Christine reflects on what the PhD means to her and why she chooses not to use her title at work.

Do you feel personally or professionally affected by the prestige of the PhD?

I would feel self conscious using the doctorate in my current professional role since I don't work in an academic or purely academic environment, although I do come across academics as part of my work, so I don't feel really that it's appropriate for me to use it professionally. I feel if I did use it professionally it would be, I think I would feel slightly uncomfortable and I be worried that people might perceive that I was sort of trying, you know, trying to flag up this past achievement. And on the whole, because I value my PhD experience and I think it's brought a lot to my working life, I'm very proud of it and would prefer to bring it in to aspects of my work in a more sort of natural way when appropriate, when meeting perhaps certain other academics or if it happens to come up in conversation. I certainly don't feel embarrassed about mentioning it but just prefer not to use it officially. And a further factor that sort of confirms my instinctive reaction that it wasn't quite appropriate to insist on my PhD in my professional life is knowing that there are other people in my organisation who have PhDs and also don't use them so I think sort of further confirmed that decision for me.