Hello,
I am new to here, and so happy to find a place where grad students can come and chat. I often feel that this process is lonely, and extra hard when you don't have others to discuss the experience with...so..YAY! so happy to have found this place.
I have a couple questions for people.
I am currently finishing the second year of my PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. I am doing a mixture of environmental sciences, health promotion, and psychology. To date, I have finished my course work, and am in my comprehensive stage. My comps (decided by my committee to be the format of a publishable paper and defense), have been going extremely slow.
I truly believe this is a combination of my supervisor being new (I am the first PhD student) and him not being quite sure how to provide appropriate feedback to further my process- and me not being fully devoted and interested in my topic. I have just recently decided that I want to change my topic, bring in a co-supervisor, and new committee members. Overall, this process, well over-whelming and stressful internally, has gone very smoothly with my department and supervisor (in fact, I give him kudos for being so supportive and almost showing a revitalized interest in me as a student).
Right now I am at a crossroad. To date I have been fully funded and had received a stipend from my supervisor...I have unfortunately gained the inaccurate opinion that a PhD is actually a lucrative career choice- HA! As of now, my funding from my supervisor has ended, and my scholarship runs out in September. If I do not get additional funding through CIHR, my Faculty, ora few minor scholarships, I am in the position of having to take more work (right now I work 10-15 hours on a contract basis).
My questions for you guys are:
1) I know many people do not have full funding throughout this process...how do you manage working more than 20hours AND making progress on their degree?, and
2) Have people changed their topic at this point? And how has that impacted your degree? Networks? Reception from the academic community? ...etc...
During this process I took some time to really think about if this was the choice for me...and I do feel I want to complete my PhD, and I feel my new topic is something that I am quite interested in and would be excited to spend the next few years working on, and further expanding on in my career...but I am almost hesitant to continue on without funding. Having spent so much time and effort in the past two years learning about my previous topic, I can't imagine doing all that AND working extra hours. I know this is a decision for myself, but I was just wondering if others have felt like this, and how they have handled this push/pull of emotions.
Thanks!
