I can remember excitedly e-mailing one of my professors. I enthusiastically typed, “I’ve passed my dissertation defense! I’ll be graduating with my doctorate!” It had been a challenging road, one filled with hard work, a few tears, and blood (if you count paper cuts). But I will never forget my professor’s response, “Congratulations! Now you have your license to learn!” I had always looked at my Ph.D. as destination. In academic circles, they call it a “terminal degree.” It’s the last one, the end of the line, the carrot at the end of the stick. So why was my former professor telling me that I now had a license to learn?
He was reminding me that earning a degree doesn’t mean that you’ve somehow arrived, that you now have no need to learn. It was also a reminder to two other important truths. First, it was a reminder to be humble. Those who hold a Ph.D. can sometimes be full of themselves. In this vein my father’s words regularly echo in my mind, “Ph.D. means ‘piled higher and deeper,’” or I also remember my wife’s words, “Ph.D. means ‘post hole digger.’” In other words, don’t take yourself too seriously just because you’ve earned a Ph.D. Be humble. The world is a big place and there are a lot of smart people out there from whom you can learn a lot.
Second, the best students make the best teachers. Even though I’ve got my Ph.D., the more I’ve studied the more I’ve realized how little I know. So even though I earned my degree, I keep on reading, studying, and learning. And in some cases, I have to re-learn what I’ve forgotten. On several occasions I’ve picked up books and started to read them, only to find out that they’ve got highlights and markings in them—my highlights and markings! How on earth I can completely forget that I’ve read and marked up a book is beyond me. But it does happen (at least it happens to me).
So regardless of your place in life, whether you have no degrees or many, never forget that you can always continue to learn. Pick up a book and learn something new.