157 14 THE PHD PROCESS: DOCTOR OR DOCTORED? Kasturi Behari-Leak INTRODUCTION The doctoral journey has been the most profound and intense intellectual and emotional engagement I have had in my academic life. It is fitting that the PhD graduation ceremony, which is the culmination of years of intellectual endurance and perseverance, is filled with tradition and ceremony. The four-year doctoral journey is similar to the four-minute walk across the stage to be capped and hooded. Stepping onto the stage is like stepping into the doctoral space. Walking across the stage requires that you are mindful of the audience – as you have to be with the reader of the thesis. Being acknowledged by the university through its conferring of the degree is synonymous with academic peer review. Finally facing the academic community is like coming through the examination process. All these physical movements during graduation embody the stages in the doctoral journey from conception of the research question, to the final submission of the thesis for examination, and then to graduation. Standing there, finely kitted out in academic gown and regalia, the more pressing and immediate task was walking across the stage. What if I tripped over myself in my eagerness to make it to the other end as Doctor Behari-Leak? I had just completed an intellectual marathon to the finish line, so the short “walk to freedom” could not be that involved, could it? As I made my way to the chancellor to be capped, I faced a huge dilemma. If I knelt down onto the low stool, would I be able to stand up again given that I was wearing a saree, which is a traditional Indian outfit? Would my cultural trappings result, literally, in my downfall? If my saree did get caught, would I be stuck there, frozen in time, half capped, not hooded? The weightier issue was that submitting or kneeling down to anyone was not something I did very well, so how would I succumb and humble myself before this esteemed chancellor of the university? Frick L, Motshoane C, McMaster C, Murphy C (eds) 2016. Postgraduate Study in South Africa. Stellenbosch: SUN PRESS DOI: 10.18820/9781928357247/14 © 2017 AFRICAN SUN MeDIA