#TEXT 1_Y_M_A_Marek
[Respondent: Marek, male, ~25, PhD student in philosophy, Jagiellonian University, Kraków. Originally from Wrocław. Lives alone in a friend's apartment for minimal rent.]
[UPDATED v3: multi-framework codes — [B]=Bourdieu [H]=Honneth [M]=Masculinity Theory]

Tell us a few words about yourself. Where do you live, what do you do, and what do you do?

	•	I live in Krakow and I'm working on my doctoral degree. I'm currently in my second year of a PhD in philosophy at the Jagiellonian University. Other than that, I don't do much.

What are the most important changes you've noticed in your life due to the pandemic?

#CODE 3. Capital mismatch and blocked conversion\Symbolic capital deferred or withheld && 7. Small place, restricted horizons and mobility\Geographic constraint and restricted opportunity structure
	•	I was supposed to go to a conference, I think in the Netherlands, but it was canceled or moved online. I was supposed to go to a school in Croatia, but it was canceled. I was supposed to have a month-long research trip to Paris, but that was also canceled. So I had a lot of opportunities for growth, interesting things to do, adventures in a sense, which also involved mobility. And since mobility was limited, these opportunities were also at least postponed, or perhaps lost altogether.
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I also have no opportunity to meet any people at the university, with whom I supposedly work in the same unit, but there's no way to have contact with them.

Has the pandemic affected your life plans?

#CODE 8. Future as anticipated social judgment\[B] Illusio withdrawal: non-planning as habitus adjustment to objective field probabilities
	•	Any longer-term ones than the ones I mentioned, no, but also because I didn't have any longer-term life plans.
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#CODE 8. Future as anticipated social judgment\Fear of the future and anticipated inadequacy
There's a chance, because let's say I get kicked out of university for insufficient achievements, for insufficient work, I could definitely blame it on the poor circumstances. Perhaps if I'd had normal, optimal conditions, it wouldn't have happened, but that remains to be seen.
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You mentioned the move to online in the context of building relationships — has the pandemic affected your work and educational situation?

#CODE 2. Education as ambivalent promise of mobility\Failed conversion: education does not yield work, autonomy or confidence
	•	university buildings were closed for a while because I can't concentrate at home either; I don't have the conditions for it. I need a separate space to work, I probably need peace and quiet, so the time I had to spend at home was practically wasted in that regard. So, for the last year, or at least a few months, I've actually been completely off — let's call it research or writing. So I feel like my PhD time has been shortened, in a sense, because there were a few months when, given my specific circumstances, I couldn't work at all.
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How did you choose your field of study and city?

#CODE 3. Capital mismatch and blocked conversion\Social capital as substitute for institutional access && 2. Education as ambivalent promise of mobility\Instrumental education: diploma as piece of paper
	•	my friend's father came to the rescue. He suggested that there was a major at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków that Wrocław didn't offer, namely cognitive science. If I told my parents I was interested in it and wanted to study it, but Wrocław didn't, so I had to go to Kraków, they'd have to agree. And so it happened, even though cognitive science didn't interest me at all. It was purely pragmatic to go to Krakow. And since it's also a fairly interdisciplinary and general program, it's actually a good option for someone who doesn't know what they want to study. I had an extra three years to figure things out.
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Do you want to stay at the university?

#CODE 2. Education as ambivalent promise of mobility\Instrumental education: diploma as piece of paper && 5. Blocked adulthood and symbolic shame\Adulthood as permanently deferred, regressed, or never felt
	•	They don't like working, they can't imagine themselves doing any kind of work. I went for a PhD, not even because philosophy somehow interests me, but because I had no other idea, and I decided that, in a sense, it's like extending my carefree childhood even further. I'm here, and I still absolutely don't feel like I could do anything else, so not because it interests me in any way, but because I don't see a sensible alternative.
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What was your first professional experience?

#CODE 1. Difference misrecognised as deficiency\Institutional labelling as lazy / problematic / weird && 4. Work, low pay and dignity\Low pay and symbolic devaluation of labour
	•	I couldn't find one, and finally, I only found one at McDonald's. So, I was a typical graduate of a program where you can only go to McDonald's. And there I fried those fries for two and a half months. It wasn't something I wanted to do for long. The next summer... I was looking for a job again and again couldn't find anything. This time, I finally found one in a call center. I called people to sell them electricity and various promotional packages with electricity. That was probably even worse.
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#CODE 3. Capital mismatch and blocked conversion\Social capital as substitute for institutional access
that half time was the next summer, when a friend got me involved in conducting research at crisis intervention centers. So I went to a city a few times and interviewed people from that center and then wrote a report. But that was a one-off.
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How do you interpret the significance of these professional experiences?

#CODE 1. Difference misrecognised as deficiency\Self-attributed incapacity and internalised deficit && 4. Work, low pay and dignity\Work as surveillance, exploitation or moral discomfort
	•	For the months I worked, whether daily or not, I woke up stressed every morning and was constantly stressed, and that certainly didn't have a positive effect on me. Furthermore, I had some contact with people in both jobs... even if this contact was minimal, on the level of small talk, short conversations, it was still unpleasant for me. For me, interacting with people is generally difficult, especially since in both jobs, none of the people I met in any way appealed to me; there was no one I liked even a little. So, the daily need to interact with people I don't particularly like is also a common problem in many jobs, and I've realized that this is also a potential problem for me. It tired me out; I get tired easily. I've been tired my whole life, or more so, but during those summer jobs, I was even more tired.
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#CODE 4. Work, low pay and dignity\Habitus-work mismatch: unsuited to the normal work world
So what this did for me in the future was that I learned that I wasn't suited to a world where I had to work, so I had to look for a job that felt as close to typical as possible. And I think working at a university is quite unusual in this regard. However, you have a lot of autonomy and the ability to set your own schedule, manage your time, and manage who you work with. So this only reinforced my belief that if I absolutely have to work somewhere, maybe this university is the best fit for me, even if not the right one.
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What will determine whether you will be able to stay at the university?

#CODE 3. Capital mismatch and blocked conversion\Blocked conversion: capitals fail to produce stable position && 8. Future as anticipated social judgment\Structural constraints naturalised as personal limits
	•	Partly, it depends on me, on how much I can pull myself together to work, to write. How much I can push myself to go to conferences, travel to places where I can develop... none of these things come naturally to me, and it's a matter of working on myself... but it's still possible that the universities I'm interested in in Poland, because I don't want to leave for now, won't have the funds for full-time positions and won't need anyone.
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#CODE 3. Capital mismatch and blocked conversion\Cultural capital possessed but economically unconvertible && 8. Future as anticipated social judgment\Collective structural condition misrecognised as individual failure
If five people with the same specialization as me show up in Poland, who are excellent and have a wealth of achievements, then in a sense, it's not my fault. So, my commitment is certainly a necessary condition, but it's not a sufficient condition.
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Are you planning anywhere you'd like to go? A dream trip?

#CODE 7. Small place, restricted horizons and mobility\Local horizon as socially naturalised limit
	•	No, not really... it's not something that's a dream come true for me and I lie in bed at night dreaming about how great it would be to go there and do it. I don't have such dreams. No dreams at all.
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What do you spend your money on?

#CODE 3. Capital mismatch and blocked conversion\Economic capital insufficiency and material precarity
	•	I don't spend much money. I don't receive much from a scholarship, but I spend even less. I spend on housing and relatively basic food. I cook my own food. I rarely spend on convenience foods, away from home. I rarely spend on clothes... I spend a quarter of my money on psychotherapy; that's a significant part of my budget.
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Is there anything you would like to spend more or less on?

#CODE 3. Capital mismatch and blocked conversion\Economic capital insufficiency and material precarity
	•	Better pasta, good Italian pasta instead of cheap Biedronka. Or never buy tomato juice because it's the cheapest and always buy orange juice, even when it's not on sale. These are small things, but when I spend, I try to spend carefully and pay attention to prices. When I buy laundry detergent, I also pay attention to price.
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Do you feel like an adult?

#CODE 5. Blocked adulthood and symbolic shame\Adulthood defined: financial independence, housing, responsibility && 6. Family care as protection and symbolic burden\Family as material safety net: housing, food, money && 5. Blocked adulthood and symbolic shame\[B] Doxa of normative adulthood: housing-work-family sequence naturalised as universal
	•	my parents continued to support me throughout the five years of my studies. As long as my parents supported me, I had no basis for feeling like an adult. And in reality, my daily life didn't change much after moving out. I had to do my own shopping, cooking, and cleaning, but it didn't feel like a significant leap. Again, the leap from being supported by my parents to supporting myself when I started my doctorate and received a stipend didn't really change anything, aside from the source and amount of the money. It didn't change anything internally, in my character, nor did it have any external consequences.
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#CODE 5. Blocked adulthood and symbolic shame\Adulthood as permanently deferred, regressed, or never felt
a doctorate is a kind of extension of childhood for me. It's not a normal job. I don't receive a salary for my work, I only receive a formal stipend... So I'm just starting to acknowledge that what I do is, in a sense, work, because if I finished my PhD and stayed at the university, there wouldn't be any real leap here either. I'd still be doing more or less the same thing.
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What specific experiences or behaviors bring you closer to adulthood?

#CODE 5. Blocked adulthood and symbolic shame\Adulthood as permanently deferred, regressed, or never felt && 5. Blocked adulthood and symbolic shame\[M] Masculine adulthood expectations: provider, self-sufficient, responsible
	•	I still have this tendency to prefer to pass responsibility onto others, not for things I've already done, but rather to have others make decisions for me, to have others make choices. I'd rather be a passive individual whose life is planned by others, and I wouldn't want to take it into my own hands, even though I know that from the outside, I'm an adult and no one has the obligation to take responsibility for my life.
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What needs to happen for you to feel 100% adult?

#CODE 5. Blocked adulthood and symbolic shame\Adulthood as permanently deferred, regressed, or never felt
	•	I don't know if something like that will ever happen. I wouldn't be surprised if I were 40 and still didn't feel particularly grown up. From a relatively objective perspective, like looking from the outside, I could basically say right now that I won't be any more grown up... when it comes to a sense of adulthood, I'm not strongly convinced it will ever develop in me. This may be related to my personality, which I find difficult to change.
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Do you see any differences between your generation and your parents' generation?

#CODE 5. Blocked adulthood and symbolic shame\Blocked adulthood: conditions for independence structurally unavailable && 8. Future as anticipated social judgment\Collective structural condition misrecognised as individual failure
	•	Having a fairly good life and having everything relatively easy, light, and pleasant, perhaps this is also the reason for my lack of a full sense of adulthood, or at least this delayed sense of adulthood.
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#CODE 8. Future as anticipated social judgment\Collective structural condition misrecognised as individual failure
I think more people in my generation have less motivation to become adults than my parents' generation. At least many of the people in my generation that I know come from relatively decent, middle-class families, where they grew up in decent, decent circumstances. Often, even in big cities, my peers didn't have much motivation to quickly become independent.
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Do you feel stable in your life right now? Any goals in the 5-year plan?

#CODE 8. Future as anticipated social judgment\Fear of the future and anticipated inadequacy
	•	In five years, it would be good if I'm still alive in five years, to find some source of income after my course, also related to the academic world, whether it's a full-time job, or something like that. But I don't have any other plans.
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