Me? Do a PhD?

All being well my wife will graduate from med school in July and start working as an F1 (junior house officer) in August.  It's taken four years on the course and a year of preparation to reach this point - five years in all.

During all that time, I've been the sole breadwinner and holding the fort at home, with the help of au pairs. With the prospect of less pressure to earn, I've been wondering what the possibilities might be in future.

Way, way back around the same time as I applied to join Reuters Graduate Trainee Scheme, I was also investigating becoming a psychotherapist. In the course of my investigations I met some very interesting people but came to the conclusion that virtually all of them had just become more adept at talking about and justifying their neuroses. So when Reuters offered me a job, that's the route I took. Since then I have met some far more "together" people in the psych areas - Bionergetic Therapists, NLP trainers wth a broad psychology background (not weekend diploma merchants), and research neurologists.

Back to this year. I had already decided to write a book this year on the subject of Richer Conversation - likely to be in Q3 and Q4.  I expect to be thinking and learning a lot. Some of it will be original, meaning it will be based on my experience and reflections. Some of it will be adapted from academic research, philosophy etc. Assuming I would complete the book and have some momentum, I realised around mid-May that could extend the work towards a PhD.

A bounced the PhD idea around with a few people and actually got in touch with a contact at the University of Bath, Dr Neil Hinvest.  I had what I thought was a rough idea of a research project I wanted to do, and how I wanted to do it, so I discussed it with him.  Pretty early on in our chat he said he would be interested in supervising the project! He summed it up as elegant, well thought-through and with many potential uses both clinically and in business.


I found it both exciting and shocking that I could go from the germ of an idea to having the idea practically accepted in such a short time.  I still have to make the application.  I still have to discuss the whole thing with my wife, once she has her finals behind her.  So it's still early days and I may still decide against it.  Whether or not, it's all very exciting.