My plans to start this blog earlier were mildly derailed by a minor life crisis. I’m downplaying it, but it was really rather huge. Last year, in a similar crisis of conscience, I left my well-paying job to go back to school and complete a PhD.

Fast forward 1 year later and two weeks ago, I initiated the process of downgrading my registration from a PhD program to a Master’s program. I actually had planned to quit completely and walk away with nothing, but my supervisor pointed out that that wasn’t necessary as long as I’m willing to stick it out for another 6 months. So that’s what I’ll do. By the end of the summer, I will have another degree and be back on the street.

Ask anyone doing a PhD, or any university professor, and they will tell you that intelligence has nothing to do with being a successful PhD student. There’s no question in my mind that I could finish the program and get my doctorate. The problem is I don’t want to. Which brings us to the qualities you do need to be a successful PhD student – passion, commitment and perseverance. If you love, and I mean really love, like ‘all I want to do all day long is talk about how awesome or perplexing my research is’ love what you are studying, that will often be enough to carry you through the ups and downs of being a graduate student. When that is not enough, commitment and perseverance will pick up the slack.  Though I think I have enough commitment and perseverance, being in the program made me realize pretty quickly that I’m not passionate about what I’m studying. I don’t want to talk all day long about what I’m studying…in fact, I usually don’t want to talk about it at all. It just seems kind of self-indulgent to me. If I don’t really care about what I’m studying, why would anyone else?

That was the big one, the problem that has no solution other than to study something completely different – which brings me to reason #2 why I’m quitting – I’m not a diver. I recently read a book called I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It by Barbara Sher. Its funny how the things you need most tend to come to you at just the right times. I didn’t even know I had this book and yet I found it sitting on my bookshelf one night about a month ago. Turns out it was a gift from my mother-in-law to my partner a while back. The book points out that society is composed of divers and scanners. Our society values divers, because they are specialists or people who become experts in their field, often in one particular nuance of a larger field. PhD’s are well suited to divers.

Scanners, on the other hand, just appear like they don’t know what they want or can’t focus on anything in particular. But scanners have value too. Scanners are highly adaptable, flexible and terrific learners. I’ve realized that I’m a scanner (with diving tendencies). When I become transfixed by a topic, I dive into it quickly, suddenly, obsessively, almost rabidly, learning as much as I can in a short time. But as soon as I’ve learned enough to become better than the average person, I want to learn about something new. I’m not interested in being an expert in something – I’m happy with knowing just enough to add it to my skills repertoire and move on to something new. One of the most common professions of scanners is teaching. Think about it, teachers are expected to know about a wide variety of topics, but not necessarily be specialists in them (of course, in some cases, the teacher is expected to be a specialist as well).

And wouldn’t you know it, one of the biggest realizations I’ve had so far while doing the PhD is that I love teaching. Actually, I wouldn’t call it a realization, so much as a remembrance. Because the first time I did a Master’s degree, I taught and loved it. And I loved training new employees at my industry job. And now I’m teaching again and it’s the highlight of my week. So recently I’ve sought out more teaching opportunities. I’m now volunteering twice a week tutoring high school students in science. And this blog too, is a form of teaching. I may just have found my calling. Only time will tell. By pulling out of the PhD program, I’ve removed the option of teaching at the college/university level, at least in Canada. I’m ok with that though, because I think the post-secondary system is broken (and I’ll save that discussion for another post). So that leaves high school and adult education as my options as I know I don’t want to work with elementary school children. I can’t apply to Teacher’s College (for high school) until December for entry in September 2013. That’s a long way off but I feel good about it!

Not-yet-so-faithful readers, are you scanners or divers? Or a little of both?

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