Sociology/ Social Science/ Culture Studies…Humanities?

This might be a stupid question, but it just popped up into my head and I was wondering ever since. To clarify what the terms mean and how they are connected, I had a quick look and summarized my thoughts below.

Social science as the umbrella term: aspects of human society. Sociology is one part of social science and focuses on society, human social behaviour, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life, meaning it focuses on aspects of human society. Somewhere I found the info that social science primarily focus on “in the now”. Whereas humanities focus on the product of human society (literature, arts, languages, philosophy…).

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My Journey as PhD- The Importance of Perspective

My point of view on things, situations, people etc. is very personal and usually implicit. I am not always aware of my perspective on things, even though I try to reflect more – also because interpretative/qualitative researchers need to in their research.

However, developing the awareness of my perspective is not always easy, especially if it is entangled with some features of imposter syndrome. I’ve always tried to see the good and the positive in a situation that might be negative at first sight, and I think that I am relatively good at it- EXCEPT when it comes to my academic career and my PhD.

To give some context: I am part of several projects and I am supposed to “lead” an article (whatever the hell that might entail) and to present at two conferences soonish. I haven’t had focused supervision in months and I can tell you I have been PANICKING about this regularly. My perspective on this has been, that I have not made enough progress that my supervisors would want to spend time on my work. Well, I CHOSE to see it in that way.

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My Journey as a PhD- Reflection 1st year

I’ve talked a bit about my background in the last post…or got it out of my system 😀 I mean there is a reason why some people claim that journaling helps so, let’s see about that J Moving on to my reflections on my first year as a PhD, which basically consisted of exclusively negative EVERYTHING!

However, let me start from the beginning:

Well, the first warning sign should have been how I reacted to getting a PhD position. I do not know why, it had been the goal I have been working towards for a long time, but when I got the news it was a very short-lived “Yayy!”, but it felt more as if it was more of a “ticking the box” moment of achieving something, that anything else. Like, ok did that, what is next now? I do not want to sound ungrateful here. Believe me, I know what incredible achievement it is, or at least I know how I should feel about it but I kind of keep this…hidden? A bit as if I think, meh, anyone could have done it. It is not REALLY an achievement. You HAVE to do MORE! PUSH yourself…

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