Phd Student

Always a PhD Student in Training

I have always been a PhD student in training.

Long before I stepped into a classroom, I was revising. Updating. Changing. Life made me do the research. Trauma was my dissertation before I ever knew what APA format was.

As I grew older and wiser, I walked through issues and learning. I learned to revise and to reflect. To question. To answer. To find solutions and form hypotheses. To examine and evaluate things — not just in textbooks, but in my own life. Why did the eviction happen? What patterns kept me in poverty? How do systems work? How do people heal?

I remember on LinkedIn a professor told me I was a PhD candidate. It was kind. It was validating. But as I entered school I learned I was a PhD student first. You don’t jump to candidate. You earn it. You do the work. You get knocked down by stats and theory and IRB boards and you get back up.

That’s life too. We don’t start as experts in ourselves. We start as students. We collect data from every heartbreak, every motel room, every court date, every miracle. We run experiments called “new boundaries” and “monthly budgets.” We peer-review our own choices at 2am.

See, we learn.

I may not have the hood on my shoulders yet. But I’ve been in the lab of lived experience for 51 years. Bankruptcy taught me economics. Life taught me policy. Church hurt taught me theology. Rebuilding taught me resilience.

I revise my thinking. I update my beliefs. I change my methods when the data says the old way isn’t working. That’s not weakness. That’s scholarship.

So yes — I am always a PhD student in training. Of life. Of faith. Of freedom. Of myself.

And the defense? That happens every day I choose to get up, learn something new, and live it out loud.

Cathryn M. Murray

PhD Student in Training — School of Hard Knocks, Cum Laude

Salem, Oregon | August 1, 2026