I'm sure this has been asked before but when I search it comes up with about 100 posts which have the words part-time in, many not relevant. Anyway the question is if you are part-time with paid employment as well, how many hours do people work on both? I am waiting to hear if I can go part-time from July and I have a part-time job lined up which means I will be working four days on this and have three left for PhD work (and me-time!). Does this sound do-able? I know there must be people working full-time and doing a PhD so even though I was initially worried about the hours of my job, maybe it won't be as bad as I thought.

Well I'm not working, but I manage the PhD on about 5 hours a week. Occasionally I can stretch to 10 hours, but more usually it's at the lower end of the scale. I know this isn't good, it's not what I planned when I started the PhD, but my neurological disease flared up hugely in summer 2004, and I've struggled ever since.

My PhD is in history and involves doing historical research in archives. But I've managed to work around that by getting copies of the records I can work through at home, either photocopies, or on microfilm (I have a film reader at home), or digital photographs.

It's very much a case of quality time over quantity though. I wouldn't recommend doing a PhD this way, but I have nearly finished, and hopefully will be successful.

i have a full time job in education, which gives me at least part of the holidays. (I'm not a teacher, but still have loads of things to do connected with school to keep things running smoothly in my bit of the department, and often work late there during the week as well) so I tend not to do a lot during term time, probably a few hours during the week, depending on what else I have to do, and longer at the weekends. If inspiration strikes, then I do more, if not I wait until the holidays to get larger amounts of work done. I've got two chapters in pretty good shape, but will spend the summer taking them apart and reassembling them, and bits and pieces in others at the moment which I will work on more solidly too. It isn't necessarily the amoun tof time you spend, but how productive it is. It is do-able. I'm also a school governor, chair of the local community centre, and union rep and have other hobbies and things to do as well as work and PhD, you possible work pattern seems OK to me, it may depend how you like to work though.

Definitely do-able Pam. I work full-time and only managed about 1 day a week on the PhD but I still got it done - it did take 10 years though which is not to be recommended. Three days a week should be fine. Just be careful not to let your work take over - that was my mistake.

:-)

Thanks for your replies. I feel better about things now. I'm only going part-time for my last six months to give me some breathing space (see previous posts about my erratic and complicated life!!!). But it will also give me a longer period to write up after funding runs out so I think a four day a week job and three days for PhD and other things sounds OK.

I know it's only for the last few months, but be careful Pamw that you don't burn yourself out working too hard at weekends. I have a friend, also part-time PhD, who works 4 days and has 1 day off for the PhD, and she needs her weekends to rest from work etc. and do other things. She simply wouldn't be able to push herself to work (work + PhD) for 7 days of the week with no proper rest.

Good luck!