Chapter 17: Using the Skills at The Ecologies to Balance Work, Home, and School as a Doctoral Student

In January 2010, I—as a Hispanic 53-year-old male, husband, father of three, and a Social Studies Coordinator of a large school district with 25 schools and 30,000-plus students at the time—decided to finally apply for admission to the educational leadership doctorate program at the University of Texas-Pan American. I had been thinking and rethinking about it since receiving my masters in educational leadership in 2002, but had talked myself out of it year after year, mostly for fear of the potential difficulty of balancing graduate school with work and family. I forged ahead with the application, got officially accepted in March 2010, and stepped into my first semester that August. As had been predicted, it proved to not be easy. At least once a semester I wanted to quit. I had to remind myself of what I had read when I first entertained the idea of possibly applying for the program—individuals who apply for doctoral programs are already busy people. Every time I wanted to quit, I remembered that part of the narrative in the online application packet that stated that. I knew what I was getting into, because they knew what I was getting into. It was right there in the application packet. It stuck with me from that January 2010 pre-dawn morning when I read it and it in many ways helped me frame and reframe my experiences in the program as I struggled to stick with it day after day, assignment after assignment, semester after semester. I graduated May 2013 only because along the way I learned to harness the necessary technical, political, cultural resources, and leadership skills (Trueba, 1999; Mehan, 2008) at the self, organizational, and community levels (Guajardo, Guajardo, Oliver, Valadez, Keawe, Henderson, & Rocha, 2013) in order to balance life and successfully complete my educational leadership doctoral degree in two and a half years.