by Alan Tyson
Fourth Year PhD Student in Music Technology
When I started my PhD program in 2016, I knew how it was going to go. I knew how long it would take. I knew who my advisor would be. I even had a general understanding of what my dissertation topic would be. All I needed to do was follow the plan, and everything was going to be just fine.
Here’s the thing–I walked into my PhD extremely ambitious. Ambition is a good thing in most cases. It keeps you moving forward. In my case, however, my ambition led me to spell out my entire graduate school career before it even started. Although my intentions were good, being overly ambitious led to little room for flexibility.
I am currently in my fourth year. My experience has been that being flexible is just as or maybe even more important than being ambitious. Let me explain what I mean.
When I first started graduate school, one of my goals was to master coding so that I could create an app that would serve as a grade school classroom learning intervention. I took several strides to learn the right programming language. I met with my advisor on a weekly basis and he was able to help point me in the right direction. Everything seemed okay in the beginning, but there was a problem—my approach was putting me on track to graduate much later than what I initially anticipated. Within a couple of semesters, I was confronted with the possibility of my plans not panning out the way I thought they would. I needed to make some decisions. After much thought and advisement, here were my options:
Option #1- Master a programming language enough to build an app. Who knows how long it will take? Who knows how much money it will cost?
Option #2- Partner with someone from my department or another department who might be interested in developing an app. I’d have to find them first and I’d probably need enough preliminary data to convince them (at that point I had very little).
Option #3- Develop an intervention that is not in the form of an app, but still targets my initial aims.
To be fair, none of the options were bad, but I chose option 3 for a few reasons. First, option 3 would not forfeit my initial goals at all, but it would allow me to move forward at a consistent pace and stay on track to graduate. Side note: always keep graduation at the forefront. As graduate students, we can sometimes become more concerned with completing every goal we set for ourselves without considering that we have a lifetime to contribute to our field. When “getting PhinisheD” is aforethought, you will naturally prioritize accordingly. Remember, later does not mean never. Secondly, option 3 allowed me to focus on the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention through pilot testing. It gave me a chance to incrementally make quick adjustments based on feedback from both teachers and students. One model I use is the technology acceptance model. Lastly, option 3 helped me strategize about how I will collaborate with others in the future. This was huge for me. In my first year as a graduate student, I had a mindset that I had to do everything on my own. I now know the power of collaboration. This approach has given me the ability to focus on strategically presenting strong preliminary data to those who may be interested in helping develop a future app.
I shared a portion of my story to help paint a picture of what balancing ambition and flexibility looked like for me. Circumstances may differ from one student to another. But let’s be honest- grad school is hard. While setting goals (or in some cases, goals being set for us) remember to be flexible. Whatever you do, fight to keep the momentum going, even if that means temporarily simplifying your approach. If everything doesn’t go as planned while you’re in grad school, remember you have a lifetime to contribute to your field and beyond.