Typical and Individual Doctoral Processes and Lifecourses: The Types of Narratives of the Project Manager, the Survivor and the Seeker

Abstract

One task of the doctoral education is, globally as well as nationally, to produce and renew the highest expertise andknowledge in a high quality and efficient way. Even though in this global time the high-quality knowledge and skillsare a competition factor which the success of the societies is expected to be able to lean on, also the doctoral studentsand their individual factors are significant. The accelerating global change is strongly reflected at the individual level:an attempt is made to respond to the changing expectations and to prepare individually and diversely. The individualdoctoral students and the graduating doctors come from different everyday lives and contexts. The graduatingdoctors' expertise and skills are individually colored during the individual doctoral processes. Often the doctoralstudents' and the graduating doctors' individuality is ignored – even though individuality in other contexts isidentified more clearly than before. In this article I examine the lifecourse experiences and stories ofunder-40-year-old female doctoral students with a family and form three different types of doctoral student on thebasis of the material. The examination concentrates on the areas of the lifecourse; the family, doctoral studies andwork as well as on the dynamic wholeness formed by them in the temporal continuum of the lifecourse. Theobjective is to make the generalized doctoral process more comprehensively intelligible.