What do you guys reckon about part-time work and full-time PhD study? Do you do it? Do you find it OK? What type of jobs do you do alongside your study?

I've been doing my MA full time and working 18hours a week in a call centre for the past year, which has been busy but do-able. Do you think it would be much different for a PhD? (My PhD will be in literary studies type-stuff)

I have no AHRC funding, you see, and while my Uni can give me an incentive award for the first year, it aint enough to get by on without work. Am a bit loath to switch my PhD to part-time as the prospect of signing up to do anything for seven years seems daunting!

I was teaching undergraduates on my first year, but as DanB said my funding allows only 6 hours of work per week. Perhaps you contact your HR department to register to their Part-time lecturers' pool or something similar. The hourly rate is much better than working anywhere else in my opinion. You can also contact local colleges for part-time teaching.

I completed my MSc FT and worked PT.

However, I'm only studying PT for my PhD (as well as working PT).

Sixkitten - how many hours a week do you work? And do you think you COULD do the full time PhD alongside your part time job if you wanted to?

It seems like most people think its best to only work a few hours per week during a PhD, if at all...! Oh dear!

chicamala, it totally depends on personal circumstances. If you are fully funded, then you can't really work more than what your funding permits. If you do, it affects the bursary. You can do freelance or vacation type of work but then you will need to do very good calculations for Tax reasons. You don't want to work more and end up getting the same amount if you didn't work.

I work 4 days a week, but hopefully coming down to 3 soon.

For me personally, there is no blinking way on this planet I would ever study FT if I was working more than 2/3 days a week! It's very tough fitting in just PT study and nothing like doing an MSc FT and working PT (the Masters was much easier to do whilst working and even that was extremely difficult).

One of the reasons I chose my institution was that the minimum registration for PT study is 4 years (you don't have to commit to the full 6 years that some PT courses demand); if you think a lot of FT students take 4 years it means I've got the flexibility to complete earlier than a lot of PT students, but less pressure. There are some good 'deals' to be had for PT students so look around

I am a FT PhD student and I work PT.
I teach 4-5 hours each semester which in reality takes up about 10 hours a week with prep, marking etc. I spend a further 10 hours a week approx on freelance stuff, . This tends to come in batches so I have to juggle a bit. I might end up working for 3 days on that & just the PhD for 2 day that week but stay in over the w.e one evening to catch up. Boyf, as much as I love him is useless around the house so if I am busy what tends to fall by the way is cleaning, washing, shopping etc.
But I have never felt I couldn't cope.

I think it depends on your situ ( I don't have kids, live 20 mins from uni, and can do all the other paid work more or less from home, except for the odd meeting).
To be honest if I did my thesis FT and nothing else I don't think I could fill the time. Actually I think I'd just spend more time faffing, doing random internet searches and swanning round the library coffee shop at uni...

I agree with pea - it depends on your situation

Cos I'm not AHRC funded and my Uni are just helping me out, I don't have any restrictions on how many hours a week I can work. But I agree with you SixKitten, that I wouldn't want do more than 2 days per week if I was studying F-T.

I also like the sound what you're doing Pea, teaching and a bit of freelance-y stuff, cos the ability to juggle your life/PhD/work balance instead of having it dictated to you seems like one of the pros of the PhD lifestyle to me!

So feeling a bit better about it now, thanks

See what the restrictions are in terms of minimum registration periods

TBH the first thing you need to do is what I did and sit down and work out exactly how much you need each month to live on (bills, rent/mortgage, ect) and then see how many hours free you would have for study each month.

The other thing to consider is whether you can afford full time fees - I could only afford PT fees so that ruled out FT study for starters.