The identity career of the graduate student: Professional socialization to academic sociology

摘要

The pathway through graduate school is challenging and difficult. Nearly everyone, at one point or another, confronts the existential question of whether they want to drop out or to continue. Several challenges emerge as key to graduate students’ success in progressing through their programs. p]The first is moving from the secure but sometimes suffocating structure of a core graduate cohort into the role of independent student. This requires navigating an individual pathway into areas of specialization and a mentor. Programs can do no more than make faculty and courses available; from there, students must make connections and decisions on their own. The second critical transition involves moving from absorbing to creating knowledge. Accomplishing this requires that students grasp the conceptual foundation of the perspective (the “sociological eye”), learn how to gather data, to master the challenge of moving from immersion in the specificity of their research to contribute to more abstract theory, and to understand the conventions through which they must present their scholarly work.