Expectations from a Doctoral Student

At each stage of life, people’s expectations from you keeps on changing. As you grow up and move from junior to high school and later to college and graduate school, you are expected to act and behave in a certain way according to your age and level of education. As time passes by, students get to learn a number of skills and manners that they need to adopt and regularly practice in order to earn a good name and respect for themselves in the society. If students do not act their age, they might end up losing trust and respect of some people who expect them to act in a different manner.

While it is true that people are free to choose the way they act and live their life, there are certain standards that doctoral students need to meet. At this level, they are no longer seen as students because they are preparing themselves for a research and producing some theory or hypothesis by themselves. Following are some expectations that doctoral students should meet:

1)      Being a responsible individual: Over-sleeping, forgetting meetings and projects, missing deadlines and ignoring important phone calls are some acts that doctoral students are expected to avoid. These examples of utter carelessness shows that an individual is not yet prepared for a professional life because these are the minor things that determines your probability of success in future. Since by now you have experienced college and graduate school, you probably know how important it is to be responsible or else the consequences are never good.

2)      Independent by now: If you still rely on your parents to pay for your expenses related to social life and education, then you are not meeting a significant expectation of society i.e. being an independent individual. Also, you are expected to be able to tackle situations and assignments all by yourself but slight help and guidance in certain situations is encouraged. If I would have asked someone to do my help with dissertation at doctoral college, it would have been strictly against what others expect from me because too much reliance at this stage of education is inappropriate.

3)      Possess great time management skills: After going through so many stages of academia and being in the final one, you are surely expected to have great time management skills. Managing time well in every stage of life can be extremely beneficial. Well-managed time does not only mean to allocate appropriate amount of time to various tasks and implementing the schedule strictly but also so avoid waste of time under any circumstances.

Even when you have nothing to do, you will be expected to utilize that spare time efficiently in, for example, doing what you enjoy the most. Remember that even the time spent chatting with friends is not a time wasted as long as it gives you joy.

4)      Good social and professional network: Without links with some prominent individuals and a good network, people tend to miss out on a lot of opportunities than they would otherwise could have benefitted from. Due to the fact that doctoral students have passed through several stages, they are expected to have good relations with several people in various industries.

However, the expectation of independence remains the most important one and this is why I never asked anyone to do my dissertation or even help me doing it.

Author bio: Kennedy Lugar is a research associate at a think tank currently working on rural to urban migration project. He is a PhD holder in development economics and has been a part of several research programs.