Becoming “Doctor”: The Quiet Transformation of a Doctoral Journey

When I tell people I’m pursuing a doctorate degree, sometimes they ask if I’m going to “make them” call me “doctor”. That’ll eventually be my new prefix, for sure. Whether they choose to call me that is up to them. I think a lot of people think about the title at the end: Doctor. It sounds like a destination. A milestone. A line you cross one day when someone calls your name at graduation. And I guess in some ways it is, but it’s more than that.

Becoming “doctor” isn’t really about the title at all. It’s about transformation.

Doctoral study retrains your brain to look at the world differently. Not just slightly differently, like you read a new book, and it makes you think about something for a few days. This is on a whole different level. You begin to fundamentally think differently. You start asking questions you never would have asked before or even thought to ask. You begin to notice assumptions hiding in plain sight. And you start to understand that many of the things we treat as “facts of life” are actually shaped by culture, power, language, and experience. In academic terms, this is where you begin exploring research paradigms and ideas about how we socially construct reality. In normal human terms, it means you start seeing the layers beneath everyday life, and that no one is creating their reality in a silo. We all work together to create ourselves and the world we’re living in. Everything is a construct.

The process of learning how to ‘see’ the world changes you.

At first, it can feel unsettling. You might notice that your thinking slows down because you’re analyzing things more deeply. You question more. You read differently. You write differently. You even listen differently. You begin to realize that this change is not something to resist. It’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s just part of the process of becoming “doctor.”

It’s less about proving what you know and more about learning how to think.

For me, this journey has also clarified something personal: the difference between a profession and a vocation. A profession can be a job you do well and take pride in. A vocation, though, feels like a calling. Like something bigger than yourself that keeps tapping you on the shoulder, asking you to lean in a little more, to pay attention to all the recurring signs and themes life keeps giving you.

Leadership has always felt like that for me. Not just leading organizations or teams but helping people grow into themselves as leaders, and the issue of what makes leader ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and the idea that everyone has access to leadership influence.

The doctoral journey as a part of the story of my vocational calling has pushed me to examine that calling more seriously and more intentionally, and in my own quiet way, and with the help of many caring people, transform myself into “doctor.”