The doctoral student test
There’s a lovely section in John McPhee’s 2017 book Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process in which the long-time New York Times columnist and commentator talks about a test that was developed by Robert Bingham and Sara Lippincott to test the mettle of prospective NYT fact checkers.
’What we want are people who… already know that there are nine men in a batting order, what a Republican is, and that the Earth is the third planet form the sun. That being got past, it helps if you speak French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian, read classical Greek, have low blood pressure, love you fellow man, and don’t have to leave town on weekends’ (147).
For years now I’ve applied a similar test to prospective doctoral students because if a PhD is anything, it’s a test of every facet of your academic personality.
Here’s my list.
To do a PhD in good time and to a high standard, you will need to:
Write well, quickly and often
Be a good editor of your own work
Be able to manage your time and work to tight deadlines
Read widely, so that you can reach beyond the narrow confines of your field
Have a strong grasp of relevant process and theory
Be highly organised
Be doggedly determined and resilient
Be enthused by the prospect of critique
Be creative and imaginative
Be positive and hopeful
And, of course, you need to have a good idea.
As a general principle, I believe you can get away with being a bit patchy on two or three of these at Masters level. But a doctorate — if it’s worth the parchment it’s written on — will find you out if you fall below par on any of these.
If you drop the ball on any of these for any length of time the demands of the doctorate are so well calibrated to push people to their scholastic limits that you will likely lose ground faster than a long-distance runner with a stress fracture.
There’s no particular hierarchy to this list. You will need them all, all the time.
Perhaps I’m thinking more seriously about this list as I approach a point in my lecturing life where I have to think seriously about taking on new doctoral students. An 8-year commitment to someone today will take me to my official retirement age. As Marilyn Monroe said; “It makes a girl think!”
I’ve certainly spent far too many hours in the past massaging and cajoling students through the rigours of the PhD when, if I’d been more honest with myself and with them, I would have seen that they were missing a vital piece of the puzzle, and relieved them of months, or, in one case years, of stress and disappointment.
That’s why I don’t now take on anyone I don’t already know really really well.
You have to know in your bones that they’ll be able to cope with what’s coming — especially if they have work commitments, young families, and complex social lives.
But find someone with all of the tools in the toolbox and a killer idea, and the doctoral journey can be one of the most thrilling and fulfilling experiences of anyone’s academic lifetime.