I was an expert in my field. Then I became a beginner again

There is a particular kind of discomfort that comes with becoming a beginner again, when you are no longer young enough to be expected to know nothing.

I began a doctoral research project in my late thirties after years of professional practice. Natalia is an established academic, used to helping doctoral researchers turn early ideas into studies, arguments and publications.

For me, entering research did not feel like starting from zero. I had built a professional identity. Other people recognised me as a professional in my field, and I recognised myself that way, too. Yet when I began my research path, I felt as if I had returned to the first year of university. Much of what I knew did not yet count in the way I expected it to.

• ‘The first step is to understand what supervisors and students need’
• Build supervisory relationships that inspire, not just correct
• Recognise the human side of doctoral study

I became what I now call an experienced beginner. That feeling had a history. At school, at university and in my first professional roles, I had repeatedly been reminded that competence still had to be earned. I caught up each time, but each transition left the same question behind: when would I finally be seen as someone who knew what I was doing? In my late thirties, lack of experience felt harder to justify.

Research can be especially hard on experienced beginners because it demands intellectual humility in public. A method is questioned, a research question is challenged, an idea that felt mature in practice must survive a different kind of scrutiny.

From Natalia’s side, the situation looked different. As my supervisor, she saw the promise of the idea before the weakness of the design. But supervision trains you to move quickly on to what needs work. While she saw professional judgement, practical insight and a strong sense of why my topic mattered, she could also see the difficult step that many experienced professionals face when they enter research: the move from “I have seen this many times” to “this can be investigated systematically”.

One supervision meeting made this tension visible. I went in expecting advice on literature, methods or structure. My idea came from years of professional observation and, to me, felt important, grounded and urgent. Natalia listened carefully and then said, gently but directly: “This is a valuable professional insight, but it is not yet a research question.”

I nodded, but I was no longer listening in the same way. I heard the words “not yet” more loudly than the word “valuable”. The sentence first sounded like failure. Perhaps I did not understand science well enough. Perhaps I had come to research too late. Perhaps practical experience was not enough here.

From the supervisor’s side, the same sentence meant something else. It was not a dismissal of experience. It was an invitation to turn experience into something that could be examined with evidence. The insight mattered, but now we needed to move from conviction to enquiry, from observation to design, from urgency to a question that could be challenged and answered.

That meeting changed how we both understood supervision. For me, “not yet” did not mean “not good enough”. For Natalia, the task was to name the value before naming the gap.

Since that conversation, she has tried to begin feedback differently. First, she identifies what is already strong: the professional insight, the ethical sensitivity, the practical understanding of the field, the motivation to ask a meaningful question. Only after that does she name the gap – not to soften criticism, but to make sure it is heard as guidance rather than exclusion.

But experienced beginners like me can be difficult to supervise precisely because we are experienced. When feedback touches a gap in research knowledge, the first response is not always curiosity. Sometimes it is defence: a return to the field in which the person feels competent, or an attempt to juggle previous experience by offering examples, familiar cases and arguments that prove the topic is important. These contributions can strengthen a project, but they can also fill the space where a research question should emerge.

Experienced beginners do not need empty reassurance, and supervisors should not step back from difficult conversations. They need someone who can say: this part is weak, but the idea is worth developing. Your previous experience matters, but it still has to be turned into questions, evidence and arguments.

For a while, I was tempted to return to my comfort zone – the place where I was already recognised and did not have to explain why I belonged. The turning point came when we began to name the problem differently. The question was not whether I was already “professional enough” to become a researcher, but how I could allow myself to be both experienced and unfinished.

The lesson is shared. Supervisors should not confuse a beginner in research with a beginner in life. Experienced beginners should not erase their previous expertise, but they also need to accept the vulnerability of learning. Previous achievements do not remove the need for revision, uncertainty and correction. Together, we learned that supervising an experienced beginner is not only about teaching research methods or improving a doctoral project. It is also about helping a person carry a professional self into a research identity.

Being an experienced beginner means standing at the edge of a new field with a long path behind you, and deciding to step forward. As my grandmother used to say, our family is not the timid kind.

Artem Polulyakhov is a PhD student and Natalia Tsybuliak is an associate professor at Berdyansk State Pedagogical University.

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