Student Highlights – Summer 2020

Luck in the time of Corona

One Graduate Student’s Experience

One step back, and two steps forward.

Nothing is ever done in isolation, and it is because of the phenomenal advice of mentors I’ve had along the way – first to pursue a Master’s, then how to choose a Ph.D. program, and finally how to change direction amid uncertainty – that even with an unprecedented hurdle like COVID-19 in the way I still seem poised to emerge from this experience relatively unscathed.

I point all of this out because I feel as though it underlines how many things have to go right for those of us fortunate enough (or with poor enough decision making skills) to pursue an advanced degree. It is that combination of luck and support, much more than my abilities, that I attribute to where I am today. So I encourage those who are in graduate programs or who are considering them to listen to and trust your mentors – who may not be your “actual” advisor, but who have your best interest at heart. You are capable of doing it, and no one can do it alone.

In many ways it was my heeding the advice of the right mentors that has left me “in luck.” What you must understand is that when I began searching for places to pursue my Ph.D., my Master’s advisor, Dr. Spencer Platt at the University of South Carolina, encouraged me to search for advisors, not institutions. It is the advisor-advisee relationship that matters when getting your Ph.D., he told me, not the institution itself. With that in mind I restricted my search to only those advisors I had met in person, felt a sense of rapport with, and had been vouched for by their current students. No one can give you a better idea of the experience you can expect with a prospective advisor than their current and former advisees. This shortened my list of prospective institutions from six to two, much more manageable and affordable.

I enrolled in the Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) Ph.D. program at Ohio State in the Autumn of 2017 as an advisee of Dr. Matthew Mayhew and as a Graduate Administrative Associate at the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) working with the Tutoring and Study Skills Services program as the Coordinator for Supplemental Instruction. ODI provides my funding and professional experience while Dr. Mayhew provides the academic guidance, support, and experience that I need. The decision to work with Dr. Mayhew meant that I was brought onto a talented, robust research team with a wealth of experience, and more data collected through various projects than the team alone could handle.

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Pursuing a doctoral degree is not, and not supposed to be, easy. Obtaining any sort of doctoral degree is long, trying, rigorous, and frequently isolating. The process of earning a Ph.D., the highest academic degree conferred in the U.S., is roughly structured as a sequence of: coursework, a candidacy examination, a dissertation proposal, data collection and analysis, writing the dissertation, and ultimately defending the dissertation. The process averages four to six years depending on the field, and whether a master’s degree is required upon entry. Many who start the journey to a Ph.D.  never finish, but this is not because they are not capable but because life gets in the way, their advisor fails to provide sufficient support, or some combination thereof.

Unlike an undergraduate degree, a Ph.D. is not limited to a collection of class credits. The Ph.D. process includes a unique research project that serves to push the limits of knowledge within that respective field. This demands adequate guidance and support, both of which are indispensable to an educational mission. Without them, a doctoral project can fail to take shape, lack appropriate scope, become unwieldy, or any number of other pitfalls, and that is in what we might now call “more normal times.”

Upon completion of coursework the next hurdle is Candidacy. The Ph.D. Candidacy Exam looks different for doctoral students depending on their program of study. For me in HESA it meant having six weeks including Christmas and New Year’s to write four papers, each 20 pages in length, around my topic of interest and which included a methodological overview of how I intended to collect and analyze data, and ultimately how I planned to write my dissertation. In brief, I intended to collect data on students enrolled at an institution located in the Appalachian region over the Summer or Autumn of 2020. I would then use this data and subsequent analysis to write my dissertation. With that in mind, I successfully defended my Candidacy Exam on February 17, 2020 and transitioned from being a Doctoral Student to a Doctoral Candidate. This now meant that I was “ABD,” (All But Dissertation), which is where most who fail to complete the Ph.D. process ultimately withdraw.

Immediately after my defense, Dr. Mayhew advised that I take time to celebrate, but reminded me that it would soon be time to settle into the more serious work of writing the dissertation itself.

With that in mind I went home to South Carolina for Spring Break to see and celebrate with family, and that is when the threat of COVID-19 emerged as a legitimate global concern. I left the Carolinas on Sunday, March 15, and reached my apartment back in Ohio 30 minutes after all of the state’s bars and restaurants had been closed to in-house patrons indefinitely. Fewer than 10 days after that, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issued a stay-at-home order that has only recently been lifted.

This is where the wealth of experience and data provided by Dr. Mayhew and his team flexed its might. It meant that when the question of collecting my own data became highly questionable in the light of so much uncertainty, I had a number of alternative solutions. Although all 80 pages of my candidacy exam were no longer relevant, having a source of data that I could turn to meant that I was able to save around 60 of those pages rather than starting completely from scratch. Not only that, but not having to collect new data will save me an incredible amount of time to compensate for the time “lost” due to COVID-19.

I still have at least another year to go before I’m able to wear the scarlet and grey robes earned by Ph.D. recipients at Ohio State, and even then I may well be entering into a job market rife with hiring freezes in the wake of this global pandemic. Be that as it may, I fully intend to continue leaning heavily on those who surround me and who I know have my best interest at heart. They will continue to inform the decisions that I make on a daily basis.

This is exactly what I encourage those who hope to one day be in a similar position as I am now to do. The only thing certain in life is uncertainty. Rather than reinventing the wheel, learn from those whose opinions you trust because that will help to mitigate as much of the uncertainty as possible and may well turn potential obstacles into potential opportunities. In the meantime stay safe, stay well, and remember that you are never alone no matter how socially distanced you feel at the moment. You can do it.