Confused

Label: ngomel ;-P


"Why do you want to do a PhD study?" - this is a common question that you will get when you are being interviewed for getting the position. I think, an equally important question that you should ask back to your employer is: Why would you like to invest in a PhD student? - do you see it as an education, a vocation in which you have the responsibility for his development as a good researcher? Or do you see him as a worker, whom you hire cheaply in exchange of the little times that you could spare for the project itself?
In many cases, there are confusion about who is responsible for what. When a project is stucked, it is quite common that the student blames his supervisor for lack of support, while the supervisor usually answers: It's your responsibility! You're the one who wants to become a PhD! I've done my phd study already!
Having gone through the study myself so far, I have an impression that, in fact, we are indeed just borrowing the place, the facility, and the initial idea of the project. The phd student is not only responsible for the progress of the project. He is also responsible for his own education, for his own development by making mistakes, solving problems, finding a way himself. This explains why the responsibility of the supervisor only extends to arranging a regular meeting, without putting any heart or full attention on it. So, it is normal that although both of you always look at the data, you are still the only one who finally finds the flaws and a new or a better way. And since you are there, in their view, as an employee, this explains why you have to be present in meetings, journal clubs, seminars, anything they required, eventhough it is in totally different field than yours and you have no idea at all of what have been talked about. You don't have to make any sense in the hours you spend for doing these activities, or whether it contributes anything to the real problems in your project. And of course there is always an honourable reason why you should do these instead of focusing on your lab work - it is for your education, you have to broaden your horizon, or so they say. It doesn't matter that the reason you continue to a PhD study is because you want to be specialized in the subject of your choice. Perhaps, the way they view you also explains why you are obliged also for fixed social activities, as a sign that you do like them as colleagues. If everybody likes hiking, than you have to excitedly like it also. If there is any game evening organized, there is even no room for choosing your own preference of the kind of the game. Other people choose it for you. And you have to sit nicely during lunch and coffee-break while everybody arounds you are talking in the language you don't understand. They do know that you can't understand their conversation, but they can't accept that you see no point in that kind of interaction.

Don't you see the contradiction? The thing that I most learned during the time I studied abroad is to grow up, to know what I want and to make up my own mind. Here, they give no flexibility even for stating my own social preference. A PhD study is all about taking responsibility for what you want, as far as I understood. That's why you have to be excited with your own project. Nobody will struggle for you in finishing it, except yourself. That's why, at a certain point, you will be alone because you have to go deeper than anybody else in your topic. A place like this, where any argument is flattened and people still have to do things that clearly doesn't make sense, just so that the group appears nice in the outside, is not an educational institution. Or perhaps, any education that is institutionalized, cannot be a true education anymore. It becomes a set of general standards that sounds good - and you don't have to actually be good, you just have to please everybody. No room left for any unique personal need.