Making Grad School "A Job"

[newpsyche]

Hi there, friends! I'm an incoming first-year straight out of undergrad for a PhD in psychology. Question for y'all: What is the likelihood that I can "work" daily Monday through Friday from, say, 9 to 5 and get home and treat myself to down time (reading, cooking, playing with my kitties, doing TA work--and yes, I consider TA work down time!)? In undergrad I worked my butt off for a B.S. with highest honors, a B.A., a minor, and a scholar degree in research. I never had "down time" to do more than cook some Easy Mac for myself and rush back to the computer to work while eating. On top of that, I had a job to pay off tuition and room/board costs.

I've heard grad students say they treat grad school as a job and work 8-hour days, then have lives outside of that. Particularly if I do TA work during my "off" time, do you think this is feasible? I want to be done in 5 years, not 6, but I also plan on working toward my PhD during summers too and want to preserve my sanity as best I can.

I greatly look forward to hearing your opinions!

[Eigen]

I think you can treat it as a job, I don't think you can treat it as a 40 hour a week job. More like a 50-60 hour a week job- 8-5 or 9-6 and some weekend time.

I do consistently leave the lab around 5-7, come home, spend time with my wife, cook dinner, go out. On the weekend, I try to alternate between doing some work and some fun. I have hobbies and pets, and its definitely important to spend time with them.

Some of the best advice I can give is that you pick the important things in life- eating well, exercising, cooking, time with kitties, etc- and make time for those. Then have your work fill the rest of your time. It becomes more and more important to learn to schedule and prioritize your life, rather than your work, because your work can often expand to take up the time you leave for it.

[ktel]

My supervisor's old student wrote a kickass thesis and got a great TT job all while treating grad school like a 9-5 job. Many of the people in my research group have spouses and children. I'm in engineering, if that makes a difference.

[Eigen]

It's also worth noting that if you want to do this, you have to make sure that you really buckle down to work during your work hours.

[lewin]

^^ That's the biggest challenge for some. It's easy to spend the day on the internet or chatting with other grad students. The way I attempted to do it was treat 9-5 (ish) as my job to do research and some TA work, the evenings and weekends were for reading, coursework, and marking.

[juilletmercredi]

I definitely have a life but I don't think grad school lends itself well to a 9-5 all the time. First of all, as others have mentioned, I think it's more realistic to think of it as a 60-hour per week job instead of 40 hours per week. You may have classes that are scheduled after that time, or you may have classes scheduled in such a way that you have to work until 7 or 8 some days to get your research done. It also depends on whether you work in a lab (where you have to go every day) or whether you do the majority of your work at home.

Everyone (at least in my department, which is psychology) works towards the PhD over the summer. Summers are lighter, but not nonexistent. That's when you do your research in full force. Some people teach classes over the summer.

My biggest challenge in scheduling time is that I often procrastinate during my work time, and so it extends into my play time. I'm trying to be better about it this year by creating a schedule for myself, because I will be dissertating!

[We regret to inform you]

I'm starting my 3rd masters next week. Based on my experience in earning my previous two masters degrees I can say that the amount of time, effort, and energy you put into your grad program depends very much on you, your department, and your discipline.

1. How many classes are you taking? What is the expected course load for your department? My regular fall/spring semesters at both of my programs required 3 classes a semester. Also, during my 2nd masters I was a TA for 3 or 4 discussion sections during those semesters. I was fairly busy, but still had at least a few hours of free time most evenings. About once a month i'd have to sacrifice an entire weekend to study for an exam. On the other hand, in summer sessions i've usually taken just 1 class and was a TA for 2 discussion sections and I had tons of free time.

2. What is your TA workload like? Will you be doing labwork also? Again, this depends on your department and your field, but my TA responsibilities usually ate up one entire day - the day of the discussions and then afterwards grading homework and quizzes - and then a few hours on another day for preparing for that week's discussion. Will you be expected to do any sort of labwork or other department responsibilities on top of that? If so, then that'll obviously eat up more time.

My first masters was a teaching degree and it was a joke. i averaged about 60-90 minutes a day studying outside of class time and I did well. My second masters was more research based and was more intense. I probably averaged 2.5 hours a day studying outside of class time, and then another few hours a week on TA duties outside of running the discussion sections. I also did well.

I honestly can't imagine studying 5+ hours a day as some people on this board claim to. I usually run out of steam studying more than 3-4 hours a day for a few days in a row. 2-3 hours a day is usually optimal for myself. I feel that the brain is very much like a muscle - you can't keep working it out for several hours in a row nonstop. It needs breaks and it needs time off to recover.

Edited August 12, 2012 by We regret to inform you

[Eigen]

Heck with 5+ hour days, during crunch time It's not uncommon for me to work 14+hour days.

The big thing that gets in the way of treating a PhD like a job, imo, is that it's not consistent- especially in the sciences. Some weeks are much lighter than others. And some weeks, like those preceeding a grant renewal deadline, are all-hand-on-deck work full time weeks.

Sometimes I can take the weekend off, and sometimes I've got a reaction going that I need to work full days all weekend.

[TakeruK]

Just to add my experience. I try to keep my work in the office and not take it home unless I really have to. It helps me to physically separate my work and my "play" and I do notice that I am much more productive in the office than at home. I spend about 50 hours a week at school, including time for classes, and when I have assignments, I probably do about 10 more hours a week on homework at home. For some reason, I'm just as efficient on assignments/problem sets at home as at school.

A lot of what you said about your undergrad is very familiar to me. Overall, I think undergrad was a LOT harder than graduate school. I felt constantly drained as an undergrad and I don't think I really had a full day off during the school year. I am pretty sure I put in more than 60 hours a week too.

I would describe the undergrad workload as full of ups and downs -- each course would mean about 1 problem set per week, but sometimes there are extra spikes due to midterms, quizzes, term papers or projects, and final exams. This means the middle 2-3 weeks and the last 2-3 weeks of each term are high stress/work, while the rest of the time was medium stress/work. In between terms, I would have entire weeks with not much to do! On the other hand, graduate work is much more consistent. The majority of my term would be at some level of stress/work that is slightly below the undergrad "medium". Once in a while, there will be extra work due to an upcoming conference, or when I was writing my thesis, but otherwise, you are at the same "level" the whole time. There's no real breaks though, so overall I think I achieve more work as a graduate student. The high stress/work times can be higher than undergrad though -- there were a couple of 16-18 work days when I was writing my (MSc) thesis last month.

I think Eigen describes the workload of an average science graduate student well. I work for 50-60 hours per day and try to stay focused at work so I can come home around 5-6pm each night. I have plenty to do outside of work -- spending time with my wife, cooking, cleaning, hobbies/sports, going to the pub/bar with friends, and occasionally taking care of a cat (we're fostering but are planning to adopt a cat of our own after we move). There are some people I know who genuinely work 80+ hours a week, but I found out that a lot of other people might spend more time at school/office but they prefer to be less focused and combine their work and play time. So, in the end, I think the majority of graduate students do spend about 50-60 hours a week working and it's a matter of personal preference whether you want to keep your socializing/facebook/internet surfing time etc. to just at home or to mix it in with your work!

For the record, I try to average about the typical "off-task" time that a full time job would have, which is about 90 minutes per day (when I worked full time, we got 1 hour lunch plus 2 15-minute coffee breaks). I like socializing with my fellow grad students, so I usually spend my lunch/break times with my friends!

[We regret to inform you]

Heck with 5+ hour days, during crunch time It's not uncommon for me to work 14+hour days.

The big thing that gets in the way of treating a PhD like a job, imo, is that it's not consistent- especially in the sciences. Some weeks are much lighter than others. And some weeks, like those preceeding a grant renewal deadline, are all-hand-on-deck work full time weeks.

Sometimes I can take the weekend off, and sometimes I've got a reaction going that I need to work full days all weekend.

it sounds like you're talking about spending time in a lab doing physical work or running experiments, etc.

I was talking more about sitting at a desk with your head in a book. I just can't read and study from a book for 5+ hours a day for multiple days in a row. Also, i don't quite see the necessity for doing so either. In my programs my professors were NOT assigning readings and homework that would consume that much time. If a student were spending that much time then they were probably overdoing it or just doing something wrong.

[Eigen]

It depends.

Lately, I've been writing a manuscript, so I'll spend 6 or 8 hours straight writing, or reading sources followed by writing.

It's also not uncommon for me to take a couple of days every other week and spend the whole day reading.

It seems like you're talking about studying for classes, though, which I really have no frame of reference for. None of my focus graduate or undergraduate has been that classes took much time at all to study for, other than a few large study sections before tests.

But for research, sure. Spending hours a day in my office or carrel buried in books isn't unusual. And for my friends in humanities programs, spending 10+ hours reading a day isn't uncommon at all. But then, you're also talking about masters programs rather than PhD programs, which tend to be less intense on the whole, I'd say. Coursework was considered a minor thing on top of our "real" job, and studying for classes was something you did in your personal time, primarily. You didn't take time off from research (literature or physical) to study for classes.

Although my 14 hour days usually involved getting up at 4 or 5, working at the medical school labs until 8, then coming home and getting breakfast, going to my lab and doing (mostly) writing, data analysis and reading (articles or books) until 5 or 6, going home and eating dinner, and going back to work in the labs down at the medical school from 10-1 or so.

[Riotbeard]

You can do it if you want to, and don't have heavy TA requirments.

[Dal PhDer]

I think it's really hard to compare UG to grad work...for me, and this could be my social science discipline, I found the type and quality of work between the two completely different. In UG I certainly had a heavy load, but it was mostly because midterms and finals were all lined together. My honours thesis certainly look a heavy loaded semester to complete, but looking back, I don't feel the same weight of work as I have through graduate school.

In grad school you will probably have less formal assignments (like 1 final paper, and no tests), but your weekly work and contributions to the class is heavy loaded. You will find you have to do so much more weekly reading for your courses (and you can't skip it like UG, because you'll have discuss it during lectures - at least for my classes)...you'll also have to teach yourself or find additional readings if you're not familiar with a topic. I've taken a few courses where I've had to do a lot of additional reading just to be able to understand and critically participate. Also, the quality and content of the assignments are a lot different. You will have to do A LOT of additional reading in your area and topic for those assignments, and will be expected to use a critical eye on them and it will be about you're synthesis of the literature, not simply a summation (that's the major different for me between ug and grad...you are not just summarizing what you read, you are synthsizing it).

I think every student works differently. I change my patterns from working 9-5, Mon - Sat and working strictly at the office...to working for 15hrs a couple days at home, and then do nothing for a few. I have learn that when there is time where there is not much going on, take advantage of it to recharge your batteries, because you will really be required to burn your candle at both ends.

[Vader Was Framed]

I think this varies greatly between students who have had a job in the "real world" (9-5) and also who have a spouse/family, etc. I think both of those items lend towards a 9-5 system (or closely related) for their graduate routine.

I plan to return to academics for a PhD in 1-2 years, and feel totally equipped to not bring too much home with me. During my master's, I felt like I had very very sporadic hours. I don't think that would bode well for a PhD now that I have a wife and a larger life outside of my research. Of course, with research and writing, sometimes your feeling it and sometimes you just aren't. When I'm not, I go for a run or do some non-work reading to get my mind back into a good place. And when you are feeling it, sometimes you gotta ride the wave!! (queue bedside notebook/recorder for ideas, getting great thesis ideas in shower).

I think everyone has a different system. But I think not skimping on good food, good exercise, good friends/family and good sleep are key no matter what schedule you keep. 40-60 hours seems right, and I agree with some weeks just being more fully-loaded than others with deadlines, etc. I think your work environment is also key. My primary office is, well my work office. But I also float and do some writing from coffee shops and bars. It's very hard for me to do 8 hours of committed work from one seat. That is an issue I have with my current office job. I look forward to breaking up my schedule with TA duties, library trips, etc. rather than working from one office all damn day. Last option is home office, just too many distractions.

Edited August 13, 2012 by Vader Was Framed

[Dal PhDer]

I think your work environment is also key. My primary office is, well my work office. But I also float and do some writing from coffee shops and bars.

BARS!?!! You're my hero! This is a brilliant idea! why haven't I thought of that!?

[Vader Was Framed]

BARS!?!! You're my hero! This is a brilliant idea! why haven't I thought of that!?

I'm probably using bars/pubs interchangeably there but yes! A nice pint in the afternoon, a few articles and maybe some writing!

[wildviolet]

Gotta add my pic I took when I was studying for the GRE last summer. Birds of a feather flock together, LOL!

Hmmm... gotta figure out how to insert a pic...

Edited August 13, 2012 by wildviolet

[Eigen]

Bars during the day are a fantastic place to get work done.

[Dal PhDer]

My eyes have been opened! I love this idea! I must try it! An afternoon glass of wine while working sounds perfect!!

[newpsyche]

All of you have been great! Thanks from the bottom of my heart. As for the glass of wine while working, I completely intend to bring my TA work down to the pool and kick back with a margarita. Just saying.

[rising_star]

unc.tarheel, you should totally do it. I have been known to grade papers while sitting by the pool with a drink, or at the bar with a bottle of wine, etc. It definitely helps.

As for the time question, I really do think a lot more depends on your field than anything else. I'm in the social sciences and, when I want to, I can get things done in even fewer hours than 9-5. Why? Because you don't really need to do all the reading for seminar, just enough to discuss the reading coherently (read book reviews, skim articles, etc). Moreover, depending on who is in your seminar, it might be difficult to get in more than 2-3 comments per course, making it even less important to read things thoroughly. N.B.: if that reading is in your field or relevant to your research, you should definitely read it in greater detail.

That said, there are times where I put in long hours. But, if I were to keep track of how many of them are productive work hours, it's rarely more than 8 in a day, unless I'm trying to meet a deadline. There are definitely ways to be successful as a graduate student and maintain a social life that don't require putting in 60 hours a week for 9 months a year (at least in the social sciences). You have to find them for yourself though...

[go3187]

I've heard grad students say they treat grad school as a job and work 8-hour days, then have lives outside of that. Particularly if I do TA work during my "off" time, do you think this is feasible? I want to be done in 5 years, not 6, but I also plan on working toward my PhD during summers too and want to preserve my sanity as best I can.

It's a little different for me, since PhDs in Europe don't normally last 5 or more years. You can see in my profile info what I study. I normally work from 9 until around 7ish though, and work most weekends as well (but only ~5 hours). However, before a proposal deadline, it can happen that I work from 7am to 2-3am. Then there are some days on which I don't do any work at all; this weekend I went on a bike tour with my boyfriend, for example, and we were gone from Saturday morning until (very early) Monday morning. So things vary a bit, depending on the work load.

[Dal PhDer]

All of you have been great! Thanks from the bottom of my heart. As for the glass of wine while working, I completely intend to bring my TA work down to the pool and kick back with a margarita. Just saying.

Can I come tooooo!!!!!!!? This sounds wonderful!!

[lewin]

To add to the chorus, I also find that wine makes the marking go down easier; course reading too. Anything that's mindless. Writing and lab work, however, take coffee.

[newpsyche]

Can I come tooooo!!!!!!!? This sounds wonderful!!

I wish you were close by! We could all have a TGC grading-and-poolside-beverage party. What a blast that would be.