The path to higher education may not always be a straight line, but it’s never too late to take the next step. In this episode, we explore the journey of pursuing a PhD, whether you’re a seasoned professional considering a career pivot or already in the thick of dissertation work. Our guest, Dr. Jennifer Harrison, shares invaluable advice for navigating the dissertation process, staying organized, and building the right support system. If you’ve ever thought about returning to school or wondered if academia is your next move, this conversation will help you weigh your options and tackle the challenges ahead with confidence.

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Pursuing A PhD: Is It Time to Make Your Academic Move? With Jennifer Harrison

Have you been thinking about going back to school to earn a PhD, or maybe you’re in the corporate world wondering if higher education is your next big move? I have to share with you that when I was in my late twenties, I wanted to go back to school for my Master’s. I started one class and then I got pregnant with my son. I was super sick the first three months of my pregnancy, and that was the end of my going back to school to get my Master’s degree.

That’s a lesson. I chose at that time not to pursue the Master’s degree because I had a baby and I wanted to dedicate myself to my child, and I was working full-time at the time. Fast forward 26 years, I am now 55 years old and I still think about going back to school. If I’m thinking about it, I know probably other people are thinking about it.

This guest has conversations with people who think about going back to school. If that’s the case and you are thinking about going back to school, then this episode is for you. We are going to dive into how to navigate the challenges of completing a dissertation. This is if you’re doing a PhD. Whether you’re in the thick of it or considering a career pivot into academia, this conversation is going to be great for you.

Welcome. Thank you so much for being here on the show. As always, we are here to help you take the next step in your career. Believe it or not, going back to school, even though you may think that you’re not going to be earning money if that’s the case, it’s still the next step because you are developing yourself further. Whether it’s climbing that corporate ladder or making that bold move to go back into higher education, that would be amazing.

I haven’t said this out loud yet, but one of my bucket lists is to go back to school to get my Master’s degree. It will happen someday, but it has been in the back of my mind. It’s a thought that comes back more and more in my life.

In this episode, we’re going to be talking about why pursuing a PhD can be an exciting yet very challenging endeavor and how to pivot for corporate women. We have Dr. Jen Harrison. Dr. Jen helps students navigate the process without feeling overwhelmed. We’ll also dig into some actionable tips for staying motivated and organized. Being organized is huge for these types of degrees. These tips are going to be useful no matter where you are in your career journey.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know whether a PhD might be the next step for you, the next right move for you, or if maybe staying the course at what you’re doing is what you need to do. You’ll have some great strategies for tackling the dissertation process if you’re already on that path. Dr. Jen tells me that a lot of students who are in that dissertation process are not guided well enough by either the professors, mentors, or whatever. This conversation is important if you’re in that process.

Let me introduce you to Dr. Jen Harrison. She is a dissertation coach with over a decade of experience helping students, especially first-generation ESL and non-traditional students, achieve their academic goals. Here’s a fun fact about Dr. Jen. She jumped straight from undergrad to a PhD, so she has lived this experience firsthand. Plus, she has some fantastic insights for anyone thinking about making that leap back into higher education. Let’s dive in and learn how Dr. Jen makes the daunting dissertation process easier to manage. Stay tuned.

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Jennifer, thank you so much for being here. Are you doing well?

I am. Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Dissertation Coach

You’re a dissertation coach. We’ve had many different types of coaches on the show. Tell me a little bit about what a dissertation coach does.

A lot of students, when they get into a graduate program, encounter a lot of challenges. They usually have a supervisor or more than one supervisor assigned to them to help, but supervisors don’t offer a lot of support. They expect students to work very independently. They can only meet once a month maybe or once every couple of weeks. They don’t review work quickly. Students can end up feeling a little bit lost. They’re not quite sure what they’re supposed to do. Maybe they lose motivation or they’re not used to working independently.

As a dissertation coach, my job is to be the supervisor but much more available than most supervisors are. I’m here to help students with everything from staying on track and setting goals to reviewing their work and letting them know if they are on the right track. Sometimes, they don’t know what should be in a particular section of a dissertation, so I coach them on what that content should look like. I do the spectrum of everything from motivation and accountability through self-care and writing and research.

Are you hired by the university for the graduate students or are they hiring you individually?

The students are hiring me individually.

That makes sense. You are another added resource for students in graduate studies who are trying to get that. Is it a Master’s and a PhD or just a PhD?

It can be both. I’ve worked with a few Master’s students. Most of the students who come to me are PhD because the pressures are that much higher at that level.

Tell me a little bit about how you specifically help these graduate students. I know with the world changing, a lot of people have gone back to school. It would be a great way for you to maybe give us 1 or 2 examples of your clients and how you were able to help them.

The vast majority, I can think of 5 or 6 at the moment that I’m working with who fall into this category, are the students who are not quite sure what they should be putting down on the page and are not getting a lot of clarity in terms of supervisor feedback. What I tend to do with those students is we start pretty much at the beginning.

We take whatever their concept is for their dissertation, and we do an exercise that helps them brainstorm that topic and how they’re going to turn that into a research project. We make sure that all the pieces line up. We’ll sit down and throw ideas back and forth. I’ll ask them a lot of very pointed questions about what they’re doing, why, and how, and write down their answers for them so that they’re free to think, use their brains, and ramble back and forth. I’m pulling out the important stuff and writing it down for them. That’s where we start.

From there, it’s usually a case of taking the guidance, the rubrics, and so forth that their institution has given them and saying to them, “We need to start in this place. Here’s a blank page. I’m going to put some prompts on it for you. I need you to fill in this, and then send it to me. I’ll read it. I’ll tell you where you’ve still got gaps, where you need to make something stronger, and where something looks good and you should model the rest of your writing on it.” We’ll build the dissertation up in stages in that way, moving through each section. We start with the big ideas and then break them down and get them onto the page for them. They will often then submit it to their supervisor. They’ll get feedback and I’ll help them understand what the feedback means and how they should address it on the page.

We do a lot of writing together and brainstorming together. I provide a lot of writing prompts, materials, resources. and sometimes even tuition on, “What should this look like? Where can I find resources? What does this mean? How do I address this?” That’s one category of students that needs help with the whole project.

I have another category of students who can do that stuff by themselves but they find they can’t make themselves sit down and do it because nobody is cracking a whip. With those students, I tend to meet them less frequently, but we’ll meet and we’ll set a goal. It’s like, “This week, you’re going to work on this and you’re going to show it to me by this date.” They feel like they have somebody watching over them so they’re more inclined to do the work.

There’s a whole nother category of students, and there’s some overlap here. There’s a category of students who struggle with feeling overwhelmed and frustrated because they’re not getting the support that they need. They feel down. That’s more emotional than it is necessarily competence. That’s the other side of things that I do, which is I’ll meet with students and say, “I’ve read your work. It looks good. You don’t need to feel sad about this,” or, “When that person said that to you, they were bang out of line. That’s not something they should be saying. You don’t have to be sad about that.”

It could even be, “Right now, the reason you’re struggling to sit down and work is that you haven’t eaten and slept. I can see you’re tired. You need to go take a nap, and then you’re going to feel better.” Sometimes, they do need someone to be a mom for them for a little bit. That’s three areas that I cover. For some students, it’s one, and for some, it’s all three.

That makes sense. In general, you have experience because you were a graduate student yourself, correct?

Correct.

Challenges In A Graduate Program

You are using all of your knowledge and your expertise to help this particular group of graduate students. I would imagine that the university doesn’t think that they have to provide as many resources because they’re like, “You’re already a graduate student. You can figure it out.” Yet, they don’t necessarily have all the tools that they could use to get them through that finish line. I know you already talked about some challenges they have, but what are some challenges that you would say people have even deciding to do a graduate program?

The top one when it comes to deciding to do the program is that students tend to be very driven. They know they want to do something more. They want to do something extra. They want to push themselves. A lot of them have a short-term goal in mind like, “I want a promotion, I want to start my own business,” or “I finished one degree, but I’d like another one.” A lot of them don’t think through the long-term mission.

There is a perception that getting another degree is better. It makes you a smarter person or it makes you a more competent person. That ends up being the goal. A degree doesn’t work like that. There are lots of different ways to become a smarter person or a more competent person. A degree may not be the right choice for everybody.

That is the top challenge, knowing why you want to do that degree and making sure it’s the right choice. That has to be thought through before you sit down and start it. That’s one piece of the puzzle. I love it when I get people early enough that we can think that through. Sometimes, they’re already in there. Rarely, they can’t finish, but sometimes, I do wish I was able to say, “I wish you had taken this other path instead because this one was hard for you.”

The other part of it is finding the right program because there are so many options out there. There are online degrees and hybrid degrees. You can live in Canada but do a degree in Hawaii. There’s so much. Some options are better than others. It’s not in terms of prestige necessarily, although that’s true too, but in terms of the actual support you’re going to get, how well the program is designed, and how qualified the instructors are. It’s hard for you to find that information. Knowing how to evaluate a program is important as well.

At one point, I was looking to do my Master’s degree, and then I got pregnant with my child. I was sick with morning sickness and stuff. I finished my class, but then life working full-time, babies, and whatever. It’s interesting because I have been looking for programs that are specifically designed to understand what is happening with women’s culture in the workplace. There are a lot of leadership programs, and I’ve looked into a lot of them. I’ve had several conversations with people and institutions and they’re like, “We can help you become a better leader, but we’re not exactly doing how the culture is changing.” Many more women are in C-Suite levels and stuff like that.

Dr. Jen’s Story

You’re right when you say that you have to find the right program that meets your needs because everybody is trying to give me executive presence, training, or negotiation. I don’t need that. I’m more looking into who is researching all of the results that are happening from all these women elevating in the world. I haven’t been able to find it yet, so if you have anything, let me know now. When you were going through your program, tell me a little bit about your story. How did you end up being a dissertation coach? This is very niched down. Tell me a little bit about how you got to where you are with this.

It has been a winding path. I went to university in the United Kingdom. The setup there is a little bit different from the US and Canada. I finished a degree in English Literature. I was enjoying myself so much that I decided I wanted to go on to graduate studies. My professors felt that I was good enough that I didn’t need to do a Master’s, so I went from undergraduate straight into PhD.

I had an amazing supervisor who didn’t just want me to finish the PhD, but he wanted me to be trained as an academic. He taught me how to be a researcher, how to think like a researcher, and the things I needed to do to become a career researcher. He gave me a good setup. Much to his disappointment, I did not move directly into becoming an academic. Life happened and I got married. I moved to another location.

I still worked in universities, but sometimes, I was doing administrative work. Sometimes, I was doing adjunct teaching. I stayed in universities. I was teaching graduate students. I was researching the side here and there, and then I was also trying to earn a full-time living, doing other things. Eventually, it became clear that wasn’t going to work very long. You need to pick one thing or the other.

I completely pivoted. I went into teaching secondary school. That was important for ending up where I am because a lot of university professors and a lot of researchers are excellent at their research but they’re not good teachers. Training to be an actual teacher in a school and a classroom was what taught me how to be a good teacher. I did that until my kids were born.

After my kids were born, I stopped for a little while because they needed a lot of attention. The two boys liked climbing the walls, literally, so they required all my attention for a while. That was still in the UK, but my family all lived over here. Eventually, we decided to move back here to the States. When we came back to the States, I went back into teaching in higher education. I taught there for five years. Again, teaching writing, teaching research, and working with dissertation students.

The pandemic hit and the pandemic shook everything up. That seemed like a good time to pivot again. What I was seeing was that there were a lot of students who needed that help. They needed somebody who was a teacher, who had been through the experience, and knew how to do good research. There are not a lot of people out there that fill all of those gaps. At that point, I decided to leave higher education and start my business. That’s where we are.

Finding Support

That’s wonderful. Those are good skills for you to have, not only the teaching and the research, but you went through the whole program yourself. If someone was trying to figure out whether they’re on the right path in their dissertation, assuming they’re doing their PhD and they’re not getting that support that they need, how would they start figuring out what is the next best thing for them to do?

Diagnose where it is you’re struggling. That can be hard because sometimes, you’re struggling in so many different areas and you’re getting such negative feedback that you’re not sure, “Am I struggling with the whole research? Am I a poor writer or a writer who needs practice? Maybe I’m neither of those things, but I need help setting goals and managing my time.” You have to diagnose where it is you’re getting stuck. Sometimes, you can do that by yourself. Sometimes, you can do it with a friend or family member. Sometimes, you need a coach to listen to you pour out all your troubles and then say, “Here’s where I see the problems might be.” That’s the first thing.

A lot of coaches offer a free first session or a free taster session. If you ever sign up for one of those, that’s a good place to do that. Ask the coach to help you diagnose what it is that you need. If you have a supportive supervisor, they can also sometimes help. You can say to them, “I know it’s not your job to fix all these problems for me, but at least tell me. Should I be going to the writing center? Should I be hiring a coach? Should I be looking for a professional proofreader? What is it I need to help me get unstuck at this point?”

How do people even find you? How does a graduate student know to even look for a dissertation coach?

That’s tricky because a lot of the universities don’t like to tell students what supports are out there. There is this perception that it might be cheating. It’s not any more than having a football coach is cheating. Typically, my students find me because they’ve searched on Google. They’ve gotten desperate and searched for help. It’s a general call for help. Sometimes, it’s through platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn where they see helpful comments being made or they put out a cry for help that I’ve responded to. That’s another way that they find me. Sometimes and quite often, it’s through referrals where one student I’ve been able to help pass me on to other students who need help.

“There is this perception that having a dissertation coach might be cheating. It’s not any more than having a football coach is cheating.” – Jennifer Harrison Share on X

Mindset

There’s the imposter syndrome in the corporate world, but there has to be some kind of imposter syndrome going on when you’re a graduate student trying to get this huge accomplishment done and you are struggling with your mindset. Let’s talk a little bit about this. I know you already mentioned it, but I want to specifically talk about it because the mindset is such an important piece of getting anything done.

I see this all the time with students. It’s probably one of the biggest obstacles that they face. The external challenges can be overcome reasonably easily once that feeling that you can’t do it is gone. Where this comes from is there is an external expectation that if you’ve made it through the application process, have joined the program, have probably done a few classes and done well in those, and have done well in your previous degrees, you know what you need to know. You are already prepared. You are already good enough to be in a PhD program. You know all the things. You can go independently.

What isn’t acknowledged in that is that a PhD program is a very different setup. Writing a dissertation is a different setup to most of the rest of the higher education process. In taking classes, you have an instructor there who says, “Here’s your assignment. It’s due on this date. Hand it in. Here’s the rubric.” The institutions don’t necessarily acknowledge openly that this is something different. They do expect students to know what they’re doing.

Naturally, the students themselves have done well in their previous studies. They go into the program thinking they’re going to have the same level of success with the same level of output. When things look different and nobody’s saying to them, “Don’t worry. This is different. You need to learn new skills,” they think, “Clearly, everyone’s expectation is that I should know what I’m doing. If I don’t know what I’m doing, there must be something wrong with me.”

Since everybody’s got this internal, very few students are reaching out to others saying, “What’s going on? Are you stuck too? I’m stuck. Why does this not make sense?” Since everybody else is not saying anything, you think someone else would be saying something. It’s a horrible vicious cycle where everyone assumes everybody else should know what they’re doing and probably does know what they’re doing, so nobody gives anybody any help.

Students end up feeling like, “Everyone else is able to do this. It’s probably just me. I must not belong in this program. I shouldn’t have done this. I shouldn’t have signed up for this. I can’t finish it. I need to be done.” That is the biggest challenge that I see from students. They come to me and say, “I’ve tried and I keep failing. Nobody else is having this problem. I don’t belong here. Should I quit?” The answer is, “No. Everyone else is struggling too.” I know because my career is based on this. I can confirm there’s nothing wrong with you. You just need XYZ tools.

Usually, once students have got the tools, applied them, and have seen some success, imposter syndrome plummets. They suddenly realize A) I’m part of a bigger community of people who are going through the same thing, and B) It can be overcome. It doesn’t work for every single person. Sometimes, it takes a little bit more work to overcome that mindset, but usually, as soon as you can see that you’re not alone and that you can succeed, that takes care of imposter syndrome.

I am so glad that you said that because a lot of times, women come to me and they’re like, “I need to be more confident to succeed in my career.” You’ve heard that saying in the real estate industry, which is location. That’s the most important thing. In career advancement, it’s preparation. What I tell them is the more you prepare by creating your custom career roadmap with all the pieces that go into it, the more your confidence goes up.

It’s like that too where you’re saying the more the student knows that they’re not alone and the more they’re able to get that help and succeed, that imposter syndrome plummets, which is the same thing that happens to women in the corporate world as they are preparing. Preparation is key. Once you have someone saying, “You’re not the only one that’s struggling,” because there isn’t that community in the graduate programs, you would think there would be because they’re all intelligent adults and they’re all trying to do the same thing. You would think that they would do meetups or something and say, “What’s everybody struggling with?” That doesn’t seem to be the case as much, right?

It is, but very erratically. There are some students that I’ve worked with who have had a group like that within their institution. They’ve joined it and it has been really helpful. It’s not the whole picture because those other students may still not have all the answers, but at least they get mutual support. There have been quite a lot of students who told me, “Those groups exist but they’re so toxic when I join them. Everyone’s competitive. It makes me feel worse when I go in and talk to people in that group.” There are some places where they don’t want to join a group at all. They’re like, “Everybody is too busy. We haven’t got time for that. That’s more above and beyond what I can revise.” It’s variable. If there was consistency in that, it would help students a lot more.

Do you work with students from one particular area or from all over the country or all over the world? How is your clientele set up?

All over the world. The predominant locations are the USA, Canada, and the UK, which is where I have the most experience. I have a student in New Zealand. I have another one in India. It has been spread out, but mostly the US, UK, and Canada.

Dissertation Process

What about once you work with a student and they get their dissertation? What happens if it’s not accepted? What happens if they need to rewrite it? Walk me through that program because I have heard people saying, “I submitted my dissertation but I had to go back and do some corrections,” or whatever. Talk to us about that process.

In all the time I’ve been teaching, I’ve only ever known one dissertation to not need any revisions. 98% of dissertations that go through the defense process will be told, “You need some revisions.” That’s completely normal. We expect it partially because that is one of the reasons you do the defense. It is for them to find any last little holes and pieces that need fixing. That’s the first thing. We expect that to happen.

In all the time I’ve taught, I’ve never known a dissertation to fail. The reason for that is that you shouldn’t be sent to defense if your dissertation isn’t ready. When I was a student, I knew one dissertation to fail, and that student insisted on going to defense when her supervisor told her she wasn’t ready. That tells you everything you need to know. If you have a decent supervisor and they’re doing their job, you won’t be going to defense with a dissertation that would fail. You have to work hard to fail at that point. It is very normal for them to say, “You look good. We’re happy to pass you, but we want you to fix this.”

“If you have a decent supervisor and they’re doing their job, you won’t be going to defense with a dissertation that would fail.” – Jennifer Harrison Share on X

Usually, my coaching continues past defense up until the point where that student submits the final dissertation to ProQuest or whatever database it is going to go into and they hit the publish button, get the graduation award, and they’re done. I send them a congratulations card and then we finish. Some of those students stay with me. They continue working with me to publish their dissertation as a book, to write articles, or to continue their careers as academics.

That was going to be my next question. What does one do once they have their dissertation? What is the next most natural step in the majority of graduate degrees that you work with?

There are so many different options. It depends on if you want to be an academic or a researcher or if you want to pivot and do something else. Probably about 70% of the students I work with don’t want to be academics. They go into industry or the corporate world or they open their own businesses. For them, they take the expertise and translate that into something marketable or something that can be developed further in the real world. For the ones who do want to be researchers or academics, they have the option of doing a postdoc or they can look for a faculty position. Usually, they need to, at that point, start producing further research and publishing that research because that’s what gets them the jobs.

Tell me a little bit about how your dissertation process was. What was your degree in? How did you handle that whole process?

My degree was in Children’s Literature. I studied children’s books in the Victorian era, which had zero real-world applications. I had an amazing experience. I had a supervisor who cared about training you well to succeed. I don’t think I ever had imposter syndrome. I never had any challenges because whenever I had a question, felt stuck, or wasn’t sure what to do, my supervisor was right on top of it. He would meet with me every week. It’d be a lot easier to answer that question if I had a terrible experience and say, “I could empathize.”

What it is that I feel so angry about is that other students don’t have that support. I think Peter must have been very unusual. At that time, he was less unusual. Now, he would be considered, “Nobody does that. Who does that? Nobody has the time. Nobody has the resources.” It’s sad. That is what a supervisor’s experience should be. There shouldn’t be any need for a coach like me to exist. There are bigger systemic issues in higher education that need sorting out. My experience was that if you have those supports, you have an amazing experience and you’re well set up for life. I want every student to have that.

How did you select children’s literature? What was your undergraduate degree? What interest primarily led you to select that particular niche to do your dissertation in?

We’re going to get deep into the English Lit theory and context. I did an English Literature degree. I was very interested in Victorian fin de siècle. At the time, we were approaching the year 2000s and the fin de siècle of our century. I was very interested in how the end of a century brings big changes and shifts in mindset and culture with it.

One of the places that you see those shifts most is in children’s books. A lot of the time, a children’s book is meant to instruct, as well as entertain. It’s supposed to impart those cultural norms. My dissertation looked at the books that I had loved as a young reader because I was a voracious reader as a child and still am. I took the books that I had loved and I wanted to examine how they showed those cultural shifts.

That’s interesting. I’m interested in the cultural shifts because especially when you say around the turn of the century, things evolve and shift culturally. Is there maybe one insight on children’s books that you can talk about?

Yes. It’s the playfulness. A typical adult choosing a book for a child will assume that everything is on the surface. If it’s a story about a balloon, it’s a story about a balloon. If it looks like a book that talks about being polite and well-mannered, that’s probably what it is. Usually, there’s something under the surface that’s a little bit more subversive. Most of the best children’s books that we have, the ones that have stood the test of time, have that underlying message, that subversiveness underneath the surface-layer message. If you’re a parent choosing a book, look at it carefully before you give it to your kid.

From Corporate To Graduate

That’s interesting. I love it. Thank you so much for that little tangent. The reason why I thought it would be good to bring you on and talk about being a dissertation coach and how you can work with people is that people from the corporate space have left to go back into graduate school or are considering leaving the corporate world to go back into graduate school. What would you recommend for somebody who is in the corporate world and they’re trying to maybe pivot, and you have several pivots in your career, into either a Master’s degree or if they have a Master’s degree into a PhD program?

The first thing is to work out whether this is the best option or if there is a different option that will get you where you want to go. Don’t think, “I want to do the next thing,” and pick PhD as the next thing. Work out what’s the goal after that. What is it you’re trying to achieve? Do you want to be getting a promotion? Do you want to be opening a business? Whatever you do has to give you the tools that you’ll need to get there, and a degree might not do that.

That’s the first thing, brainstorming the right choice. Brainstorm how much you are going to struggle with it as a choice. If you are not a strong writer, if you’re not great at working independently, if you are not good at reading, or if you don’t like reading a lot, then it might not be the best choice. Assess your strengths and assess your goals.

The next thing is to work out the right kind of program. When you’re trying to make that decision, you have to consider your lifestyle needs. What can you logistically do? In the story you shared, you’ve also got to make sure that the program is going to deliver what you want it to deliver. You can’t just look at their advertising because their advertising is going to tell you that they are the best program for you. Every single one of them is going to do that, and they’ll give you various reasons why.

You need to work out, “When it comes down to the day by day, are they going to demand that I make six flights a year to their campus? Are they going to demand that I sit down every day at 6:00 for three hours? Are they going to demand that I do eighteen hours of writing a week?” You have to get those details from them. If they won’t give them to you, don’t go with that program.

Get those details. What is going to be demanded of you day by day? What are they going to give you back in return? Are they promising you a leadership qualification? If you don’t need a leadership qualification, even if they’re in the right field, that’s not going to work for you. Look at the instructors and what their specialties are. What are they researching? What are they publishing? That’s where they’re going to be able to bring strengths to your work.

The third thing is whether it is going to be a positive environment for you or not. The way to find that out is to talk to previous students, not to talk to the people who try to get you to sign up because they will tell you that you’ll have an amazing experience. They want you to sign up. Try and find the people who are alumni and ask them, “What was your experience like? Was the program well-constructed and designed? Were the instructors supportive? Was there a good student community? Did you feel like you got what you paid for?” All those questions have to be asked, and they have to be asked by people who will give you honest answers.

Do you think if I ask a university to give me 2 or 3 names of students or put me in contact with other students, would they generally do that?

They might. Some of them would, and some of them might be more cagey about giving out personal details. Social media is your friend. Go onto #AcademicChatter or #AcademicTwitter on Twitter or go to Facebook groups that are for researchers or academics and say, “Has anybody done this program at this university? What were your experiences?”

That’s probably the easiest way to do this. Thank you so much for talking to us about this. I do have one other question. I’m assuming you were coaching both men and women, right?

Yes.

A lot of times, we say in the corporate space that men get more opportunities because they go to sporting events with other friends, golfing, or whatever with other men in the industry. Is there any specific difference that you saw between men and women as you were coaching them or are they pretty similar in their struggles and their challenges at that time?

There is a big difference. The biggest one is that it’s mostly women who come to work with me. If I had looked at the research and made an educated guess, I would’ve said it would be the other way around that men feel more confident asking for help and women feel like they ought to be able to do it all on their own. My clientele tells me exactly the opposite. The men are much more cagey about asking for help with a dissertation and the women are like, “I need help. Let me go get that.” That’s one big one.

There’s the type of help as well. The men will often reach out to say, “I need to get this done. Can you tell me how to do this?” It’s very concrete. The women are much better at recognizing the holistic side of the help. They’re like, “I need help staying on track. I need help with motivation. I’m not quite sure how to do this. I’m struggling with the feedback.” They do recognize the emotional side of it as well. What we’re saying here is that the women are much more self-educated about what seeking good help looks like.

That’s good to know. We had a lot of conversations with many different tips, but is there maybe one actionable tip that you can leave the audience with that can help them make those decisions when they’re in corporate and trying to figure out if they need to pivot in any way?

The biggest tip for that if anything else is to have a network of people who will support you and give you the answers, the help, and the emotional support that you need. Whether you’re trying to make that decision to go into a program, whether you’re in one, whether you are thinking of doing one in the future, or whatever it might be, have the people around you who will help and who you can turn to to help and feel comfortable doing that with.

“Have a network of people who will support you and give you the answers, the help, and the emotional support that you need.” – Jennifer Harrison Share on X

Thank you so much again for your time. I appreciate it.

You are very welcome.

This episode resonated with me because I personally would love to go back to school. I have a passion for learning. My husband teases me because anytime I get a community college catalog or a library catalog of all their classes, I am eagerly reading through the catalogs and I want to see what they have to offer. My husband teases me. He’s like, “You’re such a geek,” which I know I am a geek and a nerd for learning, so I’m okay with that.

Dr. Jen shared a ton of wisdom with us. I hope that you are feeling as inspired as I am. I want to talk about three things that highlighted the conversation. First, we learned about the importance of having the right kind of support when tackling big challenges. Whether you’re considering getting your PhD or considering a career pivot, Dr. Jen emphasizes the right mentor or program can help you stay on track and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Second, Dr. Jen shared valuable tips on staying organized and breaking bigger goals into smaller, manageable steps is critical. She helps students create clear actionable plans to tackle each part of their dissertation, which is a strategy that works both for academic and corporate settings. I know that for PhD students have a specific deadline to submit their dissertation, and if it gets challenged, they have to go back and rework it. You want to make sure that you stay on track with all those due dates.

Finally, the third thing that was a takeaway for me is that asking for help is crucial, whether it’s from a coach, your supervisor, or a peer. Dr. Jen pointed out that seeking guidance isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a smart move to keep you moving forward confidently. Especially in the corporate world, when you think that asking a question is going to put you in a bad position because you maybe didn’t understand what your manager asked you to do, going back and clarifying the directions is a sign of strength if you didn’t understand it. It’s okay to say, “I started working on the project. I wasn’t clear. Can you please re-explain whatever X project is?”

Dr. Jen leaves us with one actionable tip. She says, “Build a network of people who can support you with the answers, help, and emotional backing.” These are people who have been through the process. They’re going to be better equipped to help you go through the process when they’ve already been through the process. Whether you are starting your PhD or making a big career move, having the right kind of support can be game-changing. This was a great conversation with Dr. Jen. It inspires me to look into going back to school. I hope that you feel inspired.

If you’re ready to take the next step in your career or if you’re feeling stuck and don’t know what to do, take the Promotion Readiness Quiz to find out exactly where you stand. You could be an emerging leader, a progressive professional, or a career trailblazer. The quiz will give you some rough resources so that you can figure out what you need to do once you get your results.

While you’re at it, check out the Unlock the Leader Within Membership for a supportive community. This includes women who are ready to grow, connect, and elevate their careers together. One of the things that I always talk about for the membership is that I want you to be promotion-ready. I want you to work on self-advocating with confidence, and then having and building a community of incredibly supportive women.

This episode reminded us that preparation and support are key to overcoming challenges. Whether it’s a dissertation or a career pivot, with the right tools, you can face anything with confidence. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Jen. She was very inspirational. With that, remember to be brave, be bold, and take action.

Important Links

• https://ReadWritePerfect.com
• https://Twitter.com/Perfect_Write
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/Jennifer-Harrison-RWP
• A Free Session with Jennifer Harrison
• Unlock the Leader Within Membership Link to Join
• Promotion Readiness Quiz
• 4-Hour VIP Accelerator Bootcamp

About Dr. Jennifer Harrison

Dr. Jen Harrison is a highly experienced dissertation coach. A PhD herself, she has coached and supervised first-generation, ESL, and non-traditional students in the UK and USA for more than 10 years. Many of them have achieved first-class degrees. Dr. Harrison offers support in writing, research design, motivation, and research methods. She specializes in helping you achieve your dissertation and career goals quickly and easily, so you can feel confident and supported moving forward.