Personally, I think doing a good PhD means:

Doing a PhD represents several years of supervised training, developing oneself to become a researcher capable of independently contributing to, and participating in, a scientific discipline.

Contributing to a scientific discipline means that a PhD candidate is supervised to create scientific products of the highest possible quality, and does so in an increasingly independent manner. Participating in a scientific discipline entails presenting these scientific products to others, frequently discussing these with colleagues, and collaborating with representatives of that discipline.

The core of that statement is being trained to independently contributing to a scientific discipline.

Based on my (clearly limited and selective) experiences, I learned that in New York (US?) PhD students really are … students. This by no means is a negative comments, but it is clear that the PhDs I met have a different set of skills. Generally, my impression is that their course load results in them being familiar with a wide overview of the literature on several topics, but (at least during the first few years) are less experienced in doing research with some level of independence. It’s a trade-off: some of the exams seem to be gruesome, with students faced with the taks of familiarizing themselves with a whole field of research. This is well beyond the relatively simple exams we have in the Netherlands, but getting your hands ‘in the dirt’ while doing some actual research yourself also is quite the experience.

Also, I noticed that it is much more of a struggle to do your PhD in the US. In New York life is expensive, and most PhDs are not employed by their universities as in the Netherlands. This means you have to find yourself some funding, but also that it really is a disappointment if your proposal is rejected. Not getting those funds really means you have to rethink your options. Many PhDs also need to have a job – besides writing their thesis, that is. Many teach or assist a professor, tasks that we do in the Netherlands as well. The difference, I think, is that the workload (again, besides writing a thesis which is a pretty decent workload by itself) is much higher in the US.

If every individual is under quite a lot of pressure, I wonder how that works out in terms of being able to form an academic group. I learned of one example of a PhD only providing to help to others when being paid on an hourly rate. I understand where that’s coming from, but also wonder how it affects the livelihood of an academic community of shared ideas, discussion, and collective interest.

I decided to show them that sociology ‘lies out on the street’. I picked the newspaper of the previous evening and demonstrated that of all three main questions of sociology (rationalization, inequality, and cohesion) multiple articles were to be found in that edition of the newspaper. Together, we discussed the relevance for sociology of the discussion regarding embryo-selection, the increased educational gap in health, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion of a unified Europe.

The majority of the time I spend on a discussion how to investigate when people object against minorities. I showed two fragments of a news show, illustrating two perspectives on when indigenous people object against minorities. I let the students brainstorm on how this background could lead to a specific research question, what kind of theoretical background would be appropriate, and how to investigate such a problem. I contrasted the survey approach with what they were familiar with from their secondary school (literature review). I also wanted to show them some results from ‘real’ research, so I interwove the brainstorming with the problem, theoretical background, and some of the outcomes of some project I worked on earlier.

I found it to be an inspirational process to prepare myself for giving this lecture. Especially because it was an interactive one, which you can’t (or rather: shouldn’t) write out literally. Some of the students came up with interesting discussion points and I think they had a good time. I know I did, and I hope to lecture a group of students again soon.