I Don't Know What I Don't Know: Living My Own Literature Review

I am a constructivist at heart. I believe that knowledge isn't some abstract concept floating in a vacuum; it is built through individual voices, personal histories, and lived experiences. So, as I sit at my desk, navigating the middle stages of an Ed.D. program, it feels only right to practice what I preach and look at my own path through that exact lens, and talk about where I am at this moment in my doctoral journey. Right now, my doctoral research focuses on a world I know intimately: the intersection of low-income, first-generation college status, social mobility, and identity development. My dissertation proposal is designed to look past the standard institutional benchmarks of "access and completion" to ask a deeper question: What happens to the human being after they cross the stage? What does it actually feel like to navigate the emotional, psychological, and cultural shifts of crossing class lines through higher education?

The irony is that while I am busy writing the literature review on this exact topic, I am simultaneously living it. I am literally one of the people I am researching. And as I move forward, I keep walking into the same wall, the one that haunts and annoys me to no end: I don't know what I don't know. As an instructional designer, this is especially maddening. My entire field is built on the opposite premise. In ID, you start with the framework. You define the outcomes, map the concepts, and then design the experience around them. Backward design is practically our religion. Yet here I am, living my doctoral journey in what feels like reverse, learning the concepts in real time with no designed outline to follow. That outline exists, but for many students at this level, it arrives through cultural capital: inherited from families, mentors, and networks who have walked this road before them. It is a framework I was never handed. Is there a process? Of course there is. But no one gave it to me, so I am reverse-engineering it as I go, and some days that leaves me feeling woefully unprepared and unconfident in work I know, deep down, I am capable of doing.

A few weeks ago, I wrapped up an inquiry course where I submitted the first major, comprehensive draft of what will eventually become my dissertation's Chapter 2. I poured hours into balancing heavy conceptual frameworks -- weaving together Bourdieu's theories on cultural capital with Yosso's community cultural wealth framework. I wanted to show how first-gen students navigate structural disadvantages while carrying incredible, often unrecognized assets. When the course ended, I received an A. On paper, that is a success. But at the doctoral level, a grade without feedback can feel incredibly hollow. Like many working professionals in higher education, I understand the immense pressure, competing priorities, and limited bandwidth that faculty operate under. I don't expect endless page-by-page critiques. Yet receiving a top mark with zero developmental guidance leaves you standing there with questions about quality, synthesis, and direction. For a first-generation scholar, this doesn't just feel like a missed learning opportunity. It can (and has in me!) trigger the exact "institutional mismatch" and self-doubt that the literature describes. Without a feedback loop to serve as a roadmap, you are left wondering: Is this actually a solid foundation for candidacy? Where should I tighten this idea up? Should I add more to this concept? Should there be a whole section I never even thought to include? Did I cover everything Chapter 2 requires? Am I missing anything?

In higher education, we talk a lot about holistic student development. But as administrators, educators, and students, we often compartmentalize our professional roles from our personal realities. This process has reminded me that my vulnerability, my unanswered questions, and my navigation of these unwritten doctoral spaces aren't distractions from my work. They are the work. Earning a credential changes your opportunities, but it doesn't instantly hand you the inherited map of how these systems operate. The truth is, I am just as lost as the next person. But I am doing my best, and hopefully this is not the wildfire disaster my imposter syndrome keeps telling me it is.