June 29, 2010
A Right Question
“Why are you doing a PhD?” – Drs. Manigault-Bryant and Walton encouraged the first-year students to find the choruses in our praisesongs for the Ph.D. We were in search of, as Dr. Walton succinctly identified, our animating impulse for the next four to ten years. I first said out loud: “I don’t know.” I then gave pieces of the puzzle in an effort to make narrative meaning of my presence. The “I don’t know,” at the moment, felt like enough. Indeed, Dr. Iva Caruthers challenged this year’s group of motley doctoral fellows with a charge: we do not have to know the right answers to the wrong questions, Caruthers contended. Rather, we are able to say “I don’t know” in the face of the right questions.
“Why are you doing a PhD?” – a right question.