Why study?

摘要

I have just waved my latest successful PhD student off home to Canada after his viva examination. I am always proud of doctoral success, but in this case my pride was enhanced by the fact that he is over 60 and a full-time clinician. We have known each other for 9 years: 3 while he completed a distance learning master's degree and another 6 while he worked, in his 'spare time', to build on his early ideas, formulate a research question, learn a set of empirical techniques, systematically study a focused topic, analyse his data, summarise his key findings and defend his conclusions.