Dr. Steve Tippins tells recent PhDs that your doctorate is a union card opening doors you didn't expect. Your original reasons for the degree often shift after defense. The skills and credibility work in academia, industry, teaching, or research, so stay open to where the degree actually takes you.
Part of the reason I encourage people to take time is you went into a doctoral program with a goal. I want to get a doctorate and I want to change the world. I want to be a tenured professor at an R1 institution. And we all have these goals and they help us finish, but we are different people. And I've had clients come in and say, I'm never going to be involved in academia. That's okay. I want a doctorate. It's a personal thing. And they get all done and say, you know, I really like this process. I'm going to go be a teacher and a scholar. I'm going to do research and do things. And also you don't know what opportunities are out there. You don't know now that you have the degree, the Union card as I like to call it, you now get to sit at tables you never sat at before. And there's going to be opportunities you never dreamed of that are going to come to you. So, allow those to happen. Allow yourself to be open to those and understand that you have the abilities and capabilities to do all of this now.
