PhD?

I'm finally ready to put into words the idea that has been percolating in my head: I think I want to go for a PhD. As usual, this is one of several ideas running around in my head but I'm serious about it enough now to actually say it out loud.

I love my job working for the Army but it's not in the field I've dreamed of working in for the last eight years. I can easily see myself transitioning into a job in the State Department or the Pentagon and working my way up the ladder. I can see that path and I may take it.

But I can also see myself going back to school for a PhD. Tonight the Professor asked me what I would study for my PhD and I found myself saying "Middle East gender issues and development rhetoric". It was one of those moments where I surprised myself by pulling a bunch of well-baked but unconscious ideas together and saying them out loud.

These are all of the things that get me excited. Gender issues (and I mean gender, not women's issues alone) in Middle East countries are thoroughly fascinating to me. Especially how gender roles are similar or different between various religious communities in the same geographical location in the Middle East.

In terms of development rhetoric, one of the most fascinating issues for me is how the simplified sexy messaging development organizations develop to sell their idea and garner financial and public backing is often what gets sent into public policy spheres. That messaging then becomes the basis for policy decisions rather than the nuanced and academically researched findings becoming policy.

If I'm really serious about doing a PhD I have a lot of work ahead of me - especially since my performance in my masters program was less than stellar. I need to make a reading list, I need read the stuff on the reading list, and I need to start looking for conferences to present at. I also need to start looking at what universities offer the kind of programs I would want to take.