Don’t Have a Ph.D.?
Recently I was approached by an author with a byline in a well-known magazine who wanted to interview an associate and me. I did not initiate the encounter. During the over an hour phone interview, the interviewer oohed and aahed over our responses.
A week later, I received the draft copy for approval to find that the article featured another person with a Ph.D. Nowhere within the text was anything that my associate or I had said.
I returned the emailed draft and commented that I didn’t recognize anything within the article. Moments later, I received a reply that to publish the article in this ‘very important’ magazine; they needed the quotes to come from a Ph.D.
I was stunned and, quite honestly, insulted. We weren’t PhDs when you interviewed us. Very strange.
The article was supposed to be about making a human connection with those who need help and how simple things like taking the time to listen or how making and sending a handmade gift have the power to heal.
But instead, the article focused on the clinical table of contents kind of stuff from textbooks of yore, far removed from humanness and kindness. So the article morphed from real and raw to regurgitated academia.
My associate and I are not doctors of philosophy. We do not have Ph.D.s. We ‘are’ PHDs. Through her work in homeless and trafficking shelters and through various aspects of what I do in the patient safety world and other projects, we:
Promote Hopeful Dreams
Provide Healing and Dignity
Perform Honorable Deeds
There is no philosophizing about it when you take the hand of someone experiencing homelessness and give them your heart and your help. There is no philosophizing involved when you spend your evenings making happy pillowcases to send to people whom you will never meet in the hopes that your little piece of fabric might give them some comfort, might help a child fall asleep knowing that good people do exist.
So I say to you, never allow anyone to look down on you based on how many years you didn’t sit in a classroom but instead got your feet wet, hands dirty, and heart broken. It’s not the letters behind your last name that prop you up – it’s your actions, spirit, and soul.
Let’s make the world a better place. Let’s PHD!
PR
