What Every Doctoral Student I've Coached Has Taught Me About Finishing

I wasn't finished with my own dissertation yet.

My wife was supposed to sit in as a peer on a student's defense. She texted me last minute. Can't make it. Here's the link.

I was in my Jeep. Top off. Locs flying everywhere from the wind, dripping sweat in the heat. I grabbed a loc soc, threw it on, and logged into the defense on my phone from a parking lot. I looked like I had a doo rag on, and I was not prepared to be on camera. I figured I wouldn't need to be. I was just listening.

Except you have to turn your camera on to introduce yourself.

Camera on. Name. Affiliation. Camera off.

I sat in that parking lot on my phone and listened to the presentation, the questions, the back and forth. And almost immediately I noticed something that made me uncomfortable. I could not identify who the Chair was. The student's biggest advocate, the person who signed off that this student was ready to stand in that room, was invisible to me in the conversation. And the conversation itself was going sideways.

The committee was all over the place about Bias. Round and round, nobody naming it clearly, nobody offering a fix. I sat with it as long as I could.

Then I turned my camera back on.

Excuse me. If I may. What I hear you describing is Bias. And this is a simple fix. Have the student write up what Bias is, how it impacts studies, and how to mitigate it.

I turned the camera back off.

I remember thinking, who are you talking to right now? There are doctors in that room and you just walked in from a parking lot in a loc soc and solved the problem. I hadn't finished my own dissertation. I had no business being that clear. But I was.

That moment planted a seed I wasn't ready to trust yet. Imposter syndrome is a something else, because I had almost convinced myself it was a fluke. A divine moment that didn't count because I hadn't earned the title yet.

Nine months later, I finished. I was Dr. Wolfe.

And then a text came in from a friend. A student needs your help.

I said cool, let me see what's up.

Data Analysis.

If you have read my other posts, you know what Data Analysis almost did to me. NVivo, MAXQDA, Dedoose, SPSS… None of it made sense. I cried. I had full adult temper tantrums. All anyone would say to me was figure it out. I spent nights on YouTube until one video, one person with an Excel spreadsheet, finally cracked it open. I built my own spreadsheet and mimicked her every move until I understood what I was looking at.

That was one of my lowest points during the doctoral process.

And it was the first thing a student needed help with after I finished.

I said yes anyway. Because I knew what that moment felt like from the inside. I knew what it felt like to have no idea what the data was telling you, to feel like everyone else in the program had figured something out that you somehow missed, to hear figure it out and want to throw something across the room. That student did not need another person telling them to figure it out. They needed someone who had already been in that exact hole and knew the way out.

We worked through it together. The student finished the section. That was my first real client.

Here is what those two moments, and every student since, have taught me about finishing.

The ones who finish are not the ones who never struggle. They are the ones who are determined to finish even when they are struggling. Challenge is not the variable. Determination is.

The ones who come to me closest to the edge are almost always afraid of failure. Not lazy. Not incapable. Afraid. And fear dressed up as procrastination or avoidance or writer's block looks a lot like giving up from the outside. It is not the same thing.

And the thing that surprises me most, every single time, is that every doctoral student thinks they are alone on this journey. They think everyone else has it together. They think the struggle they are carrying is evidence that they do not belong. It is not. It is evidence that they are human, doing one of the hardest things a person can do, without nearly enough support.

You do not have to figure it out alone. That is not a weakness. That is wisdom.

I figured that out in a parking lot in a loc soc before I even defended. It took me a while to trust it. But it was true then, and it is true now.

If you are in the middle of your doctoral journey and you are tired of hearing figure it out, that is exactly what PhinisheD Doc is built for. Book your free discovery call today.

Coach Adriann