What’s A Question You Love To Be Asked (Or Asking)?

When my PhD students are entering their final phase of work, they’re thinking, “I have to pass my oral exams, I've started writing my thesis, and then I have to defend my thesis.”

All practical next steps. What I do is ask them something completely unrelated.

I say, “Do you understand now that pretty soon someone is going to call you professor?”

“How does that feel? Does it feel like you've earned it?”

When I ask that question, it's always the point where the student says, “Yeah, you know what, I've earned that.”

I don’t always have a single question to ask everyone, but whatever it is, I want the other person to be excited about what their answer is.