How to Stay In: Three Lessons From My Doctoral Journey

Before I spoke, one of the doctoral students introduced me.

She talked about my accomplishments, my work as an associate professor, evaluator, scholar-practitioner, and leader, and some of the experiences that have shaped my career. As I listened, I found myself having an unexpected reaction.

I was thinking about the woman I had been before any of those things were true.

I had not mapped out this career. I had not envisioned all the places my work would eventually take me. I hadn’t even planned to earn a PhD.

I was walking the path God put in front of me.

Sometimes I walked confidently. More often than I probably admitted at the time, I walked with trepidation. I could usually see the next step, but rarely could I see very far down the road.

And somehow, standing there listening to that introduction, I could see more of the road behind me than I ever could while I was walking it.

Getting into a doctoral program is an accomplishment. But getting in is only the beginning.

At the Each One, Reach One: HBCU Doctoral Success Experience, my part of the program was called How to Stay In, framed around persistence, balance, feedback, and accountability.

As I thought about what I could offer doctoral students, I realized I didn’t want to give them another list of strategies for getting through graduate school. I wanted to tell them something about what staying in had actually looked like for me.

My doctoral journey really began before I ever enrolled in a program.

I was in a season of change. I had gotten divorced, moved across state lines, and was creating a new life. I had achieved a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction with a concentration in mathematics and was teaching mathematics at a high school and community college.

A PhD was not part of some carefully constructed career plan.

Then I met the parents of a friend. Both had PhDs. The mother asked me a simple question:

“Karen, have you ever thought about getting your PhD?”

I hadn’t.

But she planted a seed.

Curiosity led me to investigate programs, take the GRE again, visit universities, and eventually enroll at NC State.

Getting in was one thing.

Staying in would require something else entirely.

1. Do not confuse being challenged with being incapable.

One of my earliest challenges was writing.

That may sound strange because I already knew how to write. My background was in chemistry and mathematics, and I had written plenty of scientific reports.

But I was moving from the physical sciences into the social sciences. I had to learn a different way of constructing arguments, engaging literature, using evidence, and communicating as a scholar.

I earned a B in one of my first courses, largely because academic writing in this new discipline was so unfamiliar to me.

At the time, that felt significant.

Looking back, I understand it differently.

I knew how to write. I did not yet know how to write as a social scientist.

There is an important difference.

Doctoral education puts us repeatedly in situations where we are not yet proficient. Feedback can feel like evidence that we aren’t capable, particularly when we are surrounded by accomplished people who appear to know exactly what they are doing.

But not yet matters.

Your argument may not be developed yet.

Your methodology may not be defensible yet.

You may not know how to write the chapter yet.

Being challenged is not the same thing as being incapable.

Part of becoming a scholar is learning to remain present long enough to learn what we do not yet know.

2. Perseverance is not a solo act.

My doctorate took seven years.

During those years, life did not politely wait for me to finish.

I worked full time. Funding changed. Relationships changed. I experienced the deaths of two close friends. One died from cancer. Another was murdered. He was also in my doctoral program, and we had taken our classes together.

His death affected me profoundly. For a period, simply trying to return to campus triggered tremendous anxiety.

I took a semester off.

Today, when I talk about perseverance, I am careful about equating it with simply pushing through.

Sometimes staying in requires stepping away.

That semester was not the end of my doctoral journey. It was part of it.

And when I returned, relationships mattered enormously.

Most of my blood family lived in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida. My decision to build a life in North Carolina required sacrifice, and not only from me. I know everyone in my family didn’t initially love my decision to move away. Over time, particularly my mother and siblings, they came to understand why the journey mattered to me.

I also created family along the way.

One particularly important community was Sistah Docs, a group of Black women pursuing doctorates at universities across the Research Triangle. Once a month, we gathered at someone’s home. We ate. We laughed. We talked. We understood things about one another’s experiences that sometimes required no explanation.

Many of those women remain my friends 10 to 15 years after completing our degrees.

My doctoral chair provided another kind of community. After coursework ended and students began scattering into the isolation of dissertation work, he created a cohort of people at different stages of completion. We met regularly at the Friday Institute. Someone might be developing a proposal while someone else was preparing to defend.

I could see people doing the thing I was trying to do.

My family didn’t have to understand everything about doctoral education. Sistah Docs didn’t have to provide my scholarly direction. My chair didn’t have to meet every emotional need.

I learned that no one person or group has to be everything.

And that is why one of the most important things I told the students was:

When you feel yourself withdrawing, reach toward someone rather than disappearing.

Ask yourself: Who is on my doctoral team?

Not simply your dissertation committee.

Your team.

3. Balance sometimes means becoming intentional about the life you actually have.

Eventually, I finished my coursework.

And then came the dissertation.

By this point, I was working full time in a director’s position at Durham Tech. The structure that coursework had provided was gone. I needed to figure out how I was actually going to finish.

Being the math minded person that I am, I opened a spreadsheet.

I put in my commitments and responsibilities and looked honestly at the time that remained.

The answer was 12 hours.

Twelve hours a week was what I could consistently give my dissertation.

So that became the plan.

Two evenings during the week and Sunday became dissertation time. You could regularly find me at Hunt Library or at the Nordstrom Café at Southpoint Mall working.

The spreadsheet taught me something I understand differently now.

I didn’t need time from an imaginary version of my life. I needed to become intentional about the time available in the life I actually had.

For doctoral students, particularly adult learners, “balance” can become an impossible standard.

There is work.

There are children, parents, siblings, partners, and friends.

There are people who depend on us.

There are illnesses, weddings, funerals, birthdays, financial responsibilities, community obligations, our own wellbeing and self-care and ordinary Tuesday afternoons when we are simply tired.

The doctorate happens inside a life.

So perhaps the question isn’t, How do I perfectly balance all of this?

A better question may be:

What does the life I actually have allow me to protect consistently?

For me, the answer was 12 hours.

Once I became intentional about those hours, I finished.

Seven years later

I think there is value in saying this plainly:

It took me seven years to earn my PhD.

I initially had three years of funding.

But three years of funding did not mean I had a three-year life.

During those seven years, I worked full time. I learned an entirely different form of scholarly writing. I experienced profound loss. I stepped away. I returned. I developed relationships. I published a journal article and a book chapter before graduation. I found community.

And eventually, I finished.

The degree has my name on it.

But I did not get there alone.

That is why I now think the question eventually has to change again.

We begin by asking:

Can I get in?

Then:

How do I stay in?

Walking Before You Know Where the Road Leads

During the Q&A, the conversation returned to something that had been present underneath my entire story.

Faith.

Looking back, I can see that one of the most important things I did was simply continue walking the path God put in front of me.

That doesn’t mean I always knew where I was going. Quite the opposite.

Someone suggested I consider a PhD. I investigated.

NC State felt like the right place. I enrolled.

Writing was difficult. I learned.

Grief stopped me. I stepped away.

I needed community. I found it.

I needed a way to finish. I opened a spreadsheet and found 12 hours.

One step. And then another.

I felt strong and confident in taking some of those steps and other steps were filled with anxiety.

I think we sometimes look at people later in their careers and imagine that they must have been following a plan that led inevitably to where they are now. I certainly wasn’t.

What I had was faith, curiosity, people who appeared along the way, and enough courage for the next step.

Perhaps that is one of the things age and experience have allowed me to understand differently. I used to think the uncertainty was particular to certain seasons of my life. Now I understand that walking into the unknown is simply part of being alive.

None of us knows exactly what comes next.

We make decisions with the information we have. We listen. We discern. We lean on people we trust. We change course when we need to. We grieve what we lose. We notice doors opening. And, sometimes confidently and sometimes trepidatiously, we put one foot in front of the other.

But somewhere along the journey, I hope doctoral students begin asking:

What am I staying in for?

So perhaps “What am I staying in for?” does not require us to know exactly where the journey will lead.

Maybe the question is also:

What is mine to do in this season?

What is the next faithful step in front of me?

And who am I becoming as I take it.

The woman who first heard someone ask, “Karen, have you ever thought about getting your PhD?” could not have known all the places that question would eventually take me.

And doctoral students today may not yet know everything their degree is preparing them to do either.

So get in knowing you don’t have to know everything yet.

Stay in by building community, honoring the life you actually have, and becoming intentional about your time.

Get out knowing that although the degree may have your name on it, you probably didn’t get there alone.

And then reach back.

Because somebody else’s ability to get in, stay in, and get out may be strengthened by your willingness to reach for them.

Each one. Reach one.

Karen T. Jackson, Ph.D. September 2026