Chemistry Discourse

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The Discourse Community of Chemistry Ph.D. Students
The chemistry Ph.D. program is designed to advance students’ cognitive skills and should ultimately afford them the ability to become independent thinkers. When the students join the Ph.D. program they soon become members of a discourse community, which is a group of members that share the same values, goals, and lexis. Especially in the science disciplines the students become immersed in their new group by exploring various research projects and conducting experiments that will hopefully propel their scientific curiosity exponentially before they graduate. One of the primary goals for students within this program is to produce research publications in order for the students to …show more content…

One of the methods was by finding another member of the community you can feel comfortable with and ultimately confide in so that can express your feelings to someone in the same situation (Smith). The importance of peer support was also mentioned by Gardner as she explained the students relied upon “the graduate student grapevine” that was a method of communicating with one another (724). The consensus she received from the students was that “students look to one another for support, friendship, and…for guidance in their programs through the graduate student grapevine” (Gardner 736). In addition to spending time with some of their peers both of the students agreed that one of the primary ways the deal with the tension was “to start stripping down your beliefs of the advisor” (Smith). The students explained that this meant that collectively they began to understand the dysfunctional relationship they had with their advisor was also shared by many of their fellow peers. Therefore, as Mays explained the PI had “lost his credibility in our eyes because he acts this way with everyone.” Thus, he stated that it allowed him to feel more confident and to ultimately take more control over his research (Mays). However, it is important to note that this did not correct his relationship with the PI, but instead helped him …show more content…

After analyzing the causes of the tension between grad students and their PI it is important to bring forth the issues that can arise because of the constant friction. As Leonard Cassuto, an English Professor from Fordham University, explained that when the environment the advisor helps to create is mostly filled with frustration, it can sometimes cause the students to drop out from the graduate program at the alarming rate of approximately 50% of students across several different disciplines (1). Both of the grad students I met with explained that recently one of their peers exited the program primarily due to a lack of communication between him and the PI (Mays and Smith). Additionally, as Mays explained the actions and behavior of their advisor has caused him and several of his peers to battle periods of depression during their time in the program, and that the depression had forced he and several other students to seek

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