Well yes, of course I do. Whenever I insist that someone call me "doctor Phronk"—whether it's government documents, or my friends, or the lady serving me shawarma—I get a nice little reminder that I am, in fact, superior to all the common people without PhDs. That's a great feeling.
It also feels different knowing that I'm now qualified to force my opinion about anything on anyone. Also, I don't know if you knew this (you don't have a PhD, after all), but a psych degree comes with a free license to kill. It also makes you a god in the sack, lowers your THAC0 by 3, and allows you to glow when you get in a fight.
Actually, I set up a camera to record my PhD defense so you can see what it was like:
Err but for reals, being
These past 6+ years of grad school have certainly been important to me, but my degree was only one project I was working on. It's not what has defined me as a person. So I'm proud of checking one more thing off my list of accomplishments, sure, but it is only one thing.
As a polymathic sort of person, I get pleasure in pursuing a variety of goals. Reaching those goals is rewarding, but often secondary to the pursuit. I don't feel different when I complete a multi-year project, because the ongoing learning and building I'd been doing all those years was already fulfilling the reasons for starting the project.
Now I can focus on some other pursuits more. Substantial ones like kicking ass at my job, publishing some of my research, and finishing up those half-completed novels that are sitting around, but also more nebulous ones like building relationships with kickass people, blogging, and contributing to the good of mankind.
(Speaking of which, I will be sharing some of my knowledge, academic and otherwise, at Podcamp Toronto this Saturday. Come if you're in TO and bored.)
I'm proud of my PhD though. Sometime I should tell you guys what my research is all about, because I was extremely lucky to be able to study what I actually wanted to study, and it turned out pretty cool. Until then, cheerio.
-- Dr. Phronk, M.Sc., Ph.D., O.M.G.