What does it take to succeed in this dive?
 
Patience, hard work, and stamina.  Those are the three most important ingredients to make a doctoral degree happen.
 
Here’s why: 
 
You need patience to stay motivated through many years of study.  Earning a doctorate does take a long time.  You can’t be in a rush, because it just doesn’t work that way.
 
You need to work hard because no one earns a doctorate by wishing it so.  You’re going to be reading many books and articles, doing lots of research, writing quite a bit, and defending your work to a body of peers and mentors.  Hard work is an understatement.
 
You need stamina because you will get off track, you will get discouraged, and you will question at times why you even started.  All par for the course.  You need the stamina to keep slogging through it all until you get to the finish line.
 
Beyond that, you need to be honest.  Too many people cheat trying to earn their doctorates, and guess what: it catches up with them.  The embarrassment and shame that results is never worth the short-term benefit from cheating.  Don’t do it.