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Thought for Sunday, 05/30:
"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." ~ George Bernard Shaw
WHAT A PHD IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT?
After having completed a PhD degree myself, I would like to offer some humble advice to those aspiring to pursue a PhD degree. I find that many students misunderstood the purpose of getting a PhD degree and the commitments and sacrifices that it calls for.
A PhD is the highest academic and research degree from a university. I have seen both remarkable successes and disappointing failures amongst students pursuing this academic endeavour. It takes more than just brain power to cross the line to complete this journey.
The most important prerequisites for pursuing a successful PhD program are passion, inquisitiveness, creativity, discipline, persistence, perseverance and meticulousness. I did not mention intelligence not because it is not important, but because it is less important than the other attributes I mentioned. At least, it is in my book. Others may feel differently.
Of those many attributes, I consider passion the most important. Some students start out enthusiastically but lose steam halfway through or towards the end. Ever heard of the saying, "when the going gets tough, the tough gets going?" Success in a PhD is simply that. The harder it becomes, the harder you will strive. Sometimes, you do not see the light at the end of the tunnel but you still keep looking for it because you know it is there. When you love what you do, failure is not an option.
Some people do PhD for wrong reasons. Some do it because the jobs they have taken up require them to acquire a PhD. You cannot force yourself to do a PhD. You cannot force yourself to love something. you must love to force yourself to get it.
The PhD is an academic journey. There will be failures but mainly successes along your way. You may encounter some foes but mainly friends in the same boat as yourself. It always help to be in a group of students to share both your setbacks and achievements. Working alone in a silo is the worst you can do to yourself. There are certain things you want to discuss with your fellow colleagues that you cannot discuss with your supervisor; matters that are either academic or personal.
Your supervisor is your mentor, guide and consultant, not your teacher. He cannot teach you your PhD knowledge, you have to teach yourself through his guidance and wisdom. He is more your friend than he is your master. At the end of your PhD journey, you are supposed to be more knowledgeable on the subject of your research than your supervisor. I have heard of students not being able to complete their PhD because they could not get along. This is the worst scenario that can happen to you. If you do not have a supervisor you can work with, you will not get your PhD no matter how good you are or how hard you work. So, choose your supervisor well, not just the university you want to do your PhD in.
A PhD degree needs sacrifices, especially when you are a family person; a wife, mother, husband or dad. Family is always important and should always be your priority. However, you and your family members must be willing to make sacrifices that are necessary. There can be no gain without pain. That is why when you finally get your PhD degree, your family members can even be happier and more proud of you than you yourself, because it is as much their accomplishment as it is yours. Their sacrifices must be duly appreciated.
So what does it mean when you have a Dr. before your name? Does it mean that you are an expert on a certain subject matter? Hardly so, I think. It means that you are both a seeker as well as a generator of knowledge. It means that you have enriched the world and added on to the vast body of knowledge through your PhD contribution. The world has become a slightly better place from the knowledge that you have contributed through your PhD thesis and publications. The world now knows more on a subject than before you completed your PhD. Your work get referred and cited by other researchers in your field, as they absorb your new knowledge to generate new knowledge of their own.
I hope I have inspired some of you to pursue a PhD degree if what you read here is what you really want from a PhD. On the other hand, I hope I have also discouraged others who have a misconception of what a PhD degree entails, so that you will not go down the road of failure. A Ph.D. is not for everyone.
- What a PhD is and isnt. By Anonymous
"We have been trained by the broader culture that how we feel when we come to worship is determined by the success of the instrumentation to create a good feeling. The assumption is that praise is created by the success of the musicians, as if we have to achieve concert quality music to truly praise God. This has led many to view their church music as the one aspect to their church that they perceive as not very good. What we need is a young, hip musician up front, graphic T, with a band behind him, who will bring us into a state of true praise. This has become the de facto standard of achieving true praise in American churches.
Those churches who do not mimic this model often find that their congregants view their music as mediocre, tolerating the sub-standard approach, believing that most other churches down the street do it better. For a variety of different reasons, they are willing to remain with the church, but they have given up hope that the music will ever get better.
Further, for most church shoppers, their entire church attendance is based on this question: how uplifting is the music? If the church music doesn’t achieve the status of elevating people to the rated quality of expected feeling, many people will disregard that church altogether, regardless of how faithful the ministry of the Word may be. The question is whether such an approach to praise is correct, and whether the church itself is to bear the weight of the responsibility to create what people assume is fulfilling praise. There may be variation in the circumstances of praise, but the question has to do with how true praise is accomplished.
It might be shocking to the reader to hear that much of what is so called praise today in worship is not received by the Lord. God certainly turns his ear away from not just vain repetitions, but also empty hearts due to empty theology. It should be self-evident that our feelings have to arise to something higher than animal instincts to truly praise the Lord."
Chris Gordon, “What’s Wrong With Our Church Praise Music?” Abounding Grace Radio (May 28, 2021)
https://agradio.org/whats-wron....g-with-our-church-pr
