Hi!

I'd like to know how is the typical day of a PhD student.
How many hours do they have to spend in the department? ( I'm curious about humanities, so nothing concerning laboratories)
How many free time do they have? Like there will be enough time in a day to do a part-time job?

It would be great if one of the PhD student will write how is his everyday life.

Thanks! :)

I have only been going a few month, but so far has just really been going into my department reading and normally talking to my fellow PhD students about how we have no idea about what we are doing! I guess soon when the panic hits will be doing more work. In terms of free time I have no lectures and meet my supervisor once every few weeks, so have all the free time I want, just depends on myself how much work I want to do. Not sure about part time work as everyone in my department has funding so dont know anyone who works, but some people do some tutorials and teaching. Guess though, a PhD is an individual thing some people can manage their time well so get loads done when they have the opportunity, myself I need to sit down all day just to get a few hours work done!!

Hi Minerva,

I guess it would be very hard to generalise, as each student faces different challenges and requirements.

Some people work from home and meet their supervisors fortnightly, monthly or even less often. Other students have supervisors that micro-manage them and expect them to be in the office/lab every breathing moment. Some people work 4 or 5 hours a day and they do great as they work very efficiently.... Most people in my office treat the PhD as a 9 to 5 job and they don't work in the weekends.

Personally, I put very long hours in my PhD: I work around 60 hours per week, and that includes weekends. I blame it to my multi-disciplinary topic that required a lot of reading in the first year to catch up, and also a very labour-intensive PhD, with extensive fieldwork, huge amount of data to be transcribed and a large database with complicated statistical analysis. Moreover, I am involved with teaching, marking, supervising dissertations and organising conferences and events that take place in the department. However, I still try to make time for the gym, socialise with my friends and read books (I can do these because I don't have a family).

In my university full-time PhD students are allowed to work up to 20 hours per week. I don't think that I would manage.Burn-out is a real thing.

I'm able to be very flexible with my working hours (I luckily don't have the 'breathing down your neck type' supervisor!).

A point I would like to add is that my productivity varies, as do my other commitments (dentist, doctors, birthdays, social events). Occasionally I've done as few as 15 hours of 'pure work' (discounting emails, talking to colleagues, admin, reports) at other times I've done as many as 60 hours of the same intense work but mostly I do around 30 hours 'pure work' plus another 10-15 of teaching, emailing, report writing and other admin as well as chatting to others in the department, networking etc...

I work at the university from 10amish till 6pmish, go to the gym for an hour then have the evening to myself mostly, sometimes doing a couple of hours PhD reading. I tend to work for around 3-4 hours on a Saturday or Sunday too.

Writing this out like this just now has made me realise that perhaps I need to look at cutting that 10-15 hours admin etc down a little bit! :-/

Hope that helps to give you an idea though

GM

well......
i like your sharing so much. its really good piece of information for us. Good work
keep it up. Thanks