Autoethnographic narrative reveals key self-regulation strategies in an adult doctoral learner, highlighting methods to navigate academic uncertainty.
Doctoral education is widely regarded as a defining milestone in an academic career-one simultaneously demanding, transformative, and deeply rewarding (Li et al., 2023).As an adult learner juggling a full-time job, I embarked on my doctoral journey some years ago with considerable enthusiasm and passion, driven by a desire to pursue research that resonated deeply with me.While I expected the journey to present many challenges, I relished the prospect of engaging in rigorous intellectual discourse and pushing beyond my comfort zone.What I did not fully appreciate at the onset was how critical actively managing my own thinking and learning in the face of seemingly persistent challenges would be.Although familiar in theory, self-regulated learning remained "head knowledge" to me-until a defining episode fundamentally reshaped my understanding as a lived experience, leading to challenges and a turning point, then solutions and strategies, with application for adult learning.
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Xiao‐Feng Kenan Kok (2026) studied this question.
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