MAY 22 — The Permanent Head Damage. The Pizza Hut Deliverer. The Probably Heavy (in) Debt.
Malaysia, being truly Asia, will always gush over anybody with a “Dr” in front of their name. Because the way human evolution has occurred in our country, our early primates’ vision turned to gold each time the other ape/hominid/pre-smartphone-user introduced himself as a doctor.
This phenomenon still occurs today. Just watch: Malaysians (especially those in the corporate world) are neurally wired to flinch a few milliseconds when they find out they are in the presence of a dude or dame with a PhD—it’s like OMG, the air’s starting to shine, it’s beautiful…
For this, and other less noble reasons (not least the glut of education providers in the peninsula; it used to be, “Throw a stone and you hit two Bachelor degree graduates”, now it’s “Throw a stone and you hit two universities”), the PhD will remain an enamouring option unless and until an article is published proving that people with PhDs tend to die of laksa poisoning.
Anyway, if you’re one of those who’ve been looking around for a suitable programme, here’s the best piece of advice you’re gonna get: Never do your PhD part-time.
Well, maybe not never. You may proceed with your part-time plans if you’re a psychotic loser like me who was so fascinated by my topic that I was reading and studying that s*** in train and planes, while watching football, during business meetings (so sue me), in the toilet, while climbing the Great Wall, etc.
Unless you’re like me — basically, unless you enjoy the kind of life in which you have no life—you really should go full-time.
(Look, even if you are an OCD lost cause like me, be prepared to do a lot of waiting during your studies because it’s very unlikely that your supervisors can or will even want to keep up.)
But, if you’re normal AND you still insist on doing your PhD part-time, what then?
Honestly, this is what you have to do: Quit your job, get a divorce (or dump your partner), give up your kids for adoption, tell your pastor or imam or monk you’ve stopped believing in God, drop all your hobbies, delete your Facebook account, trash your phone... all so that you can, well, convert your degree to a full-time one.
Like Omaha Beach on D-Day
Because I kid you not. The very moment you sign your name on that document which says I-Agree-To-Be-An-Academic-Slave-For-The-Next-6-(Or-More)-Years you would’ve immediately raised your chances of dropping out of the PhD programme.
You may as well sign up to invade Omaha Beach on D-Day and bet a million bucks you’ll live till the following week. It’s a massacre, a slaughter, a frickin’ genocide. PhD part-timers drop so fast you’d think the anti-PhD Nazis were having a turkey shoot from near-range.
How do I know? Because, like the rising of the sun and Malaysia never qualifying for the World Cup, that is a law of Nature.
Just like how, if you finally decide that Malaysia sucks and so migrate to Japan in search of cooler weather and seafood which still move when you swallow, the chances of you or your family members committing suicide jumps a few percentage points. It’s just sociology, baby.
Back to the PhD.
You know what the attrition rate for the average MBA is? 30 per cent.
That’s right. Out of a hundred hopefuls who sign up to boost their business credentials by paying for a RM25,000 to RM50,000 (see note 1) a “Married But Available” degree, 30 of them will—in no time—begin missing assignment deadlines, only to soon decide the dream has become a nightmare so dammit I’m waking up.
And you know why the attrition is so high? Because most MBAs are done part-time. Now, if the I’ve-Had-Enough-Of-This-S*** rate for MBA is 30 per cent, what do you think is the rate for part-time PhD students? Around 300 per cent. Hell, yeah.
It’s like walking up Batu Caves versus climbing Mount Kinabalu. Or like eating a KFC Spicy chicken versus drinking a chili padi salad made of a hundred chillies with a half-ton of belacan dressing.
The average MBA paper is 2,000 to 10,000 words with 98 per cent of the references coming from the first 10 results of Google and the other 2 per cent coming from whatever textbooks the hot chick or hunk next to you happens to be using.
The average PhD thesis? 50,000 to 100,000 words that, unless you’re happy to have a s*** thesis, must come from deep research.
What is deep research? It’s booking and paying for a Deluxe Single at the library and staying there for three months until you find that one paragraph in that one book which blows you through the wall and the librarian has to call the maintenance guys who will, in turn, call Bomb Disposal.
The brutality of Parkinson’s Law
Another major problem with a part-time PhD is that it inevitably sucks up Parkinson’s Law i.e. the dogma that declares that the more time you’re given for a task, the more complex that task will grow.
Give somebody two hours to propose an idea, he’ll only start thinking after a 100 minutes (or even more) has passed. Give the same person two minutes to think ─ or better yet, 20 seconds (and put a gun to his head) ─ and you may see a miracle of speed.
This law is proven every day by every major I.T. systems-integration project that budget a hundred years to install a new banking system for their organisation. It virtually never dawns on the project managers that the longer you “let” a project continue, the more it will be hit with complications and problems.
Likewise, if you give yourself 10 days to write a report your mind-set will naturally “drift” and ding-dong-ding-dong for the first 7-8 days. But if you give yourself only one day to finish the report, the juices will automatically flow and you will get the damn thing done.
Moral of the story: Always cut a timeline to as short as humanly possible. Don’t allow tasks to be delayed a moment longer.
Ditto, the part-time PhD.
Because of the loooonnnng drawn-out nature of the candidature (that’s sexy for “the duration of your official existence as a PhD student”) will leave a permanent impression in your mind that you’re preparing for a marathon when, in fact, an 800-metre run will do.
There will always be the temptation for either you or your supervisor to use the maximum duration allowed to hit the checkpoints i.e. it may already be good enough after, say, four months but, just because you have “more time”, you keep stretching it.
Like office staff who always leave late ─ because they “know” they’ll be around until 9pm ─ two bad things will happen: 1) There is lower motivation to be more efficient in the afternoon, and 2) There is the tendency to say Yes to many unnecessary tasks (because, hey, I’m here till late at night, right?).
It’s exactly the same problem with doing a part-time PhD. You’ll end up being slower (on purpose!) than you can be and you’ll start including stuff which isn’t priority.
In contrast, when you do a PhD full-time, the milestones come quicker and nearer between. This means your supervisor (and of course yourself) have NO BLEEDIN’ CHOICE but to ensure that, say, your required 10,000 words for confirmation are done within that (relatively short) time.
Perfection is thrown out the window, stomped on, chewed up, spit out and stomped on again. And, as we know, each time we slap perfection in the face? Progress happens.
But, hey, only if you’re doing the PhD full-time.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
