A New Year of Changing PhD's Perceptions

As a Master's student, the author did not consider himself to be the intellectual type.  The days of "studying" in London was spent mostly on the road, "studying" by observing Europe and its sociocultural realities on the ground firsthand.  That only new year spent in Europe, for instance, for instance, happened to be in Sarajevo, far from the libraries and study rooms of LSE where he was supposedly preparing for exams.  He felt that the greatest opportunity granted to students is having plenty of free time, useful for personal explorations that need not to be immersion in books. 

The idea of being immersed in books, for the 23-year-old Master's student, was a life suitable for PhD students and the professors that they are destined to one day become (or at least to strive for career-wise).  The Master's student was supposed to be in school only for "real" skills, if not just for the good diploma at a good school that could be quite useful when job search season comes around.  And considering that most Master's students did not seek to continue studies after graduation, such a, shall we say, erudite perception of PhD students is quite commonplace.

Yet, more than 5 years later, the author found himself at the receiving end of the same erudite perception, questioning himself whether he really, or should even, fit the perception.  The obvious answer is no.  5 years did not make the author any more bookwormish.  If anything, the past half a decade had the exact opposite effect.  If working in a minimalist IT startup that became a darling for investments teaches anything, it is that the slow, deliberative culture of academic research really has no place in the business world.  The isolating ivy tower is an appropriate place only for a small group of people that feel comfortable within it.

The author, for one, has no desire to be restricted to an isolating ivy tower of any sort.  Sure, as social scientists, the world is an experimental petri dish, full of new phenomena to be observed and studied, but ultimately, the studying, and more importantly, the presentations of what are studied, are still done within a small circle disconnected from the very people being studied.  To be exclusively situated in that circle, at the expense of other connections, business or otherwise, is not an ideal situation, a point made clear in a previous post.

To make that point clear in real life requires some efforts that not too many PhD students are willing to go through.  The author spent his New Year's Countdown in the midst of a loud livehouse, filled to the rim with revelers partaking in Japan's underground rap and DJ scene.  There were decidedly little if any audience resembling intellectual types.  Sure, there might be other academics in disguise, but the fact that they are academics is something to be hidden, even in banters on the venue's sidelines.  Talking about the profession, and its contents only raises eyebrows, not cheerful conversations that the situation requires.  

In other words, to be perceived simply in as a "normal" person outside (or even some places inside) academic institutions, PhD students often have to hide their very academic identity.  Their supposedly superior intellect make them difficult to approach and carry on a good conversation.  "Normal" people who do not have PhDs simply do not find themselves capable of understanding the world of PhDs, not only the content of their research in detail, but also the very reason why they decided to devote themselves to books that few in the "real" world can actually appreciate.

The reality is much simpler than that.  PhD candidates, like everyone else, are normal people with normal needs.  They need to pay bills, stable incomes that sufficiently cater to personal interests, and workplaces that sufficiently fit their personalities.  Many PhD students hate reading (much less composing) dense academic papers just as anyone else who had to undertake such tasks as part of a normal college education.  But just like normal people also hate at least some aspect of their non-academic jobs, PhD graduates have to put up with that unsavory aspect to keep their careers as academics.

Maybe the new year resolution is not simply to act like a normal person, as anyone can do by going to a livehouse and pretend to be a fan of underground musicians.  It is much more worthy to be a normal person while also being a PhD student.  For that to happen, there needs to be concrete changes in perception of who is a PhD student and what kind of a person a PhD student can be.  The stereotype of "highly knowledgeable but too narrow in academic focus" does not really apply.  PhD students are not smarter than any non-PhD person out there.  They are simply people who have a certain job for a career.