I’ve been thinking a lot recently about when and how I call myself ‘Dr Jonas’.
I have every right to do that. I earned a PhD in 2010; I am, literally, a Doctor of Psychology.
I don’t actually remember who first called me ‘Dr Jonas’, though it was likely my PhD supervisor as I came out of my thesis defence. Whoever it was, that was the first time I thought – the first time I’d had to think – about how I felt when someone said ‘doctor’ and meant… me.
The first few weeks of being ‘Dr Jonas’ were strange and delightful. I changed my title on my bank card. I didn’t change anything else, but I liked having the reminder that I’d done it.
And then I more or less stopped thinking about it, because I worked in academia and I was surrounded by other people who had PhDs. When everyone’s a doctor, no-one’s a doctor, or something.
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The second time I thought properly about being Dr Jonas was when I took up a teaching post at St Andrews and suddenly had undergraduate students who were calling me ‘Dr Jonas’.
“Call me Clare if you’d like,” I said. (In case you’re horrified by this breach of etiquette, it’s pretty standard in the UK for lecturers and professors to invite students to call them by their first name if they prefer. You do not have to accept the invitation: some of my students did call me ‘Clare’, some stuck with ‘Dr Jonas’, some branched out to ‘Dr J’.)
My first ever proper door nameplate, at the University of St Andrews.
While I was in that post, I thought a lot about cultural differences and power dynamics in the classroom, the status that attaches to being a doctor and the status that attaches to being in charge of a class. I also thought about how I didn’t really want any of that status because I hate being on either end of a power dynamic – but I had the power anyway, and therefore a responsibility to use it wisely, not as a weapon to turn on others.
About a year later, I was looking through handwritten student feedback forms for one of my courses when I found one that said, in its entirety, “I LOVE JONAS.”
It was in such huge letters that I could not doubt its sincerity, and a large chunk of my anxiety about whether I was doing a good job simply broke off and drifted away, like a much cheerier version of an ice shelf calving a glacier. It also told me that I'd managed to use my power well: a student doesn’t write feedback like that unless they feel safe as well as happy.
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The third time I thought about being Dr Jonas was when I left academia. Suddenly I was no longer surrounded by people who could, if they wished, say things like, “Oh, you’ve got a PhD? Well, I’m a professor who’s just got a £3 million grant from the Royal Society and has an Erdős number of 2.* How’d you like them apples?”
Since I left academia to do research communications at a research funder, I was still in regular contact with academics, but most of my time was now spent with colleagues, who largely didn’t have PhDs and were sometimes kind of intimidated that I did.
The last thing I wanted was for my colleagues to be intimidated by me. I needed them to feel safe enough to take in what I was saying about research, and to let me know if they didn’t understand something. If they felt intimidated, my work would more or less fall apart. From my second research comms job onwards, I only ever mentioned my PhD to them if it was relevant, and it mostly wasn’t.
I didn’t stop using ‘Dr’ entirely in those jobs, because there were a couple of things it genuinely was useful for, both a sort of shorthand to different groups of people.
One group was journalists, to whom it functioned as shorthand for ‘senior enough to be doing press comments’. The logic, as my media team colleagues explained it, was this: my job title was not particularly senior and sometimes journalists would request a quote from someone with a fancier label - but if my name came with ‘Dr’ attached, a journalist would be more likely to accept it and we wouldn’t have to find a more senior person to sign off on a comment in their name.
I often felt conflicted about this use of ‘Dr’. We were commenting on healthcare research so I was always slightly worried that people would assume I was a medical doctor. We managed the worry: I knew what I was talking about, multiple people would check any comment over before it went to a journalist, we were ruthless about prioritising accuracy and limiting ambiguity – but it never quite went away.
The other group was researchers, to whom it was shorthand for ‘yes, I understand how research works and yes, I know how much pressure you are under.’
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The last year I’ve thought about being ‘Dr Jonas’ for a fourth time, mostly because I’ve found myself using my title much more since I went freelance. The reasons are, in part, similar to those I had at research funders.
I still work with academics, and I want you to know that I get it if you’re considering coaching, or coming to one of my wellbeing workshops, or asking for support with research communication.
I still get asked to do press comments, though these days I’m usually approached about psychology topics rather than healthcare so I don’t worry about being mistaken for a medical doctor any more, and I’m being asked in my own right rather than as a representative of an organisation.
That last bit – not being a representative of an organisation – is probably why I started using it beyond those two things.
That Thinking Feeling is just me. I don’t have the weight of a research funder or a university behind me any more.
Uncomfortable as it makes me, I need every milligram of status I have right now.
I am still trying to use it wisely.
tl;dr – Dr Clare Will CV You Now
“Clare, did you just write a long, serious meditation on power and status purely so you could make a dreadful pun about being a doctor?”
Well… not purely for that reason, but I put it to you that when I make dreadful puns about being a doctor I am, in fact, using my status wisely.
For a while now, people have been coming to me for help with their CVs and job-hunting. Some are people whose confidence has been badly undermined by their workplaces and now get panicked at the prospect of applying for jobs. Some are people who are struggling to figure out what their transferable skills are. Some are academics looking to figure out how to get out of academia.
So I made Dr Clare Will CV You Now.
I’m offering personalised CV check-ups, support calls to help you figure out job-hunting and job application challenges, and even follow-up co-working and accountability calls if you need someone there for troubleshooting or moral support while you’re updating your CV, finding jobs, or writing cover letters.
If you’re one of the first five people to book Dr Clare Will CV You now, you’ll get 15% off.
(Yes, I do have a sliding scale of fees, yes, the 15% discount applies to both the standard cost and lower-cost prices.)
Wait, what was that asterisk?
* Erdős numbers are the academic equivalent of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only you’re trying to get to renowned mathematician Paul Erdős via shared publications. In case you’re wondering, I have an Erdős number of 3 via a publication with the consciousness researcher Anil Seth, who in turn co-authored a paper with the mathematician András Sárközy, who in turn published a paper with Paul Erdős himself. How’d you like them apples?