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Please Don’t Call Me Dr. Rios
My decision to get a doctorate degree was a difficult decision to make. But one of the outcomes I never anticipated was how being called Dr. Rios would make me feel for the rest of my life.
In 2010, I decided on a fluke to take the GRE and apply to education leadership doctoral programs. I felt stuck in my career and believed, at the time, that a terminal degree would bring me closer to my professional goals.
While that decision will probably be the topic of more posts, I can say that my decision to get the degree was mainly because I thought being called Dr. Rios would open more doors.
And then I started getting called Dr. Rios and it made me incredibly uncomfortable.
So uncomfortable that at one job I held, I didn’t tell anyone I had a doctorate for almost 6 months into the job. I was helping plan an awards ceremony and asked to be introduced as Dr. Rios when I came to the lectern to hand out the next award. It felt like an important event and my honorific matched the occasion, or so it seemed.
The next day, I received a dozen emails congratulating me on my doctorate — a degree I had held for almost a year at that point. It was dizzying to be recognized for something I had purposefully withheld and that I had received well before starting this job.
