Winter vacation plans?

[matrix]

What do people usually do in winter? Considering a grad student income etc! I'm not a fan of sitting at home for a month watching TV shows so...suggestions?

[beccamayworth]

did you have to relocate for your program? There might be tons of small trips/adventures you could do nearby... 

[GeoDUDE!]

What do people usually do in winter? Considering a grad student income etc! I'm not a fan of sitting at home for a month watching TV shows so...suggestions?

 

 

research? graduate school is more like a job than "school". Winter Vacation is a great way to get ahead or catch up on your research!

Edited September 5, 2014 by GeoDUDE!

[fuzzylogician]

My field's large society conference is in January so I try and go there. Aside from that, I may do some travel for the holidays and take a few days off to relax, hike, or take a vacation, but otherwise I use the time to work. I think you'll discover soon enough that you do most of your work (especially writing things up) during breaks, and much less is accomplished during the semester.

[jhefflol]

Sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.

[Eigen]

Work. I took 3 days off for Christmas over a weekend, and then another 3 days off for New Years last year. Other than that, stayed in the lab.

[kyjin]

Catching up on reading. And I fly home to visit my family for a couple weeks or so since my summers tend to be filled with research trips or workshops, so I can't travel then. (I relocated from the east coast to the west coast.)

[TakeruK]

I usually take the days between Dec 25th and Jan 1st off (i.e. when the school is officially closed for break anyways). Technically these are institute holidays and graduate students also get these days off, on paper. Sometimes, for sake of research progress, I do work on these days but it might be only a few hours (i.e. to start a long set of computations to run over the week) or from home.

 

I normally work right up to the 25th and the term begins shortly after Jan 1 at my school. But this is quite flexible. For example, if I have people visiting in the days before Christmas, then I might take those days off to entertain guests and then work a few days between 25th and 1st to make up for it.

 

However, I know that it's not uncommon for grad students in my program to take a long visit home during December. Classes end in the first week and exams are all take-home, so some students choose to go home for about 3-4 weeks during this time. Most of them will do some work while they are at home visiting family or whatever though (or they might consider this earned vacation time from working extra during other times in the year and/or consider it part of the 2 weeks vacation that we get).

[Monochrome Spring]

Since I have to do field work to collect data, being in the lab isn't really necessary for me to do work over this coming break. I will probably take a whole month away from the university to make rounds to visit family. BUT, I will also allocate a certain amount of time each day to work. Work for me will include writing proposals, reading papers, learning code, etc. For someone in a lab science that requires lab presence to do experiments, I can't imagine a break longer than 1-2 weeks. If I was doing field work this winter break (which I might be next winter because I'll have had time for field permits), I would probably not get a break at all. I agree that you should treat grad school as a job, and as such, your breaks will not be the same as the undergraduates'.

[music]

I'm back in my home country for 5 weeks over Christmas, taking an extra week to attend a conference. I plan to take the odd day off here and there, but otherwise stick to the same working hours that I keep during term time, i.e. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Since my partner has a regular person job, he will be out at work most of the time which will help me stay on track, and my family are pretty used to me working during holiday season from my years as a music performance major. 

 

That being said, I'm totally going skiing during Spring break, and wont take any work with me.

[gellert]

Might take a week off to visit my sister in a nearby-ish state, but mostly I hope to catch up on reading and maybe apply for a few grants.  We'll see!  If I visit my sister, though, I'll probably skip going home for Thanksgiving just so I'm not taking too much time off. It's a balancing act.

Edited September 5, 2014 by gellert

[dat_nerd]

Last year, I took three weeks off and felt that was WAY too much. This year, it's one week for Thanksgiving, one week for Christmas and New Year's so I can go visit family.

[Between Fields]

I'm going to New York with the money they're giving us to reimburse us for the health insurance premium at the end of the semester. (The plane ticket, anyway--I'm staying with a friend, so I don't have to pay for lodging.) I haven't been on an honest to goodness vacation in probably 7 or 8 years, so it will be nice to travel somewhere and then not have to present anything or chaperone anyone.

[St Andrews Lynx]

I want to go somewhere REALLY warm to counterbalance the Eastern Seaboard winter chills. Hawaii, California or Florida feel really tempting... 

[bsharpe269]

I will be going to Ghana for a couple weeks to visit a friend!

 

That being said, I did work spring break and last winter break and will work over thanksgiving and all to be able to do that. I do computational work and have a hands off PI. He expects his students to be self motivated and produce lots of results and put in as many hours as needed to get them. All of hte students that he agress to take on are extremely hard workers and go above and beyond the hours of most students in other labs. Along with this though comes lots of flexibility. Because the PI knows that everone in the lab works hard, if I show up one week with no results then he is not upset because he knows that means that I genuinely did not have time and wasnt just slacking. The same goes for my Ghana trip. He will be fine with me leaving for 2 weeks because he knows that I work enough hours most of the time to make up for the missed time. In my opinion, this is an awesome type of PI to work for!

[Vene]

What do people usually do in winter? Considering a grad student income etc! I'm not a fan of sitting at home for a month watching TV shows so...suggestions?

A month? Seriously? You may have a month off between semesters, but that's not the same thing as having a month off. My program has a suggested two weeks off simply because I don't believe anybody will even be at the university. But that's a great time to get some real research done.

[rising_star]

I pretty much always went home for at least a week, sometimes two. I'd take some reading with me and maybe work on some paper stuff but, in general, I took the time to relax. If you're in the mindset of treating grad school as a full-time job, then you should remember that most full-time employees in the USA get 2 weeks of paid vacation per year (which is admittedly paltry compared to European countries). So, if you can take a week or two away from work, you should. See your family or friends. Read a book or two for pleasure. Explore a side interest that you've had to put on the side due to grad school (could be a side research interest, a hobby, or something else). Explore the area where your grad school is if that's an appealing option. Even if you're in a lab, you can probably worry a bit less about doing work in the evenings, if only because you won't have classes.

[Eigen]

I completely agree to the taking at least two weeks off a year. It just depends when you take them. 

 

I find a lot of our newer students are of the opinion that they can take off all the University holidays and then take off another 2-3 weeks a year, when both count as vacation. 

 

Personally, I prefer to take more partial vacations (work fewer hours during the week, enjoy my weekends and evenings) and take less chunks of time off, as I find it makes my life a lot more manageable long term. But I do try to take at least 1 full week off a year for a good vacation. 

 

Depending on our department, our handbooks actually specify we get two weeks off, as well as the University closure times. Some departments don't give grad students off the University closure times, just the two weeks per year. University closure times are not the same as semester vacation periods, though. 

 

For instance, our University just closes from the 25th to the 1st- all full time employees are back on the second. 

[TakeruK]

My school very clearly indicate that students are to take 2 weeks of vacation time per year (i.e. 10 work days) in addition to the 11 or 12 university closure dates, for a total of approximately 20-22 days (i.e. ~4 weeks) of total vacation time. However, this is all subject to advisor approval. This is a university wide policy that some departments try to circumvent/deny to students based on the "advisor approval" clause, but our grad studies office fight hard against departments that abuse it. The idea of the advisor approval clause is so that a student does not take all 4 weeks of vacation at once if it would negatively impact the lab/research, not to limit total vacation to less than 4 weeks.

 

Definitely agree with Eigen that students should realise that university closure time is not the same as the time in between semesters!! And I also prefer to spread out my vacation time. For example, I spend the equivalent of 1 vacation day per year because I come in late sometimes due to doctor or dentist appointments. I appreciate my work being flexible but that doesn't mean I abuse it--if I take time off work for an appointment, I either work late that evening or count it towards my total vacation time.

 

I usually only take off entire blocks of vacation time when I have people visiting that I want to entertain, or when I am actually on a personal vacation trip (i.e. earlier this month, took a week off to explore the London after a UK conference). Overall, this averages to 1.5 to 2.0 weeks in "blocked off time" and about 10 days off in sporadic days off.

 

I am lucky that the only time where I absolutely must work are: 1) when I need to complete TA work (although for short trips this can be worked around fairly easily) and 2) when I scheduled to use a telescope--at an average operating cost of $1/second, I definitely have to plan my life around work in that instance.

[maelia8]

Since I'm in the humanities and just beginning my program (and my family is only 6 hours' drive away), I'll be going home fairly frequently, possibly even on long weekends. The kind of sources I work with are portable (mostly), so I'll probably just gather up a good stack of books and PDFs related to a seminar paper and read some while I'm at home to at least get something done while I'm there

[zigzag]

Since I'm in the humanities and just beginning my program (and my family is only 6 hours' drive away), I'll be going home fairly frequently, possibly even on long weekends. The kind of sources I work with are portable (mostly), so I'll probably just gather up a good stack of books and PDFs related to a seminar paper and read some while I'm at home to at least get something done while I'm there

Yeah this sounds in many ways a STEM quandry. There are plenty of humanities obligations which might keep us close to campus, (our advisors, the facilities we can access, nearby internships, localized research materials, etc) but I can pretty much pack up my stuff and go.

This still means I have to work, of course -- and carefully select the days which I don't have to work at all, so that some are true vacation and others are work/play.

[ProfLorax]

Agreed-- I think the issue about breaks between semesters is pretty discipline specific. I'm also in the Humanities, and this summer, I went to campus maybe two or three times. Of course, I was working throughout the summer: I finished my language requirement through an immersive program at another school, prepared my syllabus for Fall semester, and revised an article for publication. But most of those are things I can do at home or on the road. 

 

This winter break I probably won't be doing any school work... I'll be having a baby! So no travel for me, but typically, I love traveling in the winter: airfares and hotels tend to be cheaper for certain areas (two years ago, we did a big Europe trip in January on the cheap). Or I like driving just a few hours away for a short vacation and different climate. Other than that, my breaks between semesters tend to be consumed by balancing research, writing, and Netflix. Mmmm Netflix...

Edited September 7, 2014 by proflorax

[WriteAndKnit]

I'm also in the Humanities, and plan to definitely take the days that the university is closed off -- and to work "part-time" hours on reading and research when the university's open but classes aren't in session. Why would I pass up a chance to use the library without having to ignore undergrads?