Average Summer Workload

[newpsyche]

Hi, all!

 

This summer will be my first as a grad student (I just finished my first year). Part of my fellowship package includes full summer funding, which means I will not be TAing or RAing. There are also no grad-level courses offered during the summer.

 

This being said, I will have only research to work on. Just out of curiosity, how many hours per week do you typically work on research over the summer?

[Arcadian]

Well, it depends on what's going on in my lab at the time. The summer after my first year, I had a relatively small workload. I don't know, 10-20 hours. This summer (after second year), I've got a lot more because my lab has 6 projects going on at the same time, and I'm involved with 4 of them.

[rising_star]

Depends on where you are in the program and the kind of research you do. For part of the summer, I tended not to have much to do other than prep for fieldwork. Then, there were the six or so weeks of fieldwork, so those are obviously more hours.

[fuzzylogician]

It depends, as others said. I got myself a RA position after my first year that led to my first major project and a couple of publications. The following years, I've mostly used the summers for writing up projects, which is easier for me to do over long breaks than during the school year. This summer I will hopefully be finishing all the experiments for my dissertation and maybe writing up a chapter or two, depending on the results.

[artimacia]

My first summer, I TA'd for a class and worked about 30-40 hours at my lab. This summer, since it's time to finish up my thesis and projects, I'm working 40-60 hours and proctoring for four classes.

[Eigen]

My summer is the same as the rest of the year- our department makes no differentiation, other than the undergrads are gone.                                          

[goldheartmountaintop]

I think I'm looking at a busy summer, so I chose 30-40 hours. I'll be writing my MA thesis and gearing up for a conference, plus I have two summer RA-ships. 

Edited May 13, 2013 by goldheartmountaintop