So here I am in the USA, getting ready to embark on Phase II of my data collection. I have already conducted more than 20 interviews with New Zealand women and will be asking research questions of women from the same demographic in the USA. This means that I will at least be closer to my Michigan home. I have moved to St. Louis, Missouri where I will be based at Washington University. I am excited to get started!
“We just had the new staff and faculty orientation last week. There were people there from Texas, California, Illinois…” My mentor, a Vice-Chancellor from the teaching University where I had obtained my baccalaureate degrees, ticked off the places from near and far that they had hired new academics from. I noted that all had come from other states, not directly from other countries.
After the initiating conversation in which I experienced an absolutely life-changing moment in the sociology professor’s office who asked me why I didn’t just stay and get my PhD at the University of Otago in New Zealand instead of returning home to the USA to do it there, I found myself thinking, Why not?
I left the conversation and his office that day and began to seriously research. Come to find out, the population I wished to study was indeed in New Zealand and it created a wonderful niche opportunity to do cross-cultural research. Slowly, my research proposal began to take shape. I would study a particular group of women in religion that were located both in the USA and New Zealand and spend time conducting interviews in both countries, writing up my research as I went. A few academics at the University of Otago kindly offered me feedback on my proposal in getting it shaped and ready. Was it better suited for sociology or anthropology? I knew that I was an anthropologist at heart but my Masters had gone in the direction of sociology. Perhaps I should stay with that? There was much to consider.
Although I had begun writing my research proposal, I wanted to make sure that obtaining my PhD abroad was in my best interests. I contacted all of my mentors at previous universities I’d attended and ran it past them. What did they think? They were cautiously optimistic. Others I knew who had obtained their degrees abroad had usually done so with their baccalaureate and/or Masters degrees. But the PhD? That seemed pretty risky. Gutsy too. I knew that I wanted to land a professorship in a good university later on. Would obtaining my PhD in another country keep me from being able to get a job in the United States? The only point that was made against it was that because New Zealand observes the British system of three years of research and writing and no coursework, I would be unable to teach PhD classes, having never taken them myself. But I argued that I had indeed taken them during my Masters in the USA when PhD and Masters students alike sat side by side in the same classes. After many emails and phone calls with several academics, I began to realize it could work.
But what about funding? I knew there could be no conversation without it. I applied for and received the Doctoral Scholarship from Otago that pays me a living stipend every month for three years to do nothing but research. That was a deal I couldn’t even hope for in the USA where living stipends come with conditions like teaching three classes at a time so the sitting professor can focus on his research. I do teach at Otago but only because I love it. (Oh, and to build my CV.) And I get paid extra to do so. (Not much mind you, but it is extra. Or it would be if I didn’t have so many dang bills in USD that I have to strrrrreeeetch those NZ dollars to cover.)
In short, I am very blessed to get to do the work I do. I am researching the lived spiritual experiences of dynamic women who live in two countries. I get to travel and meet amazing people. Sure, it’s hard work and sometimes it’s pretty exhausting. I don’t even know yet what job I will have or what fruition this journey will find. But I’m living in my calling and that’s all the reassurance I need that God has my back. And, the University of Otago in New Zealand and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri where I get to carry out my research are pretty cool places to be!
“Why don’t you do your PhD here at the University of Otago?”
I stared in wonder at the professor of sociology who looked up at me expectantly. I dropped into a chair.
Why not do my PhD right here in New Zealand? Arguments raced through my mind. The population I wanted to study was located in the USA. Didn’t it make more sense to return to my home in the USA and get my PhD there? I asked him this question and he said, “Well, is it possible that the same or a similar population is here in New Zealand too?”
I had honestly never thought about it. Suddenly, it began to make sense, the spirit call I’d experienced to come to this country some four years before this conversation and how my coming to New Zealand had become a reality just one year previous. I had found a program called BUNAC (www.bunac.org) that helped US citizens up to age 35 come to New Zealand on a one-year work visa. I’d called BUNAC on April 5, 2010 while sitting in my apartment in Shanghai (another long story) and said, “I turn 35 in ten days. What can you do for me?” They responded that it was all good as long as I turned 36 in New Zealand. So I began the process of following a spirit call that had started a long time before that initiating conversation.
When I arrived in Auckland on 24 August 2010, I literally had in my mind, Okay, Universe. I’m here. Now tell me why. It would be one more year before I found out the answer standing in that professor’s office the first week of August, 2011.
The Smart Girl's Guide to Getting Her PhD Abroad 