The song Part of Your World is a song from the movie The Litte Mermaid (1989). Interestingly I think it fits so close to the state of mind where an undergrad aspiring for a PhD: “Even if we aren’t literally mermaids/mermen wanting to be human, there are some goals or things we want in life that are just as seemingly impossible. So while the song is specific to Ariel’s situation, it’s incredibly accessible to every audience member” (Howard Ashman, lyric writer who collaborated with Alen Menken to write the song).
Why it didn’t win an Oscar
Another song from the movie (Under the Sea) won the Oscar. While Part of Your World is just as brilliant (if not even more) as Under the Sea it isn’t even nominated. Reason:
At the time the kinds of songs that got nominated and won [the academy award] weren’t the kinds of songs that were direct monologues from a specific character about their specific situation. They were usually straight love songs or songs about more generic concepts, songs that you could easily just take out of a soundtrack and plug into the pop charts without people needing to know anything about the specific plot of the movie.
Part of Your World is broadly about the idea of wanting to fit into a society you’re not a part of but it’s literally and specifically about a mermaid going through her trinket collection and musing about how great it would be to have legs and walk around on land. At the time songs like that didn’t break through to the Oscars because they were seen as too specific in context to have broad appeal outside of the movie itself.
Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s work on the early Disney Renaissance films (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin) actually revolutionized this. The “I Want” song, in which a character in a musical describes what they’re missing in their life, was popularized in the context of the film musical and it became more common for songs with more specific plot-related contexts to break through and become popular.
So in this regard “Part of Your World” was actually a couple of years ahead of its time!