Hi all,

since I am now about to transition from working in industry to being a PhD student, I was wondering what I should be expecting.
How is everyone faring on their studentship money? Is it enough to get by?
Is it possible to finish in 3 years or am I looking at an extra year for the writing up etc?
Any advice you can give to someone just starting out?
How many hours do you put in each week?

xx

======= Date Modified 26 May 2011 09:10:46 =======
======= Date Modified 26 May 2011 09:09:47 =======
Welcome and congratulations!

Yes it is possible to do it under 3 years. This varies a lot depending on the fields. According to some US stats (http://www.phdcompletion.org/) which I accessed through a secondary source the humanities and social sciences fields are the ones with the longest completion - the humanities completion rate is of only 3% in 3 years time, and social science is 7%. However, I feel this numbers could be very different if in general guidance was of higher quality. In general I believe that completions under 3 years leave much to be desired as students are most likely missing the opportunity to put in a little more time on learning and developing research skills, time which later on will be scarce. So sooner is not necessarily better. Also, very pragmatic students (although a time comes we all must be pragmatic) are also logically likely to be in the 3 years group students. But pragmatism, is to some extent at odds with a inquisitive knowledge hungry mind.

That being said I believe, too much is assumed of the doctoral student, that may not be true. Personally I scorned about "PhD guidance books". My mistake! My advice would be buy or request from your institutions' library some good books, on the following categories:
* General (Doing a PhD, PhD Project Management)
* Literature Review
* Dissertation writing
There will be overlap, as all tend to touch some areas (like lit review or managing your commitee). However, there is quite some variation in quality. Some books also offer very little info on qualitative projects.

Unless you have *truly mastered* reference and citation management in your masters, this is paramount and you should get this down before you start working. This investment up front will save you gazillions of time later on. So go ahead and spend an inordinate amount of time on this. Trust it will pay up! By the way, some advisers feel this is so obviously simple that they will push you to start producing (? no kidding it happened to me), reading, writing, or whatever they think it's best. Don't get me wrong most advisers obviously have a clue. However, none will know what skills you are really  missing. Take responsibility, manage the adviser and get your dearly missing skills.

Hours a week.
Is your program part-time or fulltime? Are you working professionally as well? What other responsibilities will you "have" to keep (professional, familiar)? Do you have an area of interest or will you need to shop around before you find something you are willing to invest in 3+ (most likely more than 3) years of research and study?

HTH - Hope This Helps

Thanks for the advice!

I actually managed to get a studentship, which is paid for 3 years. Thus I'll be a full-time PhD student, and I'll be able to devote *all* my time to the project...
Since I applied for a specific project, I won't be spending much time 'shopping around'. Hopefully that will allow me to get started quicker.
It's definitely true what you write about referencing - I'm totally scared I'm going to make mistakes in that area!
Thanks for the tips about the books, definitely going to check out what's on offer.
I'm just a bit nervous in general, because I've spent the last year working and feel sort of out of touch with the world of academia...
Also, I'm moving to London for my PhD which adds to the stress what with all the flathunting and trying to get my stuff moved etc. I'm sure it'll be easier once I'm settled in (at least I hope so!).

======= Date Modified 26 May 2011 11:00:00 =======
Since referencing, citation and writing are important to you, I my advise the following.

Peg Boyle Single's "Demystifying Dissertation Writing: A Streamlined Process from Choice of Topic to Final Text" - although this book could be much shorter it offers the best system to organize your references, citable quotes and final product in an integrated manner. Most of all the author's I read address these subjects (perhaps to the exclusion of writing) but fail to integrate them. Using Peg's system your dissertation will be written almost by it self. She uses EndNote, which is ok if you have an institutional license, but personally I advise on using Zotero (gold tip: create a tag for interactives and a tag for citables - make one note for each citable) *I believe this tip is worth the entire post*.

Christopher Hart's "Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination" - Although very much focused to sociology, anthropology et al, it is a very good book, but somewhat less practical. Although you may find ideas good about mapping the literature, and how to review papers, among others.

By the way, I've at least read other less valuable books, but specially went it comes to how to take read papers and take notes on them it becomes very valuable the extra time you spend doing this!!!

I'm sure others' will be able to contribute with good references on this.
HTH

Hi, first off well done getting a funded studentship. The money as you probably know isn't amazing but as long as you don't have extravagant tastes it should be enough to live comfortably, i.e. food, bills and rent should all be covered with ease. For me the studentship money is actually the most I've ever earned as I went straight from undergrad to masters to PhD, so for me I can afford to buy a few little treats now and again. You may need to buy a couple of text books depending on what's available in the library and how often you need to consult it, these can be pricey.

I'm only in my first year and I hope I will finish in 3 years but will have to wait and see. With regards to hours I tend to do around 40 a week as I try and treat it like a full time job. Obviously there will be some occaisons where you need to do more, especially if you are doing some kind of lab/fieldwork.

The most important thing I think for anyone starting whatever their subject is to get organised and use a reference manager. You will end up reading A LOT and will need a good system for keeping it organised. I use a reference manager called Mendeley which is free and lets you organise papers and notes together. There are alternatives as well which I haven't tried but I think there have been other posts on here about reference management.