Dear list,
I also "studied sideways" moving from professional practice (and MDes in
Communication Design) to a Ph.D. in Rhetoric. And that sideways move to
Rhetoric was, as Geoff and Klaus have also said, incredibly enriching in
the way that you might expect when one set of assumptions confronts
another.
But for me, rather than issues of salary and career (which are also
critically important) , it was the following quote from the article that
hit home in terms of what helps to make a graduate school experience
successful. The author quotes Golde:
"Why did you admit me?" the student asks. "Why did you come?" the
department counters.
"It's like a bad dating situation," says Ms. Golde. "No one is taking
responsibility for the match. Instead everyone needs to take responsibility
for the match."
Based on my own experience, taking responsibility for the match means that
the advisor recognizes his or her crucial role as the person who must
springboard the process from course work to exams to proposal to finished
dissertation. Springboarding means that in each step along the way the
advisor must ask questions that help the student move from "felt
difficulty" to broad question, to narrow research question to even narrower
finished dissertation.
The student must be willing to explore that felt difficulty, to understand
that the arena of felt difficulty is not an easy place to reside. Students
also need to trust that with reflection and study, felt difficulty does
move to an understanding of some small part of the world -- some small area
in which, as my advisor used to say, "one's ignorance is made more
beautiful."
Perhaps therein lies part of the problem for students who have never
failed. If answers have always come too easily, and if the strange nature
of this process isn't sufficiently forecast, that that arena of felt
difficulty might quickly and simply become uninhabitable.
Best wishes,
Susan
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Susan M. Hagan, Ph.D., MDes.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213
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