Reflections on Doctoral Study: It's All about the Socialization, So Make It Work for You
This post will focus on some key lessons I learned mostly in retrospect after already enrolling in a Ph.D. program. Here are five "take homes" I kinda wish I knew before even considering enrolling, but fortunately didn't really adversely affect my life because I accidentally got lucky and intentionally pursued things that tend to be rewarded in academe. To avoid unnecessary complications, we need to understand graduate study as socialization, not simply "school".
1. You're not here to master information so you're "really smart"
Get this lie out of your head. There's a reason why your adviser probably is encouraging you to focus on research and treat classes more like a formality. Yes, you'll learn important things in class. Yes, you'll have excellent and intellectually-stimulating discussions in class (if your classmates understand why they're there and your professor understands how to facilitate it). But guess what? In grad school everyone is "smart". This isn't undergrad; you'll go legitimately insane if you spend excessive time asking whether you're smart enough yet. Knowledge is important, but not determinant seeing as (again) the virtually everyone in your midst has just as much as you do. Master the content with the expressed purpose of using it to execute high-quality research.
2. Since it's a socialization process, you had better socialize, damnit
Now that we've acknowledged grad school isn't about becoming smart, let's acknowledge the other piece: it's about socialization, hence the apprenticeship model. This means you should pay constant and close attention to what's happening around you, carefully identifying what exactly it is that successful scholars do. It's not that they're always right, but more that they will show you to some degree what is rewarded in the professoriate. You may see some horrible and disgusting things along the way, but you need to know they exist if you're going to have a clue of how to navigate higher education (and change it if you're calling yourself a champion of working-class causes). When events are hosted and you're invited, show your face. These invites aren't usually suggestions: they're intentional nudges toward an opportunity to be further apprenticed. Insert comments begrudging the indirectness and passive-aggressive non-confrontationalism of middle class culture here, y'all.
3. Your adviser and your dissertation committee are an incredibly important part of the socialization process
Not only do we develop as scholars by simply watching the experts do their thing, we also develop as scholars through more explicit acts of mentorship from a faculty adviser. It's important to figure out early on whether you and your adviser are a good match in communication style and, if not, what your options are to fix this issue. Faculty advisers have their own individualized approaches to mentorship: some are extremely hands-on to the point of you not getting to choose your own research topic, others are extremely hands-off to the point where you may feel lost or unsupported, and others are somewhere in between and give you lots of leeway at times and lots of structure at other times. Often, doctoral students do not take a proactive approach to this and (unless you have an exceptionally skilled adviser) it can cause serious problems later down the road. As such, it can be very helpful to figure out your own needs early on and communicate with your adviser about what the expectations are from both sides. How often will you submit drafts of work? What is sufficient work to be completed before you send your adviser a draft? How often will you meet face-to-face? How often will you check in via email or a call? What are particular challenges you personally deal with that your adviser can help you work on (e.g. perfectionism that interferes with submitting work in a timely manner, basic literature review and project management skills for working through the many open-ended tasks of being a scholar)? What modes of communication don't work for you (e.g. harsh, unfiltered feedback without clear constructive elements)?
Figure out what you need, how much of that need can be met through your own efforts, and then determine how your adviser or another support can meet the leftover need. Note that this may include other campus resources such as writing centers to address weaknesses in your skill set, academic coaching or a counselor to learn time management skills and practicing motivationally-beneficial forms of self-talk, on-campus professional development workshops about teaching or relevant software, student organizations to prevent loneliness from getting in the way of your work, library specialists to train you on more effective ways to dig through scholarly sources, and other students in your program who have experiences that may help you with your own challenges. You also should intentionally seek off-campus supports, often available through membership in professional organizations and online in higher education news outlets like Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle Vitae, and other sources. Common resources in professional organizations include professional development workshops explicitly targeting graduate students at the annual or biennial conference. These include, but are not limited to, specialized sessions on how to publish in your field, one-on-one sessions with journal editors, courses on specific research methods, and intentional mentoring sessions (which may sometimes target specific demographic groups, like African-Americans or LGBTQ scholars).
If the combination of all these resources still isn't working, or it looks like your adviser is simply negligent or abusive, you should seek advice as soon as possible about the politics of switching to a new adviser. Your adviser will ideally be the core of your dissertation committee and a dysfunctional relationship can lead to complications in the creation of a committee. While it is true that your dissertation topic doesn't have to dictate your career trajectory going forward, choosing your committee well can be very influential in your trajcetory. Some ways your committee matters includes members' role in writing letters of reference for you when you apply for jobs or other programs, "growing" a small group of scholars who will know your work well enough to make meaningful recommendations about publishing if you seek their informal mentorship later, and "growing" a small group of scholars who know your work well enough to let you know about relevant job opportunities, particularly ones that have not yet been announced. When your committee is well-crafted, you will have a panel of informal mentors you can reach out to as you become junior faculty and possibly if you take a job outside academe. These people should be sources of constructive criticism and alternative perspectives, not a source of threat or conflict. Further, if you can select an outside member from outside of your university, you also gain a wider network in your field that will be perceived as a contribution you can offer when you get hired for a job later.
4. Other students are also a huge part of your socialization
Don't underestimate the value of your now-and-future colleagues. These people will be your future collaborators and will eventually be peer mentors to you. These people currently are your gateway to knowledge about content outside of your area of expertise. These people provide perspective that will improve your work since no research is done devoid of social interaction. Don't be the asshole who thinks you're too good for lowly graduate students who don't have as many publications as you. Respect your peers intellectually and as humans (insofar as they're not doing the grimey shit I mentioned in point #1). Further, your peers have valuable knowledge about what the world is like outside of your tiny "me and my adviser" bubble; again, different mentors have different styles and the more you know about different styles of mentorship the more meaningfully you can assess whether your own mentor-mentee relationship could use some improvement.
5. Mentors and graduate students AT OTHER UNIVERSITIES are even more important to your socialization
I cannot stress this piece enough. Part of being proactive in your own socialization as a scholar is to intentionally seek out unofficial/informal mentors OUTSIDE your institution. All professors function within sociohistorical context and two key parts of that are the department and the university itself. The professors in your department differ plenty from one another, but they also share commonalities that are less obvious until you speak with mentors from outside your institution. For example, some programs have an externally-known reputation for "eating their young", a euphemism for basically misleading, using, and dumping doctoral students without remorse, usually followed by trash talking said students as if they are the ones responsible for their own "failure". A toxic departmental situation can feel "normal" if you don't hear the experiences of faculty and students outside your department. Similarly, a hostile university can feel "normal" if you don't hear the experiences of faculty and students outside of your own university. Does your university pass the party line of "woe is me, we have no funding for anyone"? You can't know whether you're being lied to unless you hear what's going on elsewhere, particularly in places where students are unionized. Does your department sell you on the dream of a tenure-track gig but show no evidence of students actually getting said gigs? You won't know if it's "normal" unless you see who IS getting those tenure-track jobs; you'll also want to know which advisers have a continuous track record of basically producing jobless advisees...when it's a pattern, it might not be the student that's the problem. Does your department have a culture of massive amounts of unpaid, irrelevant work for graduate students? You can't know what you can do about it until you talk to someone else. Does your department treat you as a "Golden Child" who "for sure will get a good job"? Then you ESPECIALLY should see what's going on elsewhere because you'll be particularly unaware of mentorship neglect since you're most likely being treated better than your peers in-house.
Those are my five key thoughts for today. Keep in mind that the entire process is socialization and that you need to be proactive. More importantly, never put all of your eggs in the single basket of your faculty adviser: there are plenty of other knowledgeable and supportive scholars who can serve as informal mentors. Think of it like other relationships: is it realistic or fair to expect one person to meet your every need? No, it's not. That's why we usually have friends, family, romantic relationships, co-workers, and plenty of others in our lives: each person offers something different and important to your experience. Your adviser shouldn't be expected to do it all, either, so get out there and create the supports you need to succeed.