Does anybody else feel like that? I am due to submit in October, I have two chapters to re-write, a bit more data collection to do (maybe a weeks worth), and I am working 42 hpurs a week in a non academic job. I am finding it increasingly hard, but have no choice but to keep my hours the same due to finances. Is anybody else in the same position, or has been, and how did you cope?

That is an insane workload on top of your PhD....I assume you have no more vacation / leave days before October? How many sick days are you contractually allowed? Have you used any recently?

I have never been in your position, however as the father of a young child I have trained myself to go to sleep with her (usually around 8-9pm) which enables me to wake up at 3am and get in uninterrupted research until 6am, 7am on good days. So regardless of how badly my day goes, I have 3-4 hours under my belt.

It wont be easy, but you are at the finish line, and you cannot afford to falter now. You MUST find the hours in your day, and in all likeliness give up a share of your usual sleep until submission. I commend you for having the grit to work a 40+ hr job and do a PhD simultaneously. It's about to pay off, time to give it 120%.

Hi Fled, thank you for the reply. I do not have many days holiday left, but the problem is that my company restricts hours during the summer, so you cannot take holidays. It is very stressful, although i am.suring havimg children and doing the PhD is a lot, too!

Fled makes a good point. Can you take sick leave if you have no holidays? Is your job very important to you? If not it might be worth the risk taking a few weeks off sick! I've 2 young children and did my masters whilst working full time with a 1 yr old and 2 yr old. I learnt to work in short bursts and with lots of noise, working in breaks and lunch hours. I don't know how Fled does it getting up so early but hats off to him. I did late nights but never past midnight. No point getting quantity over quality. Good luck. :-)

Thank you Wowzers, thst is quire reassurimg- I feel guilty if I do not put the hpurs in, but I shall use the quality, not quantity, mantra! I do not date take sick leave- the company are very quick to fire people and, as it an entry level job, there are many people waiting to fill my slot!

Hi, I understand what you're going through. I work 37+ hours/week (and that's only what's on paper) in a FT academic lecturer role. We have very high enrollments in our first-year course, in the first semester, and this leaves little time to do PhD stuff. I'm currently taking annual leave so I can get some work done, though I'm only in my first year so there's less pressure (well...maybe not less in this outputs-driven milieu we find ourselves in). I'm finding I have to be much stricter on myself in terms of time management. Set aside an hour of quality work here and there (and stick to it!). I'm hoping it'll all add up, in time. :) Best of luck for completion.

Happy, are you staying with employer post PhD? If not and you are close to submit have you already started looking at post doc? if you are not going to stay I would def still consider the sick leave as you come up to hand in date or even to see if you can juggle your finances to negotiate some unpaid leave or re-jigging your work hours. I condensed my hours to get a day off in the week working 8-6pm 4 days a week. It takes a good while to sack someone, even more sacking over sick leave, they will have to follow their company procedures regarding warnings etc and you are really talking a few months at least to go through the process of warnings etc before they can get rid of you legitimately. Ultimately if you are starting to feel 'stress' from overwork because of juggling the two you might even actually be able to get a legitimate sick note from the Dr to cover periods of intense stress/anxiety? Obviously don't make it up but if it comes to that point you are in your rights to do that. Your employer would be on a very sticky wicket to sack you on the sick with a Dr note and not going through their company policy, they can be taken to court. Have you wrote yourself a timetable of what you need to do by when? I saw a thread about how many words to write a day, it was a good motivator and made the task seem less daunting. Also a good way to not spend too much time on one section at the risk of not completing other; in these circumstances passable/adequate and submitted is better than perfect in parts and incomplete in others :D you will do it. x

Hi there,

I just wanted to chime in at this point. I think that shuffling working hours around to make time for the PhD is a good idea...

I would caution against using sick leave though. It is not as difficult to dismiss someone for being off sick as wowzers post suggests (sorry wowzers I am not trying to be argumentative, please don't take it as that, as I realise you are suggesting it as a last resort anyway). It is relatively easy for an employer to argue a case that an employee cannot fulfill their duties as laid out in their contract due to sickness, even if they have a valid medical certificate. Of course, this all has to be done through official routes with written confirmations, chance to arrange union representative or independent representative etc. but this process can be surprisingly swift.

I do not mean to cause friction here, but I just wanted to caution against going down the sick leave route during what is already a stressful time.

All the best, and hope you work it out.

ApolloBullit makes an equally valid and cautionary point which I fully appreciate. Happyclappy, only you know your economic reality and dynamics of your workplace when contemplating "using" sick days as a last resort. Having a job post viva is a VERY good thing while hunting down that elusive postdoc (if that is your intent).

Thanks ApolloBullit!

Not in the UK. It's really a difficult and drawn-out process to dismiss someone for sickness, or anything else for that matter. I've tried many times to dismiss employees and it's so much work it's almost not worth it.

That's the perspective I was coming from Tree of Life. Not that I totally condone doing taking sick but op says it's a non academic job I'm guessing they will give it up after PhD and PhD is more important?If it's crucial to take time off and you are stressed you could go on the sick a while. Sick is usually counted by instances and duration. It's worse to have many instances of short duration e.g less than a week at a time over a few occasions than few instances of long duration e.g 1 month off for stress over a 12 month period. I've had an employer try and illegitimately get rid of me for sick so I'm speaking from personal experience. It takes a while to go through the official warning procedure (usually 3 warnings). In between there are the meetings with HR/Union etc. It's usually months to get rid of you and you would have had to have had other instances of sickness or very poor performance over that period to escalate the warnings It is also a wrong working culture to make people that wary of taking legitimate sick leave! I agree with Fled, Happy only you know what the outcome will probably be.with your employer (you could check you HR manual to try and work it out) and I guess you have to weigh up what is most important to you and what work you can achieve in the time you have left. I'd still try and go down changing work hours by condensing them and stay on same pay or cut them and reduce some pay as the first route or ask for unpaid sabatical if they allow that? Let us know how you get on :D

Yes I agree with what you have said wowsers.

And I wouldn't hesitate to go on sick leave in a job I didn't care about to work on my PhD because of this.