Question for those who are already attending

[_kita]

My schedule is different depending on class day/internship day.

 

Class Day:

6:30 Wake up

8:15 Leave for campus

9:00 Arrive

9-5 GA Office Hours including: class coverage, proctoring, tutoring statistics & psych classes, grade assist, etc.

5-8 Class

9:30 Getting back

 

Internship Day:

7:00 Wake up

8:30 Arrive at internship location

8:30-5:30 Internship

 

My GAship & internship are both 20 hours weekly. 

Edited May 13, 2015 by psychkita

[rising_star]

Writing this out, it sounds almost silly because it's such as a small thing. But getting used to saying no and treating the 12pm-1pm block as off-limits was tough to do in the last 5 weeks. I think learning to say no is very important and much harder than it sounds (it took me about 1-2 years into grad school because I was able to set definite boundaries on my work day instead of always scheduling around other people and stressing out over that).

 

This doesn't sound silly to me at all. When I was a graduate student, I reserved lunch for myself, though sometimes only 30-45 minutes. Now that I'm out of grad school, I've found that a lot of meetings are scheduled over lunch that I cannot skip. As a result, I find myself relishing the days when I don't have lunch meetings and can take that time to relax, catch up on the news, or do whatever else it is I want in addition to eating. (In case anyone cares, 3 days a week have lunch meetings that I have to attend. Three out of five. It is maddening.)

 

But, this post is about one's schedule as a graduate student. In my PhD program, all the graduate seminars were in the afternoon, some starting as late as 5pm. That was especially aggravating when one also TA'd a class that met at 9am or 10am. But, I'd use the time in between to read for class, grade papers and hold office hours, catch up on research-related work, etc. In the coursework phase when I was getting home between 6 and 7:45pm, I typically did not do any work in the evenings unless I was up against a deadline. It's hard to replicate one of those schedules since it's been a while since I was in coursework...

 

Here's a schedule from when I was finish my dissertation:

7:30am    Wake up

7:40    Walk dog

8:10    Workout at home

9:00    Shower, get dressed

9:30    Eat breakfast, answer emails

10:00  Class prep, finalize lesson plan, review student discussion questions

11:30  Teach class (11:30-12:45pm)

1:00    Lunch & office hours

3:00    Home/library to work on dissertation

5:00-5:30   Take dog to dog park

7:00    Return home from dog park

At some point, another 1-2 hours of either dissertation work or class prep

 

 

I schedule everything that I have to do in Google Calendar and get notifications on my phone so that I don't miss meetings or activities I need to attend. This includes classes, workouts (if I'm going to a workout class, it's on the calendar), office hours, meetings with students, etc. One advantage of this is that if your campus uses Google Apps for Education, people can easily see when you aren't available for a meeting. I try really hard not to meet with students outside of my office hours unless absolutely necessary (by which I mean they have class during all of my office hours and not that they waited until the last minute to get help on something). I also try to answer all work emails during a dedicated half hour in the early evening (so maybe 7-7:30pm) and then ignore my work email until the next morning. 

[mb712]

 

 

Do you guys actually track your time with apps or software, or are your schedules so ingrained that you don't need them?

 

I use the Sunrise app (on both mobile and desktop), and it's awesome. You can import all of your Google calendars (helpful, since things I'm involved in require 5 separate Google calendars from various labs/groups), plus iCal, Facebook, G+, etc. etc. etc. I find it has a much friendlier interface & is easier to use than iCal or just Google calendar itself.

[wildviolet]

I have a family, and I think I'm doing a terrible job managing my time. There's always more to do--read, write, analyze, etc. And I find endless ways to procrastinate--bake, clean, knit, Netflix. I keep track of my schedule on a calendar, but... besides meetings, I don't necessarily get done what I had planned to get done.

 

That said, I have successfully completed all my coursework and comprehensive exams and am ready to begin working on my dissertation proposal. Hard deadlines are good for me and make me productive. Deadlines that I give myself still don't work. But I somehow still get it all done.

 

I don't have a typical day, but a typical week for me looks like:

 

--4-5 hours of research team meetings throughout the week

--classes (3-hour blocks), usually in the evenings

--wake up and get my kids ready for school, then get myself ready for the day

--have lunch either at my desk or sometimes with colleagues if they're free

--constantly check my email

--writing group meeting once a week

--kids' events, usually in the evening or on weekend

--do "work" whenever I'm not doing something else (i.e., in small chunks of time sprinkled throughout the week)

--on days when I don't have to be on campus for meetings or class, I can decide to work on campus, at home, or at a local coffee shop

 

So, I'm not one of those people that can set a schedule and stick to it... I just go with the flow and get my work done when I need to and chill when I need to. Grad school for me has been up and down--there are crunch times around hard deadlines and then there are times when I say, screw it, I just need to spend the day in my pjs watching Netflix.

[Adelaide9216]

This is an interesting thread.

I wonder, how much hours should be dedicated to thesis research per week? The class is 6 credits per semester...just to have a rough idea.