Lovely husband and I had a debate recently about whether or not doctoral candidates have to ‘suffer’ to get a doctorate. He said ‘yes’, and I said ‘yes, but. What do you mean when you say “suffer”? How much “suffering” are we talking about?’. This question pulls on a few threads related to doing a doctorate that I am going to try and unspool in this post. These threads relate to the transformative potential of study at this level; the purposes of a doctorate; and why we might be doing a doctorate as a life/career choice.

The first thread, the transformative potential of a doctorate, is quite a thick thread to unspool. What even is “transformation”? If we define this as demonstrable change from one state to another – from, say, being less knowledgeable and confident in research to being a confident, capable working researcher – then how do we ‘measure’ this? Can we say, for example, that one candidate is transformed and another is not? This is murky territory because we may have unconsciously held values and ideas about what kinds of transformation should be part of doing a doctorate, which is, in essence, a research apprenticeship.

I would define transformation through undertaking doctoral research as feeling, in yourself, qualitatively different in terms of how you think, read, write, speak to peers and others about your work, and engage in the world of knowledge making. One candidate I met recently talked about how much more analytical she is becoming, in her research and more generally, and how this is changing the way she plans and approaches all sorts of events and interactions she is part of. Another talked about how learning to explain her research to her supervisors is changing her understanding of communication, which for her means being more conscious of what she leaves out and leaves unsaid and might need to take the time to explain so that she is understood. These are useful examples, I think. I felt, when I graduated, like a different researcher and writer altogether, having been challenged on numerous fronts to be more precise, to take less for granted, to challenge my assumptions, to be clear about my reasoning, to consider the evidence with careful skepticism, to ask better questions.

Taking on these challenges and pushing through the self-doubt and struggle can feel a lot like suffering as pain – change can be uncomfortable, and if you have never done something like a doctorate before, it is hard to know what forms of discomfort and crisis are part and parcel of research and writing at this level, and which are not. You have to be challenged to grow, you have to push yourself to step into the unknown, and that can be scary. Research has termed this work ‘threshold crossing’ and argues that there are numerous thresholds we cross in becoming a qualified post-doctoral researcher, both intellectual and thesis-related, and personal/professional. Crossing these thresholds means that we have to exist, for a time, in a ‘liminal’ space, between not-knowing and knowing, between where we are now and where we need to get to. This space is marked by discomfort, uncertainty, self-doubt at times, and to cross thresholds we have to learn to sit with these feelings, keep pushing forward and try to trust that the work will pay off.

This brings us to the second thread, which is the purpose of the doctorate – the university or academia’s purpose, and your purpose in undertaking one. Why do you want to do a doctorate? What is academia using the doctorate for in terms of researcher training, research development, creating new knowledge, etc.? Do your purposes align or clash with what the university, and by extension your supervisors, expect you to do, how they expect you to engage with them, with your research and with your peers, and the extent to which they expect you to lean into the transformative potential of the doctorate? Are you moving in expected and anticipated directions, both in terms of your research and writing, and your professional-personal development? Or, are you resisting transformation, change, liminality, difficult feelings that come with new challenges? If you are resisting, why? If their is a clash, why is there a clash? What are your expectations and how are they different?

There are many different paths through doctoral research – you can do place-based research, industry-focused research, pure research, applied research, practice-based or critical-creative research; you can do your doctorate as a way into an academic or research role, as an extension of an academic or research role you already hold, just because you want the experience, learning and knowledge, or for more instrumental purposes, such as progressing in your career through promotion or finding a new role/career path. This is the third thread I am unspooling here: why you might be doing a doctorate as a career/life choice.

The kind of research you do and why you are choosing to do research at this level will inform how you navigate your doctoral journey. If you are doing a doctorate because your employer told you to or because you need one to apply for probation/promotion, you may not be especially motivated by personal transformation, professional growth and challenge; you may simply want to get the thing done as fast as possible so that you have the qualification youy need. If you are doing it to gain learning and skills to grow or change your career, you may be more open to the wider opportunities and to the challenges that you will face. There is no right or wrong here, or better or worse: my point here is that knowing what your purposes and expectations are, and thinking carefully about the wider academic purposes of doctoral study, can help you to understand and moderate or manage your experience of liminality and challenge. Perhaps this understanding can help you to see your ‘suffering’ as productive and purposeful, rather than pointless or unfair, and see challenges as necessary for you to learn how to design, do and write-up a study that makes a novel contribution to knowledge in your field.

The short answer to the question I posed in the title of this post is ‘yes’ – you do have to endure some suffering to get a doctorate. But, ‘suffering’ needs to be reframed not as hardship and pain that can seem arbitrary, pointless and unnecessary, but as challenge and provocation which is necessary for intellectual and professional growth and development. If the purpose of doctoral research is to create and share new, cutting-edge knowledge through training and educating competent and capable researchers, then those who do this research need to be challenged. That challenge comes with support, though, from supervisors, peers and from communities of practice we can seek out and connect with. Doctoral candidates who actively look for and lean on their support, who make a level of peace with the deeper purposes of the doctorate and the demands they will have to respond to – emotional, mental, intellectual – tend to be happier, feel more productive, and feel more connected with their research and writing. And ultimately, the more our work means to us, the less like ‘suffering’ the challenges we inevitably encounter seem, and the more able we feel to confront them and cross learning and becoming thresholds to what awaits us on the other side.