Abstract:

Everyone’s life could be told as a story interwoven with all sorts of difficult or easy, joyful or sorrowful life events. Some events pass away and fade into oblivion, but some events leave something very special in us and become life changing stories – narratives. One of the most famous mythologists, Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), in his book “The hero with the thousand faces”, used comparative approach to highlight and detail the similarities of the hero’s journey not only in ancient myths but also in a modern cultural narrative. Campbell’s metaphor of heroic journey reveals that every individual’s ordinary life events can be seen as transformative and change inner self.
Often, a person entering a doctoral program has external expectations of the duties and responsibilities of a doctoral student. Doctoral students' activities at the university are constrained by a particular topic, research methodology, or the needs of the academic community. As a result, the doctoral student as a future researcher lacks the time and space to reflect on the learning path and discover what it means to become a researcher. Also, the university's central focus is on the development of academic skills, which misses the importance of cultivating and nurturing the personal qualities of the future researcher. This leads to a mismatch between the expectations of the university and the reality of the situation, in which frequent doctoral students face an academic identity crisis, burnout and a feeling of not finding their place in higher education, and decide not to pursue a career in the academic community.
The purpose of this presentation is to explore the metaphor of the hero's journey as a means to understand the process of a doctoral student transitioning into a researcher. In this transformative academic journey, the relationship between the student and the supervisor takes on a crucial role, particularly in the context of the writing process. Additionally, the emphasis will be placed on the significance of shared leadership and the exploration of the most interesting paths in academic writing, as these factors are essential components of this journey towards becoming a researcher.

Keywords:

Academic writing, Higher education, Leadership, Researchers’ identity, Student-teacher interaction.