Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Some people in my life have been very discouraging. Some people in my life have been very encouraging. It is not difficult for me to choose which type of person I want to be.

I can remember it like it happened yesterday. I was a graduate student working on my PhD. My major professor looked at me as I was leaving campus and going back to work. I was going to work on my research in the evening and on weekends.

He told me, “You won’t finish. People who leave campus never finish.”

Not very encouraging.

Several years later I was back on campus for a few days to talk to my committee. They wanted me to do a lot more work before they approved my dissertation. I was dejected. I was sitting in the office of another professor.

He told me, “You will do this and then that. You will finish those things in a month and be back for final approval and then graduate. You can do that.”

Very encouraging.

I sat across from a PhD student a few weeks ago. She was struggling with writing her dissertation proposal. Several people had told her that she didn’t write well enough in English to complete her assignments in pursuit of her PhD. I wanted to kill those discouraging people.

I pointed to a page she had written. I showed her how well that one page was written.

I told her, “You wrote this page. It is excellent. You can write all these other pages just as well. You will finish this.”