Connections lead to the growth of one’s communication with the world out there. As social animals, we thrive by forging networks with others to fulfill our interests and well-being. At this stage, a student juggles between a part-time Ph.D. and a job that sustains the expenses. At some point in their 20s or 30s, there are moments when these professionals need human connection to thrive and live as social animals. Hence, there is a need to function through networking with peers who have a similar situation, which helps manifest common grounds that serve multiple purposes in the long run.
This post will trace the significance of networking with peers in a setting of life as a Part-time Ph.D. student and how to navigate through a variety of peers who come from various professional backgrounds and cultures, giving exposure to understanding them. Being a Ph.D. student has its own set of life experiences that are governed by patience, resilience, perseverance, and dedication, which leads to developing the skill of waiting for triumphant moments that define one’s career. These kinds of programs have worthwhile benefits and have immense value for growing as a professional as well as a person.
Planning out Ventures/Startups
The student of the Part-time Ph.D. course can find peer students who have an entrepreneurial mindset. Collaborating with them can lead to the beginning of the exchange of ideas and blueprints for products/services that are relevant and useful for a mass market audience. This begins with finding common grounds that lead to cooperation to develop & manage the scalability of the product/service. Before the beginning of the startup journey, building a common ground is where ideas between peers become coherent and resonate with each other, where all of their goals are aligned in a way that unites them in the direction of growth & progress.
Each peer has a particular set of skills that can come in handy in handling separate tasks depending on the competency in which they have developed their skill sets. Hence, it becomes easier to distribute roles where one becomes the leader and the rest take up different departments on which the foundations of the operationality of the product/service is built. With the current economy supporting startups to kickstart into fully fledged companies and some of them becoming unicorns, the students of Part-time Ph.D. can derive insights and knowledge to innovate the products/services.
Intellectual Communities
Part-time Ph.D. students acquire deep knowledge and carry out deep studies of their subject domain, which enhances their intellect and intelligence, expressing their expertise from time to time. Intellectual discussions with peers solidify their opinions and perspectives at forums and intellectual retreats. These opportunities ensure debates, agreements, arguments, agreed disagreements, etc., that affect the thought process and social stances one takes on the subject of interest. The point of holding these forums is to enhance and accommodate multiple perspectives and use them for research purposes for their dissertations.
Hence, there is a need to have intellectual space where Ph.D. students of Ph.D. for working professionals can conduct experimental creation of thoughts and test them against counter-thoughts. This could lead to the expansion of ideas as a movement or trend which could shape the academic landscape across other forum groups from think tanks, universities, intellectual circles, and institutes which could innovate academic expansion and the feasibility of these ideas to make a difference in the particular domain that could contribute towards its applications. For Part-time Ph.D. students, this opportunity helps them to become pioneers in the development of this idea, which has repercussions that can go a long way in the particular field.
Job Recommendations
Since a Part-time Ph.D. is also sometimes a Ph.D. for working professionals, students are engaged in professional setups. On a later date, some of them work in corporate or government roles that require research acumen for outputs that could be used for improvement and development of a product/service that is under the creation process. Students pursuing Part-time Ph.D. programs sometimes take research jobs on the side that enhance their abilities and prowess to a larger extent so that they succeed in becoming seasoned research professionals.
There is an equal chance for a Part-time Ph.D. student to take up job roles in either the corporate or academic setups. In the case of academic setups, a student will be evaluated based on their academic background and accomplishments, while in the corporate sphere, the skills and portfolios are given more importance. Peers who are research professionals in the corporate sphere after the completion of the Part-time Ph.D. can recommend another student of the program by vouching for his/her skills, which can be considered by the team leader of a particular research department or similar settings. Hence, networking with peers could create connections that can get you considered for job prospects in corporate setups such as think tanks, research-oriented teams, etc.
Conclusion
Peer-to-peer networking is a worthy asset that takes a Part-time Ph.D. student to scale great career heights by opening avenues that are gained by the trust & bond created during the Ph.D. for working professionals’ program. These connections lead to the creation of ventures/startups that can be developed with an amicable understanding between the peers who are collaborators trying to build solutions out of the problems they face together. Then, the creation of intellectual communities helps particular domains become trendy and makes an impact on the academic space.
