PhD Persistence

I'm a part-time student, full time employee, wife, friend and dog owner. I have no graduate assistantship, I am female and I am 32-years old. I am the "changing face of graduate students" Polson speaks of. I am determined to finish the HALE PhD program. Is determination enough?

Nettles and Millet researched PhD persistence on a variety of levels including financial support, gender, ethnicity, focus and more. What they did not investigate was student motivation and determination. My critique of this article lies in the power that such motivation can hold. Regardless of whether I receive the coveted "three magic letters" or not, I find it difficult to group students into such black and white demographic boxes. I know of the necessary, but really feel that people are more than what they appear on paper. This research is certainly informative, but I find it to be one-dimensional and wonder if it would be more useful as a mixed methods look at the whole student, not just their race, gender and bank account (along the lines of Polson's work).

Perhaps I'm still trying to get the hang of this whole PhD thing, but quantifying people is a huge challenge for me as a researcher, as a student and as a person. I think I'm a qualitative gal.