I have noticed that a majority of people here seem to be lab based science PhDs. As a PhD fresher this Sept I would be interested to know how many hours humanities/arts based PhD'ers put in? The reason I ask is that I work part-time as well and it wouldbe useful to help balance and plan my time. I was thinking that 30 hours a week on PhD work was a reasonable amount...

30 hours of Judge Judy or soaps?

sounds about right to me. One v experienced supervisor (not mine) reckoned you needed 500 days of work for a PhD, which if my maths is right is somewhere between 3 and 31/2 days a week. Don't underestimate the amount of time you'll spend thinking about your PhD stuff when doing other things (good times for me are walking to campus and doing housework) - even if you are not consciously doing so. It all counts.

3 hours a day max.

Oh..I'm more of a Cash in the Attic man . Oh rather I was...and then they took Alistair Appleton away...*sobs*

Thanks people.......I had thought it was about right. But I'm still plagued by 'not spending enough time' phobia. Nevermind. I just tell myself that not every full time (fully funded) arts PhD spends 9-5 every day working.

God, you sound busy! I'm feeling the fear now.....

I guess I should work as much as I can.

I work P/T (four days a week)

I try and get a couple of hours done a day on the days I work and between 5-6 hours on two of the days I have off (usually I try and have one day off, but if I'm a good girl I'll work for a couple of hours then too)

So overall, I probably get around 20 hours of work done a week as a PT student (saying that, I have some weeks of complete writer's block and don't do ANYTHING!)

As a social scientist, I reckon an average of 5 hours a day 4 or 5 days a week is about right. Obviously there are going to be some days when you work more than this, and others when you dont work at all