What I mean is at what point do you feel like you have become a PhD student?

When do you categorise yourselves via your PhD student identity and when do you still regard and introduce yourself as a biologist, engineer, mathematician, chemist, psychologist, economist, geographer etc? I appreciate that this will vary for part time and full time students but am in my second year and still consider myself an entrepreneur who is 'doing a PhD' as well.

Just curious how others modulate their identity in everyday interactions.

I wouldn't exactly phrase it as "modulate identity"! lol

But, I would describe myself as a PhD student working in cultural histories of animals. My intellectual work also compliments my personal interests in animal rights and environmental issues. So I see my identity as more complimentary than so distinct.

thanks chris, was beginning to think perhaps the question appeared loaded

well for me it is a bit strange, your question.

i feel like i'm a sociologist and i was that before i started my PhD and am now and will probably be when i'm finished. it's more of a mindset than strictly up to what exactly i'm currently doing.

i used to be a student. now i'm applying what i learned and gaining further qualifications; i feel i'm a junior researcher. once i have the PhD (or should i say "if"), i will have both a broader and more narrowly specialised knowledge of sociology and will hopefully be decently paid for doing more of what i'm doing now.

it's only when i'm feeling particularly bad, insecure and doubtful that i take refuge in/revert to thinking of myself as a "student". i should hope that this happens less, the further i progress with the PhD, rather than more, as your question implies. or did i totally misunderstand?

I think there is a fundamental problem in today's academic environment. Students are regarded as students, staff are regarded as staff and identify themselves with job titles like lecturer or professor. Nobody seems to regard themselves as researchers or scientists, this lack of communal spirit of belonging to something bigger must have got lost over the past decades. Therefore it is very difficult to answer your question, sadly.

shani - that's an interesting response. If I interpret it correctly you fall back on the student label when you are struggling or feeling under excessive pressure? Perhaps ther is comfort in the 'student' ie not yet expert during those periods?

jouri - yes I agree that the power dynamics are overplayed. That may be why I don't quite fall in line with the student side. As a mid career expert in my own numerous fields and possibly more aligned with the academics than the very young students, the boundaries get blurred for older life-accomplished students I think.

I think this is a great question. I think it takes on particular relevance when you are a professional doing PhD work that is very related to your professional career. Does being a student mean you check all of your relevant knowledge and accomplishments at the door? Does my twenty years of experience in my field of study and work put me at the same intellectual level as someone who has never worked in the field, or anywhere for that matter, but only studied? I can answer for myself, that my years of professional work deeply inform my own studies and have given me a wider perspective and deeper appreciation of the information that I am considering. I am not struggling to understand basic concepts and standards, because I have used them, worked with them, refined my own understanding of them over the course of time. Therefore, there is no need to establish that foundation to begin to digest the academic scholarship.

Otherwise, I think starting PhD students are just trying to get their head round some of the foundational concepts, and rightfully, that takes a great deal of time and effort in the beginning.

So as for identity, I prize my previous experience and knowledge. I am not sure that others always value it or see it as relevant, but to the extent it advances my own PhD work then I think its worth being given credit for it.

Having had a variety of titles in life, I am not much fussed about what I am called. I say student without being an apologist for it, because that is what, among many things, I am at the moment.

Olivia I fully appreciate what you say. The multiple aspect of being a little older and experienced in your field perhaps provides its own protection from what is incorrectly assumed about students and the trainee mentality. When you've been out there and proved yourself already that's where the instability of behaving as though we are novices in everything crumbles I suspect.

Glad you think it's a worthwhile question.

I have been irritated by being asked, after standing in some interminable queue at the university "Are you a student"? ..No I just play one on TV, that is why I stood in the queue! Perhaps there is also not enough recognition of mature students as students, and not some misplaced person...!

I don't mind being called a student. Its not an internalised identity at all, it makes me sort of laugh, actually. Its novel.

I am used to the business world, where your communications and interactions have a degree of professionalism and responsiveness that I think goes lacking however when you are being dealt with in your "student" role, and this I find extremely aggravating.

But we're not just mere students anyway. Actually, we're postgrad students. I prefer to call myself just a student, but my supervisor went mad at the suggestion and said 'you're a post-graduate student!'.

entrepreneur, are you asking because this is related to your PhD research? if we are your research subjects here, would you kindly let us know?

where i'm from, the term "student" is mostly reserved for bachelor and master students at universities. nobody else, not before nor after that, nor in vocational education, would readily call themselves students. as i feel that doing a PhD is quite something different than studying for a masters, as i think most people here would agree, i was most surprised when i came to the UK and found that a) i was again being classified as a student, and b) none of my fellow PhD-ers took issue with that.
so, for me, identifying as a student basically means identifying as "just a student". that does several things to me and i work it in different ways:

- when others classify me as a student, i feel put down - undervalued. i feel that what i do every day, which is not what a "student" does (in my book), is being put down, not acknowledged, ignored for what it is. not being paid for this work, as i would be elsewhere, but rather having to pay for it, adds insult to injury. at times this makes me angry. i reject the label "student" and get rebellious, pointing out that what we do is work, and should be acknowledged as such. other times i don't have the energy to fight. sometimes i just feel, well if you are going to call me student and judge what i'm doing as "not work" (or "not real research"), then i am most certainly not going to put much effort into it (a sort of destructive, self-sabotaging mindset which i try to avoid, but is sometimes, more often than i like, the easier path to tread and the only alternative to the energy-consuming rebellion/self-distancing from the label).

- but i also self-identify as student, at times. again, there are several dimensions. on the one hand, a bit connected to the second option above, it saves me from doubts and insecurities. after all, i'm "just" a student. nobody (except me, perhaps) expects me to do it all right the first time i try, to encounter no problems, to know it all. that can be a huge relief, and is an option which doctoral researchers in my home country often don't have. they are "not students anymore", get paid for their work, so they feel a huge pressure to be better than masters students (whose dissertations are sometimes MPhil/halfway through PhD-level) and to provide the results they are being paid for, without help or any further education.
on the other hand i identify as "just a student" because this feeds nicely into my self-doubts and lacking confidence.