Why PhDs lack life skills-Part II
Life skills are skills that are required to handle life well and more so are the ones that would ensure that you could move up the ladder of Success with little to no effort.
No School or University, will teach you these skills, but you learn them on the field called Experience. You can also call these skills as Soft Skills, skills that are often never visibly seen in the real life but are always running behind the curtains.
At times, it is not the years of Higher Education that an individual has obtained that would often save his or her head but the soft skills that they managed to pick up while during their apprenticeship does.
Most times, these skills generally lack in a PhD. One main reason may be, due to the fact that a PhD, spends hours and hours in isolation that all they see is just Lab results and Publication and the need to get more Published.
We don’t blame them, it is just the way they get programmed by years of a high productive lab requirements.
Life Skills will keep you from Problem
For example how would you react if you are held by a Policeman for parking violations, or may be for speeding. How would you deal with a Student who is behaving violently ? How would you deal with Colleague who shows up late everyday? How would you fix your car in the middle of a desert? How would you teach your child to defend herself from the school bully ? We can just go on and on and so we thought we could explain you with a Story.
Story time
There was this PhD scholar traveling in a boat with Fisherman who was apparently the designated boatman assisting in transporting passengers from one end of the river to the other.
To lighten the journey, and to show how great he was, the PhD, starts off by asking the boatman, “oh! boatman, have you read, Aristotle’s Classics?“ To this the boatman replies,” No! Great one” Upset with his answer, the PhD, passes a harsh judgment, “it means, you have wasted 25 percent of your life”
The PhD continues on, “Okay, have you at least read Shakespeare’s all 37 Classics?” To this the boatman replies, “No! You great one” Frustrated and disappointed, the PhD scholar remarks again, this time with more fury, “it means, you have wasted another 25 percent of your life”
Finally, the PhD scholar questions the poor fisherman, “ How about at least reading Leo Tolstoy’s Classics?” to this too, the boatman replies, “No! Sir”
Annoyed and disappointed and more so really upset with this, the Scholar rebukes the Fisherman for being such an illiterate vagabond and for being so deprived of knowledge and then advises him “now that you have wasted a total of 75 percent of your lifetime, I suggest that you join the night school and graduate, this would at least do so patch up for your laziness” The Fisherman accepts his tips with thankfulness and stays focused on his course.
The Reality shows what it means to be really Educated
Then as they were heading towards the middle of the river, due to heavy turbulent waters, the reinforcement along the sides of the boat starts to peel off letting in water.
Alarmed by this, the boatman turned towards the PhD scholar and tells, ”Oh! Sir, we are in trouble, the boat has developed a leak and we just in the middle of the River, soon the boat would sunk down”, and then continues on, “now tell me good sir, do you know how to Swim?”
The PhD scholar all too stunned and replies with a frightful feeble voice, “No! Sir boatman” To this the boatman replies, “Oh! Sir, thou great one, please don’t address me as Sir, me, just a poor Fisherman who knows now one thing, and that would be how to swim across when the boat develops a leak, but I also know this, by knowing Aristotle, Leo Tolstoy and Shakespeare, you have now wasted your whole life”
Saying this, he jumps into the river and swims across to the safety of the banks, while the boat capsizes with the PhD scholar.
The moral: There are things which are more important in life than merely immersing oneself under the auspicious company of the most sophisticated laboratories and thought process.