PhD

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Hi,

I'm interested in hearing from those of you who may be studying towards a PhD, or have completed one. Did you find that there were personal challenges that arose due to your ASD? I haven't applied to do one, it's been suggested that I do one, and I would be somewhat interested, but I don't know if it's for me, or at least, maybe not now. I think for me the challenges would lie in areas like stress and anxiety management, staying on track/focused, communicating with a research supervisor and other students, teaching, presenting the work, and so on. Of course, these issues are not unique to those of us on the autistic spectrum, and I'm sure most if not all PhD students have experience times of huge highs and some pretty big lows in their work. It would be 3-5 years of my life, if not more. I do have a few areas I'd be interested in, but I haven't explored the topics since finishing my Masters degree. Nor have I worked out how much it would cost, what the application processes are, or what colleges might be worth looking at.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States, Former president of Princeton University said verbatim: University politics is the worst kind there is. Depending on the people in the department, it could be a really good or hellish experience. people who are complete idiots and a**holes with a PHD are the most deadly sort. They have a maligned personality with ego their Doctorate can't cash and they have tenure so they are are untouchable. You really should find out all you can from other people. In other words dig up as much gossip you can find, good and bad. Its not the greatest thing yes, but I listen to gossip and critically analyze it before i accept it as fact. best to try to be indirect, asking seemingly innocent or unrelated questions about a person. you know what I mean?

I just got accepted into a PhD program for the fall of this year. I have been debating some of the same things you mention: stress mangement, communication, organization, etc.

I will say that this last semester of Master's work has prepared me better than I had hoped. I have been able to get to know a couple of professors who are very likable and trustworthy. Since I am in the special education field, they are more openminded than most about my "unique" communication style and have been very encouraging throughout.

Maybe you can do a bit of research about what field you could see yourself intensely studying for 4 or more years. I think it would be something that you are passionate about so that the harder days feel worth it. Also, finding a good mentor to model yourself after would be good. I have been able to pick up some extra social graces that I did not have before!

For myself, I think preparing well ahead of time, by making obsessive plans and to-do lists helps to ease my mind about what is coming next.

Also concerning cost: any program that is worth the effort should offer you a stipend and tuition assistance of some kind to cover most if not all of the cost. The reasoning is that all of your hard work ultimately makes the university look good, and helps attract more research funding and students.

Best of luck!

Here's my story. Perhaps it tells you something about potential problems AS/ADD person may meet.

I was accepted into a PhD program on the first day of 2006.

I spent first four years by trying to find me a suitable topic. Despite of being extremely motivated student, I had always had difficulties to find my own direction in my field. Nothing seemed to feel right. So it was eventually around four years until I could manage to start working with the thesis. Before this I had several failed attempts. During this time I completed some other (but not many) credits related to my PhD program and studied languages a bit.

Difficulties in making decisions is an Autism spectrum symptom present in some people. I guess this is what had made it so difficult for me to choose the topic. Here is something about the matter: http://www.examiner.com/article/decisio ... s-with-asd

After I managed to start working with my thesis, I worked five days in a week (usually studying something else during the weekends). Due to my severe ADD symptoms, I have always been extremely slow student but I have compensated this by working a lot. Now, after three and half years of working, I have around 220 pages written though I'm afraid that the whole thing has gone wrong. This spring my working has been extremely slow and this week I've eventually decided that I need some vacation for the first time (during which I try to write some newspaper articles probably). However, my brain is shunning the thesis to the extent that I am not sure if I am ever able to finish it. And even if I do someday, I have no any idea if getting a PhD will ever bring me any benefits.

Of course. I have not had any kind of research funding so I have lived with minimum welfare income in a terrible noisy resident shared by various people. After a few courses we had, I have worked alone in libraries without being able to see other people from my field (just my supervisor, whom I have met like once in a year or more seldom) so I have no any kind of social networks. I have no idea whether I have any chance to get any research type job even if I got PhD so I'm wondering all the time whether I could have done something more useful during these seven or eight years. I have no idea whether it is possible to work in PhD level jobs with my ADD symptoms.

If you don't think a PhD is right for you right now then don't do it until you are ready. It will be the most grueling experience you will ever have. I am not being mean, just realistic. I don't mean grueling in a bad way, it is more like an odyssey. I had a lot of fun times in graduate school but it was really hard. You said you already finished your Masters so it is a similar experience of that but more years with a extremely hard defense at the end.

I started my PhD program in biology in 2006 and just finished in 2012. At one point a colleague a year before me had trouble with her car so I helped her get home. She busted out crying. It happens to everyone the emotional roller coaster of a PhD program. You will go through every possible emotion during the time.

The hardest part with me was in communication with other people. Science is very collaborative now and I don't like to collaborate. I want to find the discoveries myself. It was very hard to do this and I still have trouble with this now.

Also, have a clear path of what you want to accomplish with a PhD. It is not just a piece of paper that hangs on the wall. It is something to get what you want. First ask what do you want and then find out if a PhD will get you that.

Feel free to ask me anything.

Make sure that it'll get you a real job. Be that in industry, government, an NGO, or as a tenure-track professor. Nothing is worse than doing all that work for no reward. That is precisely the fate for an alarming number of PhD students nowadays, and it's only getting worse.

Don't listen to the scare tactics about getting a PhD. Yes, by specialising you might take an opportunity cost and find a dead end, but if you go to a good school and publish a fair amount you will be just fine.

It certainly can be a challenge but hey what isn't for us?

Presently I am undertaking a transfer from my Australian PhD program to a US one and have now spent a year in each system. My advice would be to expect to work hard, don't do the bare minimum and start publishing as soon as possible... I mean, start in undergrad if you can. Write blogs on your subject, send your best work to the best professors, join the academic organisations, go to conferences and NEVER waste a summer break.

I did all the coursework I needed, but never did the research. My committee chairman left and nobody else that was available had the same interests.

There was one other prof who's interests were even more in line with mine, but he was officially going to retire at the end of every year I was there. As it turned out, when I gave up and left, he retired, too.

Doing a Phd will dominate your life for a number of years. It is an apprenticeship into doing research. Find a topic that really interests you, and a supervisor that is well known and has published in the area.

As an aspie we have certain advantages, ability to delve deeply into a subject etc, but also a number of disadvantages such as problems with making decisions.

Work out if it is worth the effort for you, it does take quite a while.

It is rewarding, if you can get papers published and get to go to international conferences, as you will meet many other people who have the same interests there.

Unless you really want to do, don't! It takes over your life while you are doing it. It can also be very rewarding, and be great for building confidence in yourself.

I went into it because I was trying to get over the depression and lack of self-worth after a failed relationship. It worked.

It may depend on the field, but I feel like the biggest issue is that like 80% of people with a Ph.D at least within the psychology field are a**holes. Obviously there are many exceptions to the rule, but it often breaks down to the fact that a person has the organization skills to go through with the research required for a Ph.D and little else, and they have a wildly inflated view of self-importance as a result.

I (obviously) don't have a Ph.D but I do have a masters and am the de facto "head" of a guerrilla psychology department at a DD facility in which there is no full-time clinical psychologist, and it's wild to me how often I hear during teleconferences people justify their disagreements with literally anything by saying "they can go get a Ph.D, then they can talk to me".

s**t makes me sick.

Although to be fair, on the flip side, just last night I was drunk and smoking herb and having deep anthropological discussions with a guy that is up for his Ph.D in an unrelated field, the dude was kind of overbearing but was brilliant and, for lack of a better way to put, it he just knew random stuff and was having these discussions with me so he could talk sources and find new books from which he could learn more.

I dunno, I feel like that's how it should be, but that's seemingly predominately not the case.

I think it depends on the PhD but mine is really flexible which is great for me. I found it really hard at first because of the lack of structure and not knowing exactly what I was meant to be doing, but am now a year in to a part-time PhD and it's finally starting to make sense (this year was really hard though). I'm doing creative writing but with a strong theoretical influence, and I'm doing a mix of short stories and poems about concepts of identity. The writing is based on my special interests (atm fairy tales, Alice in Wonderland and running) mixed with identity theory and physics which I'm also really interested in. I love the depth of research you can do

Your advice is actually quite good. At the same time, the cautionary tales one does hear should be given some credence. You can do everything you were supposed to do and more and still end up in the lurch. 10 years ago there wasn't as much to worry about, but since the crisis hit, it's like a nuke went off. It's the worst academic job market in 30+ years; some of the reasons are longstanding, but the crisis was the catalyst for the present situation, which is dismal.

With that said, if you think you have a shot, make sure you really really do have a shot, and then take it. Don't just assume you do (I use the pronoun "you" generally, I am not referring to anyone specifically), make sure you do.

On specialization: check the job listings. Which specialties are departments hiring for? More importantly, which specialties are they not hiring for. True academic freedom, if such a thing exists, really doesn't set in until tenure. Do projects that will please hiring committees and that you can live with. If they fall for it, keep it up until you get tenure and then you can cackle with glee as you unveil your true evil plan.

On going to a good school: I believe it was Noam Chomsky who said that the more scientific the discipline, the less that institutional pedigree matters relative to the quality of one's work. Granted, there's more to the story than that, but the further over you get towards the liberal arts (the "fuzzy" side, let's say) the more it matters that your program is up there in the rankings. A crude generalization, to be sure.

Conferences: go to conferences. I get the impression this matters even more if you're towards the fuzzy side. This is almost as important as publishing.

Exit plan: have an exit plan. Were it not for a change in my life's circumstances I would have jumped into an MPA program. Hell, I wish I could do that right now but it's not in the cards. Still, having that Plan B helped me sleep at night. I have a Plan C but it's going to take several years to realize; until then, my existence is going to be more precarious than I would have liked.