Not That Kind of Doctor - Introduction

TLTE Author

10/17/2022 Added

1 Plays

Description

Introduction to Not That Kind of Doctor - Ph.D. discussions with Nicholas Husbye and Guy Trainin. www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor and https://mediahub.unl.edu/channels/42980

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:00.000](upbeat music)
[00:00:09.085]So, I told you about my grandmother, right?
[00:00:11.400]And how, throughout her entire life,
[00:00:13.440]she was very excited about the fact
[00:00:15.450]that I was the first in my family to go to college,
[00:00:17.970]I was the first in my family to go to grad school,
[00:00:20.250]I was the first in my family to get a doctorate,
[00:00:22.590]and every single time she'd introduce me,
[00:00:26.220]she would say, "Oh, this is Nick.
[00:00:28.530]This is my grandson.
[00:00:30.009](Guy giggling)
[00:00:30.842]He's a doctor!"
[00:00:32.430]Which would always make me feel very proud
[00:00:33.810]until she would get to the comma part, right?
[00:00:37.170]That part that comes after that where she'd be like,
[00:00:38.917]"But don't get too excited. He's not that kind of doctor."
[00:00:41.420](Guy laughing)
[00:00:42.630]Yeah. And that's our show.
[00:00:43.740]And that's our show!
[00:00:45.127]"Not that Kind of Doctor."
[00:00:47.340]Right. What do you do with a PhD?
[00:00:51.960]How do you navigate grad school?
[00:00:53.430]How do you think about the job market?
[00:00:55.290]What kind of jobs can you actually do?
[00:00:58.380]Particularly with a PhD in education
[00:01:00.210]which is what Guy and I both have.
[00:01:03.540]And that is really something that we've been working
[00:01:07.170]with for ourselves, right?
[00:01:09.151]We've been PhDs, we work towards it, and then we got it
[00:01:13.680]and then we were like, what are we gonna do with it?
[00:01:16.200]And then we kind of figured that out.
[00:01:18.690]I mean, I've been doing this for 20 years.
[00:01:20.820]I mean, would you say you figured it out?
[00:01:22.080]'Cause I still feel like I don't know what I am doing.
[00:01:25.140]Like, what does PhD adulting look like?
[00:01:28.500]So, I've figured out a little bit more, maybe.
[00:01:31.350]Or maybe I'm just filling it because now,
[00:01:33.180]I'm full professor so it's like,
[00:01:34.860]I should at least pretend
[00:01:36.150]that I figured this out,
[00:01:37.140]but every year and every person I work with,
[00:01:39.510]I learn something new.
[00:01:40.920]I feel like this is an okay boomer moment,
[00:01:42.780]where you just shamed me as a PhD millennial
[00:01:46.110]and I don't know that I appreciate it.
[00:01:48.030]All right. I'm sorry then.
[00:01:50.040]No, that's okay.
[00:01:50.873](Guy laughing)
[00:01:52.470]So, we're gonna have some cross-generational-
[00:01:55.665]Conversations. Conversations.
[00:01:56.820]Generational? Are we really generational?
[00:01:58.560]I dunno if we're generational.
[00:02:00.660]But we can cross.
[00:02:01.680]We can cross.
[00:02:02.513]And we have students and people that we've worked
[00:02:06.210]with that have graduated and got jobs in and outside
[00:02:09.270]of academia because we're not just gonna talk about
[00:02:12.510]what happens if you want a job in a research institution
[00:02:15.390]or even in a teacher education institution.
[00:02:18.690]We're gonna talk about what are the other options out there
[00:02:21.150]and there are other options out there.
[00:02:22.740]There's tons of other options
[00:02:23.970]and some of which I still don't know of, right?
[00:02:26.850]Because when you get a PhD, like,
[00:02:28.620]you're essentially replicated
[00:02:31.200]to be exactly who your advisor was, right?
[00:02:35.700]Well, it can happen that way, but it doesn't have to.
[00:02:38.070]You can be really goal-oriented and think about the options
[00:02:43.830]and I think about it as opening as many doors as possible
[00:02:47.340]so when you graduate,
[00:02:48.960]you have some options and you don't have,
[00:02:51.334]"My whole life, I wanted to become a professor
[00:02:54.300]and this is not going to happen,"
[00:02:55.770]and there are lots of reasons when that doesn't happen.
[00:02:59.070]Really? Your whole life you wanted to be a professor?
[00:03:00.900]No, actually I never thought about it.
[00:03:03.510]I really have never thought about it.
[00:03:05.580]My family, both my parents are veterinarians
[00:03:08.820]and my dad was a researcher and I've never thought about it.
[00:03:12.900]This happened when I got into graduate school,
[00:03:16.610]in the United States, into my master's,
[00:03:19.650]and my first conversation with my advisor was,
[00:03:23.292]you're gonna stay for your PhD.
[00:03:25.500]And I'm like, I'm here for one year to get to master's.
[00:03:28.050]This is all I'm doing.
[00:03:29.340]So, I have the right credential to do the work
[00:03:32.460]that I was doing.
[00:03:33.330]I was working with students, especially college students,
[00:03:38.520]with learning disabilities, and somebody gave me the advice,
[00:03:41.730]actually, Malcolm Margolin from Tel Aviv University,
[00:03:44.610]one time at a meeting, she said,
[00:03:45.787]"Who are you and who are you to talk to me about that?"
[00:03:48.870]And I said, "Well, I'm a teacher
[00:03:50.910]and here's the things that I've done."
[00:03:53.400]And she's like, "That's fantastic!"
[00:03:54.660]You never want to have that conversation
[00:03:56.670]about who you are with every person you meet
[00:03:59.700]and that's why you need a graduate degree, but at the time,
[00:04:02.730]I thought I need a master's.
[00:04:04.260]So, I came for a one year master program
[00:04:06.900]at University of California Riverside.
[00:04:09.390]Huh.
[00:04:10.650]And I got recruited in my first meeting with my advisor.
[00:04:15.180]It's like, no, we're gonna make you stay
[00:04:17.100]and you're gonna get your PhD.
[00:04:18.990]And I'm like, okay.
[00:04:20.880]This explains so much about you now though.
[00:04:22.824](Guy chuckling) Yes.
[00:04:23.657]As I'm thinking about you with master students,
[00:04:24.490]you are like, you should get your PhD.
[00:04:26.280]Yes.
[00:04:27.163]See? Replication!
[00:04:27.996]Somewhat replication, but also,
[00:04:30.960]I've had so many conversations
[00:04:32.520]about this that I always say, no, you don't have to be me.
[00:04:37.650]Maybe you don't want to be me, but you don't have to be me.
[00:04:41.220]There are so many other careers
[00:04:43.680]and options out there that you want to consider
[00:04:46.770]and so that's why we're doing this is
[00:04:50.910]because we wanna talk about all the options and also, again,
[00:04:54.720]think about myself.
[00:04:55.620]I'm on the border of being a boomer.
[00:04:57.270]I'm not quite a boomer,
[00:04:58.350]but I'm not quite anything else either.
[00:05:00.277](Nicolas laughing) I hope that, sorry.
[00:05:02.657]I hope you don't feel like
[00:05:04.127]I was insulting you. No, no, no! No way!
[00:05:06.570]By the way, I will take it on, but I'm very aware,
[00:05:12.150]I think you are more than me,
[00:05:13.590]but I think I'm very aware of the fact
[00:05:15.660]that we're not sure where universities are going,
[00:05:17.790]where teacher education is going,
[00:05:19.320]and also where tenure and that whole system is going
[00:05:23.730]because there are states that are moving away from that,
[00:05:26.460]at least for the public institutions.
[00:05:28.110]There are other places where things are happening.
[00:05:30.360]So, it's a really interesting look
[00:05:32.730]to how do you think about,
[00:05:37.170]what you were talking about with med school early on,
[00:05:41.024]is how do you hedge your bets
[00:05:43.590]and have some options
[00:05:44.880]so you're not stuck into this idea of one career.
[00:05:47.700]I had a student years ago who walked
[00:05:49.440]into my office and said, "I want you to be my advisor."
[00:05:52.620]I'm like, this is great!
[00:05:54.390]She was my first advisee. This is fantastic!
[00:05:58.050]And she says, "And I know what I want to do.
[00:06:00.360]I want to get this job
[00:06:01.650]at this university five years from now."
[00:06:05.220]And that's when I had to stop and say,
[00:06:07.477]"This is a fantastic plan,
[00:06:09.330]but this is not really a life plan
[00:06:11.490]because you are narrowing this
[00:06:13.440]to something that is so specific.
[00:06:17.700]I don't know if it's gonna happen for you.
[00:06:19.140]I mean, I wish it would happen
[00:06:20.760]for you because that's your dream, but it may not."
[00:06:24.570]And she's actually finished and through life events
[00:06:27.510]and other things, that has not happened for her,
[00:06:29.940]but she's done many other interesting things
[00:06:32.520]and she'd had a career that I think she's very happy about,
[00:06:35.910]that she was very satisfied as a leader
[00:06:38.640]in a number of places doing different things.
[00:06:42.180]So, this can happen and can help
[00:06:46.230]and it's a great way to think about a second wave,
[00:06:49.770]or even a third wave,
[00:06:50.760]in your career because many of our doctoral students
[00:06:53.418]have taught for a while,
[00:06:56.460]are doing this as an opening
[00:06:58.500]to what comes next in their career.
[00:07:02.580]And beyond that, there's also the question of, like,
[00:07:03.960]how do you manage your PhD program,
[00:07:06.360]particularly as a grad student, right?
[00:07:08.430]Yeah.
[00:07:09.263]And I think we have slightly different,
[00:07:12.120]but complementary ways to think
[00:07:13.830]about how we support-
[00:07:15.348]Mhm.
[00:07:16.181]Students and things that we want our students to be doing.
[00:07:19.500]I'm a little bit more spreadsheet-based, I would say.
[00:07:22.260]Yes. Yes, you are.
[00:07:23.921](Nicolas laughing)
[00:07:25.560]Which is great!
[00:07:26.393]I think that that really provides a strategy.
[00:07:29.550]I mean, and it's planful.
[00:07:33.220]Yeah.
[00:07:34.053]I think, as a first generation college student who,
[00:07:37.080]you know, has kind of beaten the social science odds
[00:07:40.170]and actually am doing better than, as an elder millennial.
[00:07:44.160]See, that sounds even worse than boomer, elder millennial.
[00:07:47.209](Guy laughing)
[00:07:49.260]As, you know, an elder millennial who's actually done better
[00:07:52.290]than his parents, that bar was low, but still,
[00:07:56.280]it's an accomplishment, right?
[00:07:57.600]Like, I'm a bit more probably planful, I think,
[00:08:01.860]than sometimes what I see elsewhere
[00:08:04.620]because I had to be so careful about where I put my energy,
[00:08:10.980]where I put my resources,
[00:08:12.060]in terms of the education that I was getting
[00:08:15.990]and the jobs that that would lead to.
[00:08:17.880]I needed a decent ROI
[00:08:20.580]and I needed to do it as efficiently as possible.
[00:08:23.550]So. And-
[00:08:24.383]And I didn't know what I was doing.
[00:08:25.380]I had no clue what I was doing.
[00:08:27.750]And I'll be honest.
[00:08:28.740]So, I didn't know what I was doing
[00:08:31.050]in a whole variety of different ways,
[00:08:33.030]but because both my parents were doctors,
[00:08:37.329]doctors of veterinary medicine.
[00:08:39.120]My dad actually had a PhD, and-
[00:08:41.430]So, they also weren't that kinda doctor.
[00:08:43.200]But they were not exactly that kinda doctor,
[00:08:45.900]but they were that kind of doctor adjacent.
[00:08:48.203]Mhm.
[00:08:49.036]And I lived, I mean, I grew up with all of that,
[00:08:53.880]but that really, in many ways,
[00:08:57.090]did not help me when I got to graduate school
[00:08:59.340]because my parents have graduated as I was born, right?
[00:09:07.080]So, literally, I mean, my mother was-
[00:09:09.636]Like, as they're crossing the stage.
[00:09:10.950]Yeah, basically.
[00:09:11.910]Here's your diploma. There's a little baby guy.
[00:09:13.110]Yes, my mother gave birth
[00:09:15.480]to me while interning as a veterinary doctor
[00:09:21.750]and so we never talked about it.
[00:09:26.250]I mean, there were assumptions about it,
[00:09:27.700]but there were no stories,
[00:09:29.520]so I had zero strategies going to graduate school
[00:09:32.430]and I was an international student,
[00:09:34.380]which means that I was planful in other ways
[00:09:37.350]because it was very clear to me,
[00:09:38.670]as somebody who came with a family.
[00:09:40.560]So, I had two kids and I was married.
[00:09:42.840]I had two kids, and young, two and four,
[00:09:46.470]and we come to a country with no resources,
[00:09:51.060]with no ability to take on debt.
[00:09:52.710]So, and that's a blessing in a way
[00:09:55.290]because we had to figure this out without
[00:09:58.239]this idea that you can just borrow until you are done.
[00:10:03.450]So, that spurred me to be planful in other ways
[00:10:07.110]and to want to graduate really quickly, maybe too quickly,
[00:10:11.130]which is a conversation I have with students.
[00:10:12.900]You want to graduate at the right time.
[00:10:14.232]There's a time where the peach ripens and it's just right.
[00:10:19.500]You've gotta have enough things done and enough things
[00:10:22.470]that prove your capacity
[00:10:23.970]because if you go faster than that,
[00:10:25.800]than when you're applying for the job,
[00:10:27.510]you don't have the goods.
[00:10:28.710]Mhm.
[00:10:29.543]Because the goods are not just, you have a degree.
[00:10:31.590]The goods are, did you publish
[00:10:33.090]if you want a research position?
[00:10:34.758]Did you publish? Did you present?
[00:10:37.470]Did you teach?
[00:10:38.880]There's a whole host of expectations that, unfortunately,
[00:10:42.840]are not always discussed
[00:10:44.130]and this is what we want to talk about here, I think.
[00:10:46.410]Right.
[00:10:47.269]This is what we talk about to our graduate students.
[00:10:48.660]Yeah, 'cause we have a wealth
[00:10:49.890]of knowledge between us and a variety of
[00:10:52.140]approaches.
[00:10:53.062]And we hope-
[00:10:54.070]We know a lot of people
[00:10:55.540]Yeah.
[00:10:56.373]Who have done really cool,
[00:10:57.420]really interesting things with their PhD,
[00:11:00.660]with their graduate career,
[00:11:02.730]and their post-grad folks who have moved in and out
[00:11:06.360]of tenure track positions and have decided
[00:11:09.660]to do something else entirely,
[00:11:11.400]who have moved into the private sector and then moved back
[00:11:14.490]into a kind of professor experience.
[00:11:17.160]So, we're really excited to think
[00:11:21.030]about how to make that communication,
[00:11:25.050]how to make that information about how these systems work
[00:11:28.410]and can work and the possibilities for interacting
[00:11:32.760]with those systems differently, more widely available.
[00:11:36.720]So, stick with us and we'll talk about how you become
[00:11:41.490]and what you do once you are not that kind of doctor.
[00:11:44.680](upbeat music)
[00:11:45.930]Listen to them Middle East white men.
[00:11:48.191](Guy chuckling)
[00:11:49.207](upbeat music)

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Not That Kind of Doctor - Introduction

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments