Being French educated since age 2 (yeah, it was a long time ago), I naturally said "YES" to the opportunity of doing my PhD research with Paris-Est Créteil (now renamed UPEC-UPEM, after being merged with Paris Marne La Vallée) in France. So I signed up to the Research Lab OMI (Organisations, Marchés, Institutions) and joined my lab mates at the Largotec Lab (now renamed as LIPHA, after Hannah Arendt, the famous German philosopher).
You can imagine that just this short introduction on where I belong to as a 'Doctorante' (the French slang would be "thésard(e)" or, in good English, Doctoral Research Candidate) would take at least 3 minutes to "locate" myself to new encounters. Of course, we normally do not do it à la singapouréenne, where one would introduce him- or herself as "Hey, nice to meet you, I am so-and-so, here is my name card, with all my qualifications therein, here is my email, Skype, FB, LinkedIn, Google+, IM, organisation where I belong to, the number of years of experience in so-and-so field... followed by 'Shall we meet for lunch' and discuss more bla-bla-bla...". Well it is a caricature, but it is very close to the practice, and of course, it is unthinkable NOT to have your name cards with you... because you never know whom you meet on your way... (in my case, this sort of "elevator pitch" techniques proved to be really effective, ha ha).
But for the French culture, it is preferable to "sell yourself" without flooding your new encounter with so many details, as he would right away dismiss you or "classify" you under SPAM. To French people or at least those with French culture, the first "name card" effect is your level of spoken French (sans accent) and the right technical vocabulary in your message, and of course, and very importantly, the fluidity of your discourse. Wow! Coming from Switzerland, although my level of French is classified and accepted as "native" and my "non-accent" French usually earns me some admirative glances, if not open congratulations, from my colleagues and new encounters, whenever I join my classmates in France, I feel like a real "Bernoise" (in Swiss slang, it means "slow" for those who are not familiar with the Röstisgraben mentality of multi-lingual and multicultural Switzerland). In fact, for me, it is a delight for each trip I make to Paris, as I come back to my Swiss home, feeling like Michael Schumacher coming out of a Formula One Race.
One of the prerequisites to qualify for the defense of the Thesis at UPEC is to have fulfilled at least 30 hours (or 15 sessions of 2 hours each) of attendance to the "Séminaire de Méthodologie de Recherche" plus other activities and courses proposed by the Doctoral School.such as professional training, colloques, seminars, talks, ...of which the "Doctoriales" where "doctorants" can benefit a 5-day intensive experience with other colleagues. Usually only a maximum participation of 30 is allowed (and paid for by the School), so it is a real privilege to be invited to be part of this event.
The one to which I participated last June (in 2014) at the Château de Chamarande (near Paris), together with 29 other candidates, brought me a wonderful experience. The challenge is: HOW to survive the intensive training we got in decision making, team building, presentation and leadership skills during those 5 days. Imagine that you are given 45 min (or may be a bit longer) to work out with other team members (whom you meet for the first time) a brand new project and get the best presentation possible on screen to present it in class, in competition with other teams. This is really no joke, as you are asked to limit your presentation in one single slide, demonstrating the underlying team work and team spirit during each of the presentation with the required ouput. The exercise is repeated 3 times a day, during the 5 days, with changing environment and settings, and accelerating the speed to bring up participants to a higher level of competition on time and performance at each session. One of the toughest exercises, at least to me, was to present our own Doctoral thesis based on a poster which we had to prepared in advance before joining. The exercise allows 180 seconds (that is 3 minutes) for the first attempt, to then goes down to 2 minutes for the second attempt. Anyone exceeding more than the allocated time is eliminated. Oh, I can still feel the excitement now, after almost a year from that experience...Compared to the fluidity of speech which most of my French colleagues are used to, my "Swiss" speed suffered some complex of inferiority during those days. But I DID survive thanks to my years of training on techniques in effective communication (oh, thank you for your applause!). The result of this experience is, that we came out of it, wearing the blueprint of our team: for my team mates and myself, from that day on, we are now proud of being "Les Bleus". By the way, my team - Les Bleus - scored BEST overall (Applause again, Thank you !).
For me, my "doctoriales" experiment goes beyond that period of five days. At the Séminaire of Méthodogie de la Recherche, I also had the opportunity of re-shaping my thoughts and enhancing my overall knowledge, in a topic which I would have never thought of doing at this stage of my life: the Epistemology of the Philosophy of Science (view links here for more). In fact, i realized afterwards, that we somehow take philosophy for granted, and tend to forget how much philosophers and thinkers have shaped our modern society with their legacy.
Reading Economic theorists such as Marx, Hobbes, Locke and more of Rousseau, Keynes, Friedman, and then Rawls, and even Sen these last few months brought a rich complement to my early introductory courses on Dürkheim, Weber, Descartes, Pascal, Montaigne, Voltaire, Montesquieu and many more which were part of my youth education. As a result, I feel like I have a thousand books more to read, and feel "always hungry for more".
Having worked on the theories on Social Contract, theories on Social Justice, and other related works during the past 3-5 years, this long journey has led me naturally on reflecting further on Social Inequalities, Governance, and Ethics, and the challenges faced by the World of Today: the redefined role of the State facing globalization, the impact of Governance and Development Policies on the social and economic performance of the corporate community within and beyond the national borders, and, by extension, other issues on Environment, Human Development, Food Security, and Security and Arms Control for Peace, etc. All these questions keep popping up on my path, alternating with contradictory approaches to the problems as my research goes more in-depth. Surely, the Thesis is just a beginning of a long journey, and I am only climbing up the first steps of the pyramid of non-identity.
At the stage of wrapping up on my Thesis, the fruit of my preliminary years of research, through trials and errors, as I am now equipped with the newly "refreshed" tools learnt from these seminars, it seems that my approach to how I see Life and the Business World has changed. I just realize how much impact on the socio-economical transformation resulting from the adoption or misinterpretation of some dogma proposed by academics or theorists, could benefit humanity in their quest of a better world, or on the contrary, could cause so much turmoil and misery to mankind. The book I just finished reading "The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History" written so beautifully by Boris Johnson reminds me that our responsibility as a citizen of the World urges that each of us must pro-actively take charge of our destiny, which is related to that of the whole humanity. No leader or government can bring a ready-made solution to a problem if their actions are not backed up with the trust which their community has in them.
Regardless of what the impact an individual could bring to his community, one pre-condition keeps resonating in me: the key word is, EDUCATION, for a better understanding and improvement of Life.
To know more and share with me your vision of how you see the world, visit my blog on my doctoral research at
http://sbitrainingsolutions.blogspot.ch/Have a nice day,
Anh Tho Andres, Doctorante @UPEC
