Question

Topic: Student Questions

Phd Question

Posted by Anonymous on 5/20/2013 at 2:17 PM ET 25 Points
Hello,

I just accepted for my PhD in Marketing and was wondering what to expect. I know about the thesis report and what that entails. I will be researching articles, doing field work, analysing data and reporting. This I have done before, on a much smaller scale of course. But what else is there to this? I don't know what to expect and it worries me a little. Will I have to work on other research projects, go to conferences, present lectures or seminars, or will I have lectures and exams or essays?

I know this is what I want to do, but the fear of doing so is setting in now that it's time to actually accept the offer.

Cheers,
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Moriarty on 5/20/2013 at 3:19 PM Accepted
    Have you ... asked your university ... ?? After all, they're the ones wanting evidence-based arguments. Not me.

    Sorry if that's not a helpful answer - but then I come from a family where I'm the only one who doesn't have PhD. Even the dog had more qualifications than I did. (Actually that's not true, our dog failed her baccaleureat).
  • Posted on 5/20/2013 at 5:58 PM Author
    HA! Yeah, I am going to ask my supervisor and a current student. Just figured I would ask here as well. Always been a very helpful place.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 5/20/2013 at 7:17 PM Accepted
    Why did it not occur to you to ask these questions before setting out on the journey to Ph. D land?
  • Posted by Moriarty on 5/21/2013 at 3:31 AM Member
    You have been at university. Their demands and their outlook is starkly different from the real world.

    Their demand for peer-reviewed evidence-based facts means that they cannot handle the very things that makes marketing effective. Any marketer worth their salt knows that it is knowing the emotions of the customers that makes their work effective.

    Any person in any business working without taking emotions into account is a target and not the archer.

    If you want to be an archer you need to understand emotions - and a university cannot do that because of their methodology. The realm of emotions cannot be understood with the intellect - its attempt leads only to more confusion. Statistics and analytics abound - yet give few answers.

    So by all means do a PhD.

    Only be aware of its limitations.

    Emotions demand a level of thinking that can encompass them, not constrain them to the necessary limits of your objective, abstract thinking. Emotions cannot be objective, nor can they be abstracted. That means you cannot study them objectively.

    Square this circle - as I have done - and you have the keys to the kingdom.

    PS My father is a retired professor and trying to explain this to him is like teaching a tortoise to sit up and beg. I am aware of his limitations; he is not. Being aware of your own limitations is the key to grasping the things that lie outside them. If this sounds all a bit Zen-like, I can do that too.
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