I’d suggest you consider a professionally focused program that would allow you to work while you pursue your degree. I’d also recommend something that allows you to get into practice faster than a PhD would.
I’m in a grad school where most people are in their late 20s- early 30s, and I think we are all realizing that this school thing is starting to get really, really old. Grad school is light years more challenging than undergrad- I easily read 1,000 pages a week of dense text, and grad school papers are in the 20-50 page range with the expectation that they include heavy (often primary) research. When I had a midterm, we spent more than 40 hours in the course of two weeks in study groups for a single test.
At this age, all-nighters are losing their charm.
More frustratingly, we are all getting pretty itchy to, you know, actually do what we are learning. I’m growing to loathe that I spend my life working my ass of something that does not actually impact the world. You start feeling like a caged bird. I think it’s important to have some big non-school things in your life that will give it meaning, because grad school starts to be a grind.
Go for it. You are never to old. Everybody needs to reinvent themselves at least 3 or 4 times in a lifetime. If you don’t do it you know you will always wonder ‘what if’.
Consider also that people are working well into their 70’s. Not just because they can’t afford to retire, but because so many people are able to push back some of the effects of aging.
I have a professor who is in her late 50’s and has just recieved her PhD. Now she’s thinking that she needs to start something new.
Here’s a nice talk about PhD programs in computer science. There is a fair amount of CS stuff in there, but a lot of what it says is true about any research degree.
I went to grad school in my 40s.
As was so eloquently put to me when I asked the same question of my friends and family… “You’re going to get older either way, dumb ass. How can it possibly be a BAD idea to pursue something you’re interested in?”
If you want to be a therapist, why not become a licensed clinical social worker? The only big thing that differentiates them from a clinical psychologist is the title. Also, you have more flexibility. An employer may hire a social worker just because they don’t want to pay the premium expected for a Ph.D. And if you don’t like the therapy thing, you could be a case worker, work as a guidance counselor, or be an advocate at a non-profit. Your options are much greater than if you pursue a Ph.D, believe or not.
I got my degree early in life, so take what I say with a grain of salt. It was a damn hard thing to do in my 20s, at the “prime” of my life, when I had the energy to pull all nighters, slogging through paper after paper, trying to make sense of the jargon while convincing myself that I wasn’t studying stupid stuff no one cares about. Not to mention, the competition amongst other grad students is NO JOKE and you will not get extra points simply for being older than everyone. Remember, most of the students you will be in school with won’t have children or “adult” drama to worry about. They can be totally engrossed in their work, totally guilt-free. And their advisors will expect them (and you) to do this. I know in my lab, you were stigmitized if you had too many obligations in your life (like husband, children, extra job, etc.) because you weren’t seen as “committed” enough.
The title thing is cool…for the first few months or so. And then it ceases to be all that big of a deal. Why? Because unless you’re a medical doctor, no one will care. Occassionally I get addressed by my title and yeah, I use it in my email signature for professional reasons, but it’s a very non-important thing to my life. And pay? Ha!! I’da been better off just sticking with a B.S if I cared about that. I go to a clinical psychologist and I call her “Dr.” out of respect, but most of her patients do not (and she’s all right with this).
A Ph.D will not make you a good therapist, IMHO. It will make you a more educated one, but that doesn’t necessarily give you the skills you’ll need to become a really good therapist.
One thing to keep in mind, is that older students tend to have a different attitude toward study than the younger ones- I found graduate school quite a bit easier than undergrad, partially because I was studying things that were more in line with my interests, but mostly because having had a real job for 5 years, I basically approached grad school as a job, which is not how I approached undergrad. At least for me, if I put in as close to 40 hrs a week all semester long on reading, assignments and class, I didn’t really have to bust ass and do all-nighters.
Just a thought, but psychiatric nurses get paid fairly decently, and often make a bigger impact in the lives of patients than their psychiatrist or psychologist do because they are there day after day and see the whole person.
Now nursing is not for everyone,and you may not want to work in a psychiatric hospital but there are psychiatric nurse practitioners who can do a lot of good stuff on an outpatient basis. Of course every jurisdiction has different rules.
I really think you should listen to the advice about a goal oriented path to legal license to be a therapist. Academic group-think is more about exclusion then about learning. Therapy is more about empathy and pragmatic thinking. Dr OpalCat is a neat title, but it won’t necessarily make you a better therapist.
Speaking as a former hospitalized nut case, two people were responsible for actually getting me onto the road out of insanity. One was a MD Psychiatrist, and a gifted therapist. One was Nurse/MSW and a very wise and perceptive woman who understood people because she always was one.
I think you are more like the second lady, from the times we have met.
Pursue the dream you have.
Don’t go too far into debt for a set of letters on your letterhead.
With prayers for your good fortune, whatever you choose.
Would you be pursuing this while in Boston? (I seem to recall that you and your husband are considering your stay here temporary). Both UMass Boston and Cambridge College have Masters Programs in Counseling Psychology. They allow you to become licensed as a mental health counselor (LMHC) rather than a social worker, if you find that you prefer one ideology over the other. Both of these are also programs designed for working adults, so classes are held in the evenings and on weekends.
If you are planning to stay in and around Boston, this is an area pretty heavy with mental health practitioners. Setting up a private practice might be challenging, so I think you’d likely be looking at working in an agency as a clinician, at least at the beginning. This is an excellent way to get your supervision hours in for licensure and the rates of reimbursement can be pretty good for Masters-level clinicians. (That was my former career, so if you have specific questions, feel free to PM me).
I’m not very far into it yet, but the author of those 100 reasons seems to be basing his/her assumption on the goal of the degree being “to get a position teaching at a university” which is nowhere near what I want to be doing.
That list should really be titled “100 reasons not to get a PhD.” Getting a pre-professional graduate degree is an entirely different experience than getting a PhD. (ETA: In general a non-PhD has a very well-defined end-point, will probably cost you tuition but, if you choose carefully, will also have very good odds of getting you the job you wanted when you came in, and it won’t take you 6+ years.) And I agree with all the other observations that a PhD does not sound like a match for what you want to do.
The author is working on the assumption that you won’t be able to get a job in the “real world” with your Ph.D so teaching at a university is all you’re likely to be able to do with it.
As someone who recently finished what you lot in the US call Graduate School (albeit not with a Ph.D) I don’t think he’s actually that far off the mark in many respects.
I’m thinking about going and getting a PhD myself, and I’m 38.
I keep reading about how graduate school is so horrible, etc… but I went to graduate school in the business school, and got 2 master’s degrees- a MBA and a MS (IT & Mgmt). I didn’t think it was that bad really.
I’m thinking about going back for the PhD in either MIS/IT or possibly organizational behavior, both of which are business school disciplines.
What’s the PhD market look like in those fields? Everything I read about talks about the pure sciences or the humanities, and how horrible academia is for people in those fields, but nothing about engineering or business. Does the relative availability of jobs in those fields reduce the glut of PhDs vs. something like say… archaeology, where there are not commercial jobs to be had?
I finished my doctorate in my mid 30s. In my field, that’s not terribly uncommon. I never thought I was too old or young - but I didn’t have kids then.
I think the best advice to really understand what you want to do, ultimately. If it’s counseling, it doesn’t sound like a Ph.D. is necessary. There’s a lot of expense and challenge in the Ph.D. and I would wager this is why a lot of smart people are ABD. If you don’t have the passion at some point you realize it isn’t worth it. There’s a lot of rejection and “go back and do this again, the right way” by people with Ph.D.s as you earn yours. If you can’t handle a lot of that it’s definitely not a good move.
And as others have mentioned, the culminating project is a dissertation, a research project that you more or less put together from soup to nuts. If that doesn’t appeal to you, and you don’t have any idea of a project that engages you (even if it’s vague at this point) - watch out. There are a lot of folks ABD who did great in coursework but stumbled when it became time for them to start their own research agenda.
Also, I’d take a good look at your extracurricular commitments. Do you have time to meet and interact with your cohortmates and profs beyond courses? If you don’t you’ll soon find there is an “inside track” that you are not privy to, and that can feel isolating and frustrating. This is also why a lot of Ph.D. programs accept full-time students only. Our graduate program takes part-timers and full-timers and I definitely see how part-timers don’t necessarily benefit from the experiences that happen after class.
What do most of the people in the program you’re looking at end up doing? If they all go into research or academia, and that’s not your goal, you are not going to “fit” their type… and you may not enjoy constantly battling those expectations.
