K: So lately I’ve been thinking about the PhD process. You are Dr. Musick, and you have been for some time. And I’m in the process of becoming Dr. Musick.
C: Yes.
K: So… you got your PhD a few years back, a Japanese University
C: Lo these many years ago.
K: (laughs) And so I kind of want to start with talking about the decision to get a PhD.
C: Mmhmm.
K: Because I feel like you and I had very different reasons for wanting a PhD.
C: Okay.
K: So, what was your reason? Why did you want a PhD?
C: To shut everybody up.
K: (laughs) What do you mean by that?
C: No, I think a lot of it was just the expectation of myself that I should have one, because when I was younger and worked in tech, most of the people that I worked with had a PhD. So, I just kind of viewed that as a marker of “you’re fully educated”. And that was even though I didn’t even have a bachelor’s degree at the time and felt like I was doing equal work. So, like there’s a little bit of elitism in that.
K: So, did you think you should get a PhD before you started working in tech, like when you were in Alaska, or was it after coming to California?
C: After coming to California.
K: Because I find, for me at least, in where I was at, it really felt… I feel like California has a PhD culture.
C: Yeah, it does.
K: And, that’s kind of like if you’re educated I feel like the culture, at least in the Silicon Valley, is that no education under a PhD is really respected or really treated as if it has value. Because they’re not, like… a bachelor’s is just what you’re supposed to do.
C: Right.
K: That’s like the entry level to play in anything. I was really fortunate that, for me, working with children, that that wasn’t the entry level. You don’t actually need a degree in the United States. I mean, in California, rather. I don’t want to speak for the whole United States. It’s different from state to state, and sometimes different from county to county in each state. But in Santa Clara county… gosh, over twenty years ago, like twenty-five years ago, it wasn’t necessary to have anything other than 12 Early [Childhood] Education credits to work with children.
C: Yeah, your Early Childhood Education.
K: Yeah, Early Childhood Education. And then for the work that I did going from that, I did Early Childhood Education, Early Child Development, and so I got all of the development education stuff, and then I kind of tapped out of the education process because I needed to work and make money.
C: Mmhmm.
K: And I got a job. And that job trained me, and I had on-the-job training. They trained in screening, which was … low-level differential diagnosis, because we would screen children for autism and screen children for ADHD and screen… and work with, not screen, but work with Children who had Downs. Down Syndrome. And I got my entry into therapy and working with children that way, and so, for many many years, I didn’t have, like, the official education that people internationally expected.
C: Right.
K: And that’s what kind of set me on my journey to get my bachelor’s and my master’s and all of that was so that people could understand me internationally.
C: Yes. And, for me I think that’s why I started doing formal education, too, is I had all of this knowledge but it was very much within Silicon Valley, and I wanted to be more competitive in the workplace as far as landing the kind of jobs that I wanted and being able to do the kind of thing I found interesting. You know, a lot of times, if we look at the economy as a whole, when the economy gets bad, people go back to school.
K: Yeah.
C: And it’s not necessarily just to avoid being in a bad economy, but it’s also to strengthen your own qualifications. That’s a whole other thing, but I felt like Silicon Valley really taught me, which maybe not a true lesson, that if you don’t have a terminal degree, then what you have achieved can be taken from you at any time.
K: What do you mean by terminal degree?
C: A degree that kills you.
K: (laughs) And that would be a PhD, for sure! Man my PhD is killing me some days.
C: It differs by field. Like, you know, most lawyers have just a JD, and even though in the US
K: What’s a JD?
C: It’s called Juris Doctorate
K: Okay, what’s a Juris Doctorate?
C: Doctor of Law? (K laughs)
K: I’m sorry but I just completely lost the plot there for a minute, like what are you on about. Why are you talking about lawyers right now?
C: Well, because it’s not actually a doctorate. I mean, the US calls it a doctorate but no other place does.
K: I don’t know anybody that calls that a doctorate.
C: Because it’s not. And in fact (K laughs) the American Bar Association says “If you don’t have a doctorate in something else, it’s unethical to call yourself a doctorate just because of the words JD.” But, if you have a JD, nobody expects you to get more education.
K: So you’re listing JD as being on part with the PhD and an MD.
C: As far as career advancement, correct.
K: Okay. So, but, for me what terminal degree… I think it varies so much from field to field.
C: It does and that’s why
K: I’m not trying to do all that. I’m trying to talk about our PhDs. Your PhD and my PhD. This is not trying to like educate everyone on education.
C: Okay, so in my PhD, the Ph is for Phabulous.
K: (laughing) So, no, like… why did you get your PhD?
C: I found the subject really interesting, and I wanted
K: What is your subject? I don’t think, so… let’s fill everybody in, like, what do you have your PhD in… what did you do your dissertation on? What motivated you? I guess I need to be a better interviewer.
C: Okay, so my PhD is in suurikagaku, which the official translation is “Mathematical Science”. So, in other universities, if I had done exactly the same thing, it would have been in mathematics. So, this is just a quirk of Nagoya University where I went. And basically I studied topology, which is shapes, and I have my master’s in computational mathematics, so I studied differential equations and statistics and all of that, which was very applied. So between the two, I have a lot of applied and a lot of unapplied mathematics.
K: And so, I never felt like… and even when you decided to get your PhD… I never felt like it created any career opportunities for you.
C: Well, and when they study they find that PhDs don’t. Basically are not worth it. When they look at the difference in the career earnings gap between a bachelor’s and a master’s, they say “Yes, absolutely a master’s is worth it”. When they look at the career earnings gap, on average, between a master’s and a PhD, PhDs make less over their lifetime than people with a master’s because of the years they give up pursuing that PhD.
K: And so, for me, I felt like you needed your PhD to heal some… to heal the core pain of not being supported in your education when you were younger. Because you graduated high school two years early, but then you didn’t have the funding to go to college.
C: Right.
K: And I think, for me, that in you created core pain, is what I felt. And I felt like putting all the resources into you getting a PhD is so that you could feel loved, supported, and cherished by me.
C: And I am.
K: That’s why I supported your PhD.
C: And I did feel all of those things.
K: So what did you get out of it? Because I got out of it forever having good wife cred. (Both laugh) I’m like the OG of good wives now.
C: I got out of it the chance to just devote myself completely to the study of one thing. The way that the program worked where I went to school, at Nagoya University, the PhD in mathematics specifically doesn’t require any additional courses because you’re required to already have a master’s and to demonstrate before you’re admitted your competence in all areas of mathematics. So I had a long oral exam before I was admitted as a PhD student. And so I had, you know, a couple of years to just explore something that I really love. And still love. And then get certified, in a way, as an expert in this.
K: So I think that’s so interesting, like our two different approaches. Because I have avoided everything I love like the plague.
C: Mmhmm.
K: During my PhD. (laughs) Because I feel like I’m going to hate whatever… I feel like if I studied something that I loved, like was truly incensed and passionate about, that I would be angry and hurt and devastated when my chair has to come in and give me corrections or when the discipline demands something that I don’t agree with.
C: Right.
K: So, for my PhD I’m studying cultural intelligence. And that’s the ability to function in cultures other than your own, is like a simple way to put it. To be effective cross-culturally. So, for me, I find that interesting. I’ve always found culture to be interesting and the study of culture, but I’m not passionate about it in any way.
C: Mmhmm.
K: And so I find that when they’re like, “What about this?” or “What about that?” I’m like “Okay, I’ll include it.” I really don’t care. I just want to have a finished PhD. And throughout my program, that’s what the program I’m in, because I’m going to Walden, and Walden really beats into you that the best PhD is a finished PhD.
C: Right.
K: And they require that you do residences and they require that you take two years of coursework no matter what you’ve done, because I earned my master’s from Walden. Even if I had continued on straight from the master’s to the PhD, I still would have had to do two years of additional coursework. So there’s no way to complete a Walden PhD in under 4 and a half years. And that’s if you’re fast-tracking.
C: You know I found it really interesting how much more difficult it was for me to go to school online than in person.
K: Mmhmm.
C: Because I did my master’s through Texas A&M online, and it was a much lonelier and more difficult experience. And doing the PhD in person, I think I didn’t have the same experience that you’re having because there was always somebody to kind of talk over things with.
K: But I have someone to talk over things with. I have you.
C: Yeah, but I’m not in your program.
K: I don’t really value talking to people in my program about the program, because I find that every time I talk with other students… and this might just be the students that I’m missing… that I’m meeting, rather… they don’t really want to talk with me. They want to talk at me.
C: Mmm.
K: And I think it’s because most of them don’t have you. Well, none of have you.
C: None of them have me, correct.
K: And I feel like it’s the one chance that they get to talk to somebody who understands the program and who understands what they’re doing. And so they never really listen, like, even when people are like “Hey!”… because I take a lot of auxiliary classes as well, and I had the experience of a classmate saying “Hey, oh, you’re taking this auxiliary class. Let me take it with you, and we’ll be buddies for it.” And then when it came time to do it they were like “Yeah, I don’t wanna take that class,” and I was like “Right on.” So even when they’re trying to partner with me, I’ve just… I haven’t had the experience of anyone partnering with me. And there is somebody in Japan, like… 30 minutes away from us… same chair as me, in the same program as me, and we don’t communicate. I sent them an email, and they’re off doing their own thing and they’re busy, and I’m off doing my think. So I find it’s like those two lanes. Either the person already has so much support that they don’t need my support. Or they have no support and want my support without it being reciprocal.
C: I think this varies a lot by field, too. Because in mathematics, everybody kind of knows what everybody else is working on. So it’s… it’s difficult to steal somebody else’s idea, for one thing, because everybody would know you did it. And for another, it’s much less subjective.
K: So nobody is trying to steal my ideas. Like, the one cool thing that I love about Walden is once you go through your initial defense for your proposal, your idea can’t be stolen. It’s so documented.
C: Right.
K: So that’s the one great thing that I really really love about Walden is the documentation of the process. So it would be really really hard for someone to steal my idea.
C: But I think that’s the other part that I was saying is that it’s so much more… not “subjective”, but probabalistic, than mathematics is. So if you do a qualitative dissertation, which you’re doing quantitative, then it’s entirely down to how the people evaluating it feel about whether you’ve done it right.
K: That’s not true.
C: There are established ways to do it, but nobody can come in and say with 100% “Yes” or “No” on it.
K: Yeah.
C: There’s a lot of subjectivity in the assessment of it.
K: And that’s true for quant to a certain extent as well.
C: And that’s why I was saying it’s true for quant to a probabalistic extent. You can say, you know, what percentage likely it is that you’re right. And don’t write to us about p values. I can explain the whole thing. I know it’s not actually…
K: But what does this have to do with why we want our PhDs? You’re in a weird head space today. You’re confusing me.
C: I wanted a PhD so that I could geek out about this kind of stuff.
K: (laughs) And have people accept that you can geek out about it?
C: Yes.
K: So you can be an authority, so you can have the gravitas to geek out whenever you want? How’s that working out for you?
C: It works out pretty well, actually. So one of my favorite times having a PhD was that I went to a presentation for the ACCJ, the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, on sales. And the presenter said “Oh, I’m DOCTOR” and then introduced himself in just a very kind of pompous, obnoxious way. And so the person running the thing made a point to say “Oh, okay. Let me introduce to the people here. Here’s Dr. Musick. Here’s Dr. H. Here’s Dr. C.” (K laughing) Because there’s a lot of us foreigners here in Japan with PhDs.
K: Yeah. And especially with the ACCJ in particular. It’s a really well educated bunch.
C: Right. So, a lot of people here have a PhD but don’t work in their field.
K: Yeah.
C: The thing I find interesting about getting a PhD in Japan was the work culture around it. So, when I started applying for jobs, I found that if I wanted to work for an entirely Japanese company, they have a system where you just go to work for the company, and not because of your skills.
K: Yeah.
C: So, if I wanted to specify that I would work in mathematics, I had to give up pay.
K: Yes.
C: Even though I have a PhD in mathematical science.
K: Yes.
C: So that I thought was bizarre, and I ended up working for a legally Japanese company that was not run entirely by Japanese people. So, I would definitely do it again if I had the choice, knowing what I know now. But I don’t know if I would set it as a goal back when I decided at like, 21, that I wanted a PhD, if I knew what I would end up.
K: And you wanted a PhD from a foreign university. From a non-American university.
C: Absolutely, yes. That’s what I had decided was going to be the marker of it. And, too, I think part of it was … you know, just being the best in my family.
K: Mmm. (laughs)
C: Not you and me and our son, but (K continues laughing) my siblings.
K: Yes. You are the best one.
C: It’s a little petty, maybe, but it drove me to finish a PhD which I think is a great thing.
K: So which of your siblings has a master’s?
C: I’m not sure that any of my siblings even have a bachelor’s.
K: Right, so that’s so bizarre to me. You’re like, “I need a PhD,” because financially you’re successful than all your siblings, and just at the bachelor’s level, educationally you’re more successful. If we’re defining it by accolades… and then your patents. So, like, you have patents, publication, degrees up the wazoo, certifications up the wazoo.
C: I enjoy education now. I feel like I got a late start on it. I had a really rough school. My mom died when I was in high school and it was just… I graduated 100 something out of 140 in my class, and I didn’t really kind of … get into school until, in terms of just really it clicking for me, until I met you. I’m not saying you were the catalyst, just that
K: Yeah, we met in college, so… (laughs) you were in college before you met me.
C: Just that it clicked that “Oh, this is what people were saying all along.” Because my father was very much… and he would use these same words, that it’s “all just jumping through hoops” and “not letting the bastards grind you down”. That was his educational philosophy.
K: And that kind of feels like the PhD process. Jump through hoops and not let the bastards grind you down. But I have like the most amazing chair on the planet. And my co-chair, they are so amazing. They are just, like, a wet dream for me. We are so perfectly suited for each other.
C: Mmhmm.
K: They leave me the heck alone. (C laughs) And I love it. I don’t need a lot of direction, and when I write, they give me clear criticisms on what it is they want me to change. They highlight it. Underline it. And are very specific, and until it change that, it will not be approved. Whatever it is I’m working on, it will not be approved. And so the premise-writing process was really super straightforward for me. The prospectus really super straightforward for me. I’m still in the proposal writing process, but super super straightforward. It was like “Hey, I think I want to start with method on my proposal.” “No, you don’t, you want to start with your literature review.” Very succinct. Very succinct. And I don’t know what I was thinking, because I hadn’t finished my literature review, and so like that when I just get excited and I want to run ahead and chase rabbits, she’s like “You can chase those rabbits, but after you’re done chasing them you’re still going to have to do this thing I said.”
C: Well, I think you might have been thinking about all the presentations I’ve been rehearsing where I say “write your methods first”.
K: Not just that. At the residency, Walden said “write your methods first.”
C: Mmm, okay.
K: And the… to get from prospectus to proposal, you have to know your methods.
C: Yes.
K: So I have like… and I’m doing a lot of additional courses focused on methods. So, right now my life is very focused on method, while I’m doing … still in my literature review.
C: Right.
K: And, I’m like “I like doing, I like having simultaneous streams of thought” because if I’m focusing on just one thing, I feel like “Okay, well when I turn this one thing in, I’m not going to be ready to start working on the next thing.”
C: You want to have a lot of irons in the fire.
K: Yeah, always. Because there is a two-week period my chair and co-chair have for review, and so that two weeks and the program design in my pacing, I can’t afford to spend two weeks doing nothing. That’s going to lead to, you know, me maxing out, running out the clock on the PhD process. I’m trying to get it done as quickly as possible. So I’m really fortunate in that I have excellent research chops and I’m a really good writer, so writing and turning around feedback surprises my chair I’m so quick. (C laughs) And because I work for myself, on days that I know I’m getting to write, I will book those days off.
C: Right.
K: I will sacrifice money for progress. And that’s how I look at it. And so I’m always jiggling and joggling. On my schedule there’s a few days that are fixed, but the rest of the days I leave open for me to have flexibility, and then because in addition to doing my PhD and working as a therapist full-time, we’re also doing the podcast, and we have social media, and we’re parents… so, I learned from watching your process of doing it in two years, doing your PhD in two years… you were at breakneck speed, “Go!” the entire time.
C: Yes, I was.
K: And it was such a serious grind and you leaned in, and you didn’t have time for friends or family or anything other than PhD. And it was so miserable for you. Like, even when you traveled you really didn’t get to enjoy it, and you were doing some amazing things during your PhD. You went to several really prestigious conferences, and you were involved in several really prestigious think tanks but-
C: Yeah, I think I-
K: … I don’t feel like you got to luxuriate in any of that.
C: I mean, I had some time to unwind it, because I got my PhD in 2012. Yeah, I did a lot of fun stuff. I went to I think four different countries to speak, and I got to take a train across Europe. I spoke virtually in Russia. It was a lot of fun, but it was just really intense. So, I don’t think that I got to enjoy it at the time. My memory is good enough on these things. I can enjoy it retrospectively.
C: I felt like it was really a privilege to be able to go and get a PhD. So, one of the things that I’m passionate about is helping people that it’s not necessarily historically easy for them to get a PhD to work through that program.
K: So, for me in getting a PhD, my process was a little bit different than yours in that I never wanted one until I did. So, I was defiant and belligerent for, I want to say, about 15 years of you telling me that you thought it’d be cool if I got a PhD.
C: Yes.
K: Me saying, “Fuck that. I’m not … No. No, Chad. No. I will never ever ever have my PhD, not ever never, ever never.”
C: You say ten years of never, and it was ten years of never.
K: Yeah. I did. Ten years of never ever. Then when I was in my masters in … because I just did my masters at the time that you were doing your PhD and your … chair at the time had mentioned us going to Europe for your post-doc. When we were toying with that, I thought, “Hm, I would totally dig having my PhD if I could get my PhD in Austria.” That’s because of the history of the discipline, because the history of psychology, and linguistics and all of that. I really loved that.
K: Then I was like, “Nah,” and, “Nope, I don’t … ” I already had Adjustment Guidance. I had already started working in the field, then having it and having it fully realized, I felt like I don’t need a PhD to do anything I want to do. So, after seeing what you went through to get it, I was like, “I don’t know if I want to do that.”
C: Yeah, because a terminal degree for practice here in Japan is a masters.
K: Yeah, for the government to certify you.
C: Right.
K: So, now I’m like a member of the Japanese Psychological Association, and the ward offices refer to me, and I can testify in court and all of that because I have a decade of experience and a masters.
C: Right.
K: So, I am at the height of where I can be, like the Japanese Government does not value PhD.
C: So, given all that, what made you decide to do the PhD?
K: I really just felt unfinished.
C: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
K: I felt like I have the knowledge that a PhD would represent, and why don’t I just do this last step? The only thing in-between me and doing it is putting the time in.
C: Right.
K: So, why not put the time in and get this really cool thing that allows me more flexibility? I also have been thinking about, now that we have permanent residency and when we were going for it, what does that mean for the rest of the world? Would I ever want to do the top circuit, like the conference circuit? Would I ever want to do consulting? I don’t know that I’m always going to be a therapist.
C: That’s a good point.
K: Yeah, and so anything beyond therapy for me requires a PhD. I don’t know. Right now I’m really enjoying being a therapist, but I feel like being a woman of a certain age, that the clock is kind of running out for me in terms of getting the PhD and then having enough years on the PhD that I will still have enough vitality on the other side of that to do a career change if I choose.
C: Right.
K: So, I just want it for the flexibility and the options that it provides me. The gravitas doesn’t hurt. I love gravitas. Also, it just feels like a nice cherry on top of the cake. You know, it’s the icing on the cake for me.
C: I know exactly what you mean.
K: Also, something that I haven’t thought about before that I am really feeling now is a celebration for how stable my life is, because when I was doing my undergraduate work before you and I were married, I used to keep a stack of books. At De Anza University, shout out De Anza. Love De Anza, the most amazing college … one of the most amazing colleges in the world to me. The professors would put old textbooks out in the hallway, and I would just go and scoop them up. They were for free.
C: Right.
K: Then I would leave them in my apartment so that people could break into my apartment and steal my textbooks without impacting my ability to do my schoolwork. So, it was hard out here for a pimp for a long time. I guess that doesn’t sound very much like I’m in the pimp ling, but with the stockers and the person that I was partnered with at the time, nobody really wanted me to get an education. Everybody wanted me to stay small and stay where I was. They felt like education was going to make me blow up and move in directions that they couldn’t come with.
K: So, they were wanting me to stay in the same lane that they were in and not better myself. So, education for me was always really fraught and really difficult. Then when I did my masters, at the time that I did my masters, Rasta was also in college. You were doing a PhD, and we were in Japan and were trying to-
C: Yes, all three of us were in tertiary education.
K: Yeah, and trying to figure out how do we get from where we were to permanent residency.
C: Yes.
K: It was really, really fraught and really, really difficult. I didn’t have enough income and money of my own to pay for it, and I always felt like if I had … With you paying for my masters, there was a huge amount of pressure that came with you paying for, just a huge amount of pressure. I know when I was supporting us during your PhD, there was a huge amount of pressure for you.
C: Right.
K: I think I finished my masters before-
C: You did.
K: … your PhD. So, I misspoke when I said I was doing it at the same time. You were in a masters program, I was in a masters program, and Rasta was in a bachelors program.
C: No, we had overlap in … I think we had slight overlap.
K: Not much, because-
C: Not much. Maybe like a month or two.
K: Yeah. I went to work really early on-
C: Yeah.
K: I saw how much stress and pressure upon you to finish early and give me some financial relief that I knew I didn’t want that if I was going to do a PhD.
C: Right.
K: I wanted to be able to really foot the bill. Now our financial situation is so good that you’re not doing a traditional job, and I’m able to do my PhD and work. So, I just feel like this is the best situation for me, because when I get burnt out of being a therapist, I can just be a PhD student. When I’m burnt out of being a PhD student, I can just be a therapist. I can switch those lanes. I really enjoy that.
C: Work and sleep sometimes.
K: I also saw that during your PhD when you were just a PhD student, that just made it so more amplified and so much more fraught. I see that in my clients too that are just PhD students that aren’t doing anything else verus clients who are working and earning their PhD, they are so much more centered. It’s interesting.
C: It’s an odd thing, because I had a job while I was a PhD student. I was also a teaching assistant.
K: Yep. But you were a teaching assistant at the university you were getting your PhD from.
C: Yeah, which is the case for most people who are teaching assistants is that they are a TA.
K: Yeah, the people I work with have like job-jobs and are doing their PhD.
C: Right, I understand. Yep.
K: That was so shady. I just said job-jobs. Oh my goodness.
C: They have jobs-
K: Shout out to all the teaching assistants. That’s a real job-job. I’m saying jobs not affiliated with the university they attend.
C: Yes.
K: Got to clean that up.
C: Yes.
K: Okay, so you were saying that that is the case for most people?
C: I was waiting for an awkward pause so it’d seem like we’d edited that out.
K: We do not edit these. By now they know we are not spending any time on editing. We just blow right past it. You get it just raw and nasty here, raw and nasty.
C: Yeah, that was my nickname in high school.
K: That is so gross, because I know how old you were in high school. You were like nine when you entered high school.
C: I was 12 when I entered high school, not nine.
K: A little 12 year old Raw and Nasty cruising down the hall. “Hey sexy.”
C: All four foot, eight of me.
K: That is too much. Oh my gosh, that’s too much.
C: I was saying that I was working on my PhD, but I was also doing TA stuff.
K: Yes.
C: So, the-
K: Not tits and ass, teaching assistant.
C: Right, teaching assistant. So, just the student part is a misnomer for most PhD students.
K: Yeah, it is. It is. So, now being on the other side of having your PhD, I feel like when you first got it you were really, really unfulfilled and angsty.
C: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
K: Now you seem like you’ve settled into it and you’re more luxuriating in it. How did that shift happen? Why were you angsty, first of all? I never really understood that.
C: I think that I just felt like I didn’t have any way to show who I was. I was in tech before, and when you’re in tech you really have to stay in it because it changes so fast.
K: Because it what?
C: Changes so fast.
K: Oh, yeah.
C: There’s always new tools to learn. There’s always new ways of doing things.
K: Yes, so true.
C: I still enjoy reading about it. I read a lot about artificial intelligence and that kind of thing. But even when I was working full-time, because my memory can be problematic, I’ve always been somebody who uses references a lot.
C: So, I don’t believe in closed book tests. I mean, I know they exist, but I think they’re a poor way to assess things because that’s not how professionals work. Professionals use all the resources they need to accomplish whatever they’re doing.
K: Yeah.
C: I felt like I didn’t have anything to show for having developed expertise. So, I felt really angsty about how will people know how to treat me with respect.
K: PhD, that’s how they’ll know.
C: Yeah.
K: But right after that though, you felt really angsty like you didn’t feel like that PhD was enough.
C: Yeah. So, I think that it wasn’t a good approach. I think it was saying that if I get a PhD, then I’m going to feel like people respect me and that I’m going to be happy. For most people, it’s not ever going to work.
K: Yeah.
C: So, then that really caused-
K: It’s like getting a boob job to feel beautiful.
C: Yeah.
K: For some people, getting a boob job works. For other people, it just starts them down a slippery slope.
C: Yeah. I feel like if I got one, it would just never be quite right. So, I feel like after I graduated and I still wasn’t feeling settled in that way, it caused a period of self-reflection. Now I’m content with it. So, now I feel like I’ve shifted over to I would rather people call me Chad than Doctor Musick.
K: You’ve never wanted people to call you Doctor Musick. You don’t like Mister Musick. You like Doctor Musick if they’re going to say it, because that’s just the rule.
C: That is the rule, yes.
K: So, it’s no an ego thing. It’s just like if you have a PhD, it should be doctor rather than mister.
C: Right, unless people insist I call them mister, or doctor, or whatever. Then I’m petty enough to say, “Oh, I need to call you Mister this, you can call me Doctor Musick.”
K: I don’t think that’s petty. I think if people are saying, “Okay, we have a … ” the social contact is, “I’m going to closely define how you address me, and my first name was not okay.” Then if we’re using last names, it’s Doctor Musick.
C: Yeah. I know I’m in my 40s and all of that, but sometimes I still feel like I’m younger than everybody else.
K: You are younger than everybody else. All of our friends are late 40s, early 50s, some in their 60s.
C: Yeah, but now a lot of people that I am in the ACCJ with and other things are in their 30s, and some are even in their 20s.
K: That’s rare, because they’re so thirsty for 20-somethings right now.
C: Yeah, 20 is rare, but 30s is not rare anymore. So, I feel like the older I get, the more ridiculous it gets that I still think of myself as the youngest person in the room.
K: Okay, yeah no. In looking at you that would be ridiculous, because you’re bald with a gray beard.
C: Yes. Yes. Thank you for that.
K: So, I want to explain something about boob jobs.
C: Okay.
K: Because I don’t want anybody to be hurt that has a boob job. I’m not anti-boob job. I don’t care how you get there. Get there if you can. But I worked with a lot of women who got boob jobs for the wrong reason. They got boob jobs thinking that it would fill a hole in them if they changed the outside. I find that change has to come from the inside-out. If you love yourself but there’s this one thing about you that you’d like to fix, that’s a very different thing than thinking, “If I fix this one thing, I will love myself.” It’s a directional thing.
C: That’s what I was saying about I had thought that I fixed my education, if I take what felt like it was snatched away from me by my mother’s death by being almost as a teen by a lot of different things, then I will feel like my life is good. I’m stable. Everything that I lost has been restored. I didn’t.
K: So, then what did that for you? Because now you’re in such a good place. You’re so centered. I’m not seeing any of that core pain bleeding through our lives. It feels like you got healing on board for that. What did it for you?
C: I think helping other people, and specifically helping professors and PhD students and seeing that they all have those same insecurities too. Being autistic, I just assume that everybody else feels differently than I do. But I could hear from them that, no, they didn’t. This is kind of how everybody feels about education with rare exception. I was like, “Oh, okay.” So, there’s never a grand moment where you feel like, “Ah-ha, I have done it. I have completed the learning. I have learned all the knowledge.”
K: Yeah. So, then for you, PhD was about goal attainment and hoping to heal core pain?
C: Yes.
K: For me, my PhD is a celebration that my life is stable enough and good enough now that I could do this really, really hard thing. On any given day, I can tell the whole world to, “Shh.” That’s something I’ve never had before now where I could say, “Okay, everybody just freeze. Nobody need anything from me today. Nobody talk to me today. Nobody nothing,” because even in my practice I can tell clients, “I will not have access to electronics, and I can go on a writing retreat and not communicate with any clients.” I seriously will unplug.
C: Well, and you’re not an on-demand therapist.
K: Yeah, no I’m not.
C: So, you don’t take walk-ins, and you give people a hotline if they have needs in the middle of the night or whatever.
K: Yeah. Ouch … I had to switch my leg. For me, if you’re in crisis, you cannot call me and get me to answer my phone. It’s hit and miss. So, I don’t answer my phone in-between clients, and I usually don’t answer my phone on my days off.
C: You certainly don’t answer your phone during sessions.
K: Oh, absolutely not. If I’m in a car driving to and from some place, I may answer my phone. So, it’s really, really super rare. Most times I call back, so email is the fastest way to reach me. I like that distance and everybody knowing that if they send me an email, it can take to up to 24 hours to respond.
C: Right.
K: So, I really did before entering the PhD program, I was able to clear the field. Having witnessed you go through the program, I feel very lucky that you went before I did because I’m just avoiding some of the mistakes that you made. I’m able to benefit from adapting what you did to me and crafting it so that it suits me and it fits my personality. So, for me, having a PhD, what that will tell the world about me is that I had a certain amount of money, because everybody knows how much PhDs cost, and that I had consistency, that I was able to create consistency in my life.
K: Not everybody who has a PhD had consistency, and not everybody who had a PhD had a certain amount of money. Some people did loans or what have you. It says that you could get a loan, that you had access to the money. It says that you could have enough consistency that you were able to present an idea, do what was ever necessary to bring that idea to fruition and then defend it and have people say, “Yep. You did it.”
C: I guess I think the last thing for me before we finish is, I feel like part of the reason that I wanted a PhD so much and pursued it so vigorously was that it became clear to me that being disabled meant that I wouldn’t be able to sustain a career in something that required constant attention.
K: Yeah.
C: So, I don’t have any scorn or look down on people who don’t have a degree, but I knew that the best shot I had at being able to make a stable living despite being able disabled, or I should say while being disabled, was to have the PhD.
K: A point I want to make about my PhD, I dropped out of high school. I earned my GED, and it took me until I was in my 50s. This has been a lifelong journey for me of living and learning, and the first time I went around for my bachelors, it just didn’t work out. A bunch of shady stuff happened in my life and didn’t work out.
K: The second time around, I feel like I got … So, the first time I got a scholarship from who’s who among American students. I just didn’t have the maturity to bear that out. The second time, my mother was actually paying me to go to school. I didn’t have the maturity to value going to school over partying. So, I hung out with friends and partied. The third time I went, I was just trying to get to that place where I had enough education on board to get a decent job and change my career path.
K: Then the time after that, I met you, and we joke, but you fucked away all my hopes, dreams and ambitions. The sex was good. The sex was intense, and I valued sex over going to class. Then the time after that … So, there-
C: Yeah, we took a hiatus. We met in college. We got married. We met in college, got married, took a hiatus, and then went back and finished.
K: Yeah, so I don’t know. I’ve tried to get my bachelors like seven or eight times before I did it. But then I did it, because I kept going back. To me, that’s the coolest thing about being in an American is that I was in school with people in their 80s-
C: Yeah, so I was.
K: … going to get their bachelors. So, I feel like you don’t age out of it. If you want education, figure out how to do it for yourself. Even if you have to do it in increments where you have to go make a bunch of money and then take a couple classes, make a bunch of money and take a couple classes, you can get there. Don’t let anybody tell you because you’re in the foster system you can’t do it. Don’t let anybody tell you because you’re a woman you can’t do it. Don’t let anybody tell you because you’re queer you can’t do it. Don’t let anybody tell you because you’re a woman you can’t do it. That has nothing to do with you, the ways that they try to limit you, or you’re disabled and you can’t do it
C: Yeah. The way I see it, I know the stats is that something … only something like three percent of kids who were in the foster system end up with at least a bachelors degree.
K: Yeah.
C: I think you didn’t beat the odds. You made the odds,-
K: Thank you.
C: … because the people who are the 97%, they didn’t lose the odds.
K: No.
C: I think this whole idea of beating the odds is kind of-
K: Antiquated.
C: Yeah. So, I think wherever you’re at in life, if you want to do better, then-
K: Do better.
C: Yeah. It can-
K: Figure it out.
C: It can be tough to find the resources. So, I don’t fault anybody for not doing better, but we were lucky enough to-
K: Go down to your local community college and go down to the financial aid office, and tell them, “Hey. Where can I get some money?”
C: Yeah.
K: Seriously, it’s that simple. Just go down and talk to a financial aid officer, and that’s their whole job is to tell people how to get money. Most people in the foster care system qualify for the Pell Grant and other subsidies and grants. You can get paid to go to school. So, that’s my little PSA, my little rant. I saved it until the end.
C: Yeah.
K: I didn’t make the whole thing about it, but I’ll climb down off my soap box now that … Wherever you are and whoever you are, get there if you can, if education is what you want. Don’t let other people’s lack of creativity stop you from pursuing your goals.
C: Good way to put it.
K: Yeah. That’s us for today. Thanks for listening, and we hope you listen again.
C: Bye-bye.