Using Multiple Identities to Your Advantage

As a PGR student, you may occupy a number of different identities at the same time,
including student, researcher, collaborator, lecturer and employee, not to mention the
identities you may hold outside of university (friend, parent etc.).

Within our lives overall, we are generally quite comfortable holding different identities in
different places. The person you are to your mother, is probably different to the person
you are as a best friend and different again from the person you are when talking to your
supervisor.

This is perfectly normal and helpful. Occasionally students worry that being different in
different environments means that they are somehow being ‘inauthentic’ or false. But
actually being able to adapt to circumstance is simply an adaptive trait that helps you and
the people around you. If you were unable to behave appropriately in a seminar, for
instance, because you had to be the ‘authentic you’ as you are when out for an evening
with your friends, this would disrupt the seminar for all of the other people in the room.

Adapting to circumstances and the environment is actually a skill that can be very helpful
throughout life.

The difficulty many PGR students have is that they sometimes feel they have multiple
identities at the same time and in the same place. This can be a maximised version of the
experience you may have had when people from different parts of your life meet for the
first time. Very often when friends from home and university meet or friends and family
meet, we can find the experience odd, even off-putting and not be sure how to behave.

PGR students can often have this experience of not being sure who they are supposed to
be in the moment. For instance, if they meet undergraduate students from their course
socially, should they behave as another student or as a potential lecturer to that student?
This confusion can also be seen by the number of names used to refer to those working
towards a PhD – student, candidate, researcher, scholar etc.
There are no hard and fast rules about how to decide this and as a result the uncertainty
this causes can give rise to anxiety, imposter syndrome and make you feel less like you
belong [1].
However, because there are no clear rules, this means that you can take control of this
issue for yourself. Students in our panels, who successfully managed this challenge, were
clear that they had made a decision to decide for themselves when they would step into
each identity. When they felt it benefited them to appear as a student, they were a student.
When it benefited them to appear as a researcher or member of staff, they adopted that
persona. They also found that when they did this confidently and clearly communicated
which role they were in – others usually accepted and adapted to this. This gave them
stronger feelings of certainty and control and also meant that they could maximise their
multiple identities to their advantage.

One students suggested that PGR students should think of their status as like a portfolio
career in and of itself. That way rather than trying to find one right way to be all of the
time, their mindset would allow them to adapt to each circumstance and role, as needed.