Journey to a PhD

Since I graduated with a MA in Health and Kinesiology, concentration in Health Studies in 2011, my husband has encouraged me to go back for a PhD. I began teaching one undergrad class at Southeastern LA University in January 2015 on Thursday nights and immediately fell in love. While I also love my current day job working in public health, my Thursday afternoon commute to Hammond for class easily became one of my favorite parts of the week.

At the start of my third semester teaching this past Spring, I began thinking more about the possibility of going back to school and wondered if it could become a reality. I did not tell anyone I had been thinking about it until I ran into Dr. Wood, my grad school coordinator and now the Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at SELU. Dr. Wood and I were attending the same meeting and after were able to catch up a bit. He asked me what was next for me and I answered very confused stating I was happy in my career and was not sure what would be next. He laughed and asked when I was going to apply to doctoral programs. Over the next few weeks, I began researching programs and after meeting with a student in the LSU Health Science Center’s Behavioral and Community Health Sciences program, I reached out to the program to determine if they allowed late applicants.

I signed up for the GRE on a Tuesday, and took the test on the following Monday (less than one week after signing up). I spent the weekend in Austin, TX studying and preparing the documents needed to apply and turned all items in one week after requesting an extension. I found out at the beginning of June I had been accepted to begin the program in August!

Over the next 4ish years, I will be working from home, from campus, coffee shops, etc. to continue the work I have been doing in public health at a full-time rate while spending the  majority of my remaining time working through doctoral classes and eventually a dissertation. The rest of my time will be spent training for various races, cooking clean foods and fulfilling my role as wife and puppy mom.

Moving forward I’ll include pictures from meal prep, runs and little things between. Stay tuned for a post on what led me to sign up for a full marathon, the training plan I will be using (I think) and my struggle with summer running.