Higher Vibrations in Higher Education

Getting a PhD is an emotional experience with Dave Pena and Elizabeth Berry

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On this episode, I interview Drs. Dave Pena and Elizabeth Berry. Elizabeth posted on Instagram about pursuing a PhD being anxiety provoking. She wondered: Where are the expectations coming from and why do we (as people) perpetuate it? It’s seen as a rite of passage. Is that reason enough? She thinks, wait my boss and committee members went through this too, and her “brain goes to would I ask these in a different way? Treat myself like they’re treating me?” What happens from the time you’re a PhD student to an assistant professor. We jump right in to dialogue and Dave shares some of his experiences and the conflict between what you want (to gain skills and get out) and what your mentor wants.  


What we know from research in Occupational Safety and Health is that leadership, specifically, middle management is an indicator of the environment. Which, sometimes can be toxic. Toxic to the point of illegal (some stories Dave shared offline). While all of us had different experiences, we had similar pain points of “not knowing" what we can or should do (or what a healthy level of expectation might be). Dave suggests a committee (like IACUC and IRB for grad students!). Elizabeth and I agree wholeheartedly and our conversation continues.  

We wrap with the challenges of deciding to stay or leave a lab. You have to choose your right kind of hard: What suits your personality, resources, abilities. Other take aways include:

  • If you are a mentor or mentee: Check on prior and current performance, attitude, past data … are they changing? What’s going on? Can something change for the better?
  • Through more communication and discussion, we need to change the discourse about mental health decline during grad school
  • We model based on what we’ve seen… just like we don’t know how to be students, we don’t know how to be leaders. There remains generational trauma – to break this cycle it takes people who are more awake and more in tuned with different parts of being a scholar and humans
  • When people are mis-mentored, or not mentored at all, they don’t know what to do because they were never taught (you are often so deep in your content, so you don’t have time for business and pedagogy classes)
  • We need more holistic education
  • We’re not all having the same experience, even in the same lab, but we still experience similar pain points.
  • *Bonus content of how I found yoga

    • Handles:

    Elizabeth: @nature.neuroscience.phd

    Dave: @doctor_pena and his start up: stremecoder.com and pluri.design

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    Higher Vibrations in Higher EducationBy Samantha M Harden, PhD
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