While you are right from a certain very point of view, a doctorate is really not the pinnacle in any sense of your life or your career. Nor is it meant to be. It is as the parent said the beginning of your career. The gateway into research. Really, there is only so much you can accomplish in a few years. However, hopefully it will provide you a solid foundation for many years of fruitful investigation. All to often however the research conducted can turn out to be a dead end after the PhD is completed. It is a start not the goal.
