the essence of doctorateness, anyone who gets through it is charged with the responsibility of both maintaining and reinventing the form for future generations in their own idiosyncratic way.
If nothing else, enjoy the scale of what you have achieved putting it together, and taste the freedom on the other side!
Cheers,
Danny
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http://www.dannybutt.net
+64 21 456 379
On 26/03/2012, at 8:18 PM, teena clerke wrote:
> thank you Tiiu,
> cheers, teena
>
> On 26/03/2012, at 9:26 AM, Tiiu Poldma wrote:
>
>> Hi Teena,
>> You go for it!
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