In a word, No.
I will be 66 the month I finish the coursework portion of a Ph.D. in organizational leadership. I am also a physicist, a family business team member, and a third-year doctoral student in the College of Business and Leadership at Eastern University in St. Davids, PA. More importantly, I sustained a brain injury in 1986, forcing me to leave physics research as a profession and nearly cost my life. I was emotionally and cognitively unable to re-enter graduate school until I began an MBA program in 2017. In 2020 I began a Ph.D. program in 2020.
However, this article is about something other than the perseverance and indomitable spirit it took to get this far. Instead, it is about purpose, faith, family, and the right program. My family and healthcare providers convinced me I could contribute to society at a greater level than I had been if I used my innate intelligence and love for research. This could be accomplished, my family told me, even as social anxiety, PTSD, and TBI created crippling obstacles to such a plan. I received an MBA with the highest distinction and a 3.97 GPA. They were right about my innate ability. I would never have believed it until I did it. So, Ph.D. students of all ages should lean into their support people. They believe in you more than you do.
Nevertheless, faith is the critical factor and is, for me, tied to my purpose in life and education success to date. I do not want to get a degree at age 66; I want to make a difference. My purpose is to honor God by helping his people with all my spirit, will, ability, and effort. Not just help them but be all in for them. That means using my gifts as if I were doing it directly for God because I am. That is my purpose. Honor God by helping – loving – his people. Everyone else in my family, even those who are angry at God and deny God, contributes to the highest level of service to humankind. All of them but me. I was surviving and using only one of my gifts.
That brings me to the ‘right’ program. Eastern University has people who love God and other people who happen to run a highly-rated Organizational Leadership program. I reached out to them, and they took me in. I am somewhat of a black sheep, living in my wilderness and doing my own thing. Yet, as different as they are from me, my cohort and professors go out of their way to provide me with more than I knew was available. Because of that support, my purpose and the program:
· I entered my last semester of coursework today.
· I have published.
· My research area intersects with my daughter’s discipline as she works toward her Ph.D.
· And now, my whole family is working toward helping our students, our family business, the academe, and the world.
So no. If you have a purpose, support, and the right program, 66 is still young. You can’t change the world sitting on the sideline, and the academe’s purpose is to change the world.
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