Temporality: Living Through the Time While Doing Doctoral Studies

Abstract

Doctoral students’ experiences of stay and study abroad determine how they experience and understand time in relation to other existential themes of body, space, and relation. The present study aimed to understand what meanings doctoral students’ assign to time while doing their doctoral studies in different public universities of Austria. Thirteen participants were recruited purposively to understand how did they experience time and how did their experience of time determine the way they live and study in a university and complete their doctoral studies. The questions were explored through conducting and recording the interviews in a semi-structured form and subsequently transcribing and analyzing the transcripts. The participants experienced that time continuously shaped their life experiences with respect to the space they lived in, relationality, and corporeal experiences. The students experienced time as an agent of pressure, perceived as being slow or fast in their studies, feeling connected or disconnected with their family, work and study and a tool to gauge their work performance and completion of their studies. The study has a phenomenological significance of understanding of time as experienced by a group of doctoral students that led to the way they lived, stayed and studied abroad.