Pride

During the interviews, participants appeared to be proud of their accomplishments. However, a sudden increase in academic self-confidence could lead to arrogance, and some graduates were aware of that risk:

1A: ‘… ek is nie skaam hiervoor nie [om ʼn PhD te ontvang], ek is trots hierop sonder dat jy arrogansie het. So dit is ʼn fyn balans tussen selfvertroue en arrogansie dink ek. ... ek voel baie trots op die feit dat ek dit gedoen het, ek voel geweldig trots daarop. ... ek glo ek het baie goeie werk gelewer. Ek is baie trots op wat ek gedoen het en ek gaan dit nie wegsteek nie ... ek dink ek was ʼn bietjie arrogant ná my M gewees. Ek voel nie ek is arrogant ná my D nie ... ons praat van die titel, daar kom maklik arrogansie in, jy moet selfvertroue hê, maar nie arrogant wees nie. … Jy leer die beperkinge van jou vermoëns baie goed ken. Jy leer baie gou wat jy nie weet nie. Jy weet waaroor jou mond kan oopmaak en waaroor nie jou mond kan oopmaak nie. So, jy het baie selfvertroue in dit wat jy weet maar ek gaan nie my bek rek oor enig iemand anders se werk nie want ek weet nie daarvan nie. Dit voel vir my eintlik, ek is minder kritiserend teenoor ander mense sover dat ek weet wat dit is om ditself te doen. Ek dink op ‘n manier dit voel vir my ek het ‘n nicer mens geword wat ek was ná die M.’

Translation: ‘...I am not shy about this [getting a PhD]; I am proud without having the arrogance. So there is a fine balance between self-confidence and arrogance I think. ... I am very proud of the fact that I did this, I feel very proud. ... I believe I submitted a very sound thesis. ... I am very proud of what I have accomplished and I’m not going to deny it … I think I was a bit arrogant after my master’s. I believe I am not arrogant after my doctorate… It is easy to be arrogant after you received your title; you have to have self-confidence but don’t be arrogant. … You learn the limitations of your abilities very well. You learn very quickly what you don’t know. You learn where you can speak out about something and where you just have to keep quiet. You have a lot of self-confidence about what you know, but I’m not going to speak out about somebody else’s work because I don’t know anything about it. It feels like I am less critical towards others as I know what it is do it yourself. And in a way, I feel like I became a better person than the one I was after my master’s.’

3A: ‘Ek dink die moeilike ding is om nie te dink jy is nou nie ʼn klein god nie want ʼn PhD beteken rêrig nie veel nie, dis euh so net omdat jy ’n nuwe titel het om nou te dink jy is verskriklik slim, ek dink die challenge is om nederig te bly. Dis maar net nog ’n ding wat jy gedoen het. … Mens moet nie dit uit verband ruk nie.’

Translation: ‘I think the hard thing to do is not to start thinking you are a little god because a PhD does not really mean that much, it is not because you have a new title that you have to start thinking you are incredibly smart, I think the challenge is to stay humble. It is just something more that you did. … People should not take it out of context.’

4A: ‘And the amount of knowledge that you gain during the process you have to understand it, you have to make sense of it. And to me sometimes, it was very painful because there are many things that I didn’t understand. And it was a great learning curve. Personally I think I have grown a lot in things like patience for example, especially with myself and in the end you realise that some of the questions you will never be able to answer and to me that is the most humbling experience because only then I realised how much I didn’t know and what I won’t know and that I think to me was the greatest lesson personally of the whole experience. … That to me was the greatest experience to realise that there are certain things that you won’t be able to answer after your PhD.’

6A: ‘PhD made me to become more humble. Humble in the sense that you accept criticism, you are open to … people can tell you what they think. … You see, it’s like a school of thoughts. Now if you are into that then you will not have a problem. Then you should be ready to any type of criticism or anything they are telling you that ‘no you should do this, don’t you think …’ you know. But if you don’t have that humility, you are not humble enough even if your supervisor is difficult.’

From these examples it became clear that doctoral candidates could learn humility from the whole process. They were aware of the magnitude of what they had achieved. However, they did not overestimate their achievements and therefore it seemed they were aware that their increased self-confidence should not become arrogance, something they realised could easily happen. However, different people in different contexts and disciplines change in different ways. According to O’Byrne (2011, p. 8), academic identities are not only influenced by the specific discipline, but also by the various communities to which individual academics belong. I also believe that different disciplines inculcate humility in different ways and that some disciplines encourage humility more than others. But then again, this depends on the individual.

An increase in self-confidence mentioned by the participants was in line with the expectations of their supervisors. From the interviews it became clear that this growth did not just come from the academic milieu in which participants found themselves, but also that the increase in self-confidence was a psychological need. This development is regarded as part of the purpose of doctoral study. A boost in self-confidence that doctoral graduates experience is not limited to the specific academic field within which they worked, but is also

manifested on a personal level. It is not a sudden change in their being, but is a gradual process that does not end when the participant has graduated. One specific supervisor was quite verbal when it came to the influence of a doctoral study on the identity change of one doctoral graduate. For him, a doctoral study forms a candidate’s identity as the doctoral study involves such a commitment from the candidate that it alters identity and later on becomes part of the graduate’s scholarly identity.

3B: ‘Dit is belangrik in die geesteswetenskappe dat dit iets moet ontwikkel rondom jou eie identiteit. … En ek dink dis hierdie ding van identifiseer. Baie kandidate identifiseer nie hulleself met hulle studie- objek nie en met hulle navorsingsprojek nie. … Die studie het vir hom beteken, dissipline, hy moet leer gedissiplineerd wees, en dit het vir hom nugterheid gebring, om balans gekry en nie in eensydighede te verval nie of om net na één kant te kyk nie. Ek dink dit het vir hom ’n stuk volwassenheid gebring deurdat hy op ’n baie meer gebalanseerde, sy kritiese ingesteldheid na alle kante toe kon laat gly. Nie net na die één kant nie. In Suid Afrika is dit belangrik om alles op apartheid te plaas. En alles op wit mense te plaas. En as jy wetenskaplike studie doen dan moet jy ’n bietjie jou emosie en voorbeoordeling opsyskuif. Die studie het vir hom gehelp om dit te doen sodat hy op die ou end met ’n groter realisme en nugterheid na die lewe kan kyk. En dat ’n mens nie uit jou prejudice en jou perseptuele vooroordele daarna kyk nie. En ek het duidelik by hom ’n volwassenheid gesien hoe hy daaruit ontwikkel het. En ’n soort van eiesoortige identiteit kon ontwikkel het. … Kyk, identiteit is juis nie ’n vaste ontiese gegewe nie. Maar identiteit is ’n relasionele gegewe. Met ander woorde, in die wisselwerking van verhoudings word jy getoets op grond van wie jy is en identiteit kom van die Latyn idem wat kontinuïteit, dit korreleer dit wat jy is en wat jy doen begin by mekaar inhaak. En dit bring ’n evaluering wat uit jou verhouding negatief kan wees, destruktief of konstruktief. Of neutraal.’

Translation: ‘It is important in the social sciences that it [thesis] develops something around your own identity. … And I think it is this thing of identification. A lot of candidates don’t identify with their study object and their research object. … This study taught him discipline, he needed to learn discipline, and it gave him rationality , to get balance and not to fall into bias or just to look at one side. I think it brought him a sense of maturity as it gave him a more balanced and critical outlook on things. And not seeing things from one side. In South Africa the trend is to blame everything on apartheid. And white people. And if you conduct a scientific study, you have to let go of your emotional prejudice. This study helped him in doing so, so that in the end he was able to look at life with more realism and common sense. And that a person doesn’t just look from their prejudice and perceptual bias. I clearly saw a maturity, how he developed out of this. And how he developed his own kind of identity … Look, identity is not an ontological. Identity is a relational premise. In other words, in the interaction you get tested on the grounds of who you are and identity comes from Latin which means continuity, it correlates it is when what you are and what you do are linked. And this brings an evaluation which can be negative, destructive, or constructive. Or neutral.’

The reason why this specific supervisor was well aware of the influence of a doctoral study on the identity of a doctoral candidate, could be ascribed to his field of study, theology. Not all supervisors could pinpoint these changes in their graduates as being identity-related but from the examples that were put forward, these changes in graduates can be seen as being part of their identity development. The graduate mentioned in this case was a person of colour, which gave an extra dimension to the identity change within the candidate. The particular graduate had to learn more than merely an increase in self-confidence: he needed

to learn to think for himself, which gave him a more critical attitude towards his background. This graduate became more balanced and neutral when dealing with racial issues. Especially with regard to the complex history of South Africa, it was a valuable shift in identity for this graduate. As he stayed in academe, his experience may be valuable in supervising other candidates.