How many hours to take?

[eprzpd]

I am heading into my first semester of grad school at Purdue. I will be a TA for 20 hours a week, and I am currently enrolled in two, 3 hour classes and one, 1 hour class. At this point I have the option to take a 3 hour class and conduct research with my advisor on my own time OR register for a 3 hour class specifically for conducting research with my advisor. I could use some advice on which option would be best. I don't want to get behind on coursework, but I also don't want to bite off more then I can chew. Normally my advisor would have an RA for students so he doesn't run into this problem but it wasn't in the cards this year. Any opinions would be great! 

[GeoDUDE!]

have you asked your advisor?

 

There are people that can handle 20 credits and do fine with research, there are people who have trouble with 9 credits.

Edited June 23, 2015 by GeoDUDE!

[TakeruK]

In my program, it is typical for students to take about 9-10 hours of coursework (in-class/in-lab time) plus about 10-20 hours of research per week. Our program does not have a TA component for the first year. However, our quals exams are a 3 hour oral exam at the end of first year that is research-based (we have to complete two mini-projects). 

 

We spend approximately 10 hours per week for a typical 3-hour-in-class course (the 10 hours includes the 3 hours in class). So, with 3 classes plus research credits, this is a load of 40-50 hours of combined coursework+research.

 

In your case, you need to include the 20 hours of TAing too. You could and should talk to your advisor and other graduate students to learn more about this 20hr/week commitment. Sometimes TAships are 20hrs/week "on paper" but in practice, they can be more or less. Personally, I would be okay with a workload that is something like 20 hours on courses (so 6 hours of in-class time), 20 hours of TA and 10 hours per week of research for my first year. I probably would not try to add another course because that would be a 60 hour work week (if I was going to work a 60 hour week, I would prefer the extra 10 hours go towards research rather than a class). But, as I said above, my program is very research heavy. If it was not, then perhaps it would not be unreasonable to have 30 hours for classes, 20 hours for TA and 10 hours for research.

[Shamrock_Frog]

My university requires 9 hours a semester. I have not enrolled in classes yet, that comes later this summer, but what are the requirements for your department/university?

[GeoDUDE!]

Shamrock that is a pretty typical load. 

 

You should be talking to your advisor or someone in your department

Edited June 25, 2015 by GeoDUDE!

[TakeruK]

My university requires 9 hours a semester. I have not enrolled in classes yet, that comes later this summer, but what are the requirements for your department/university?

 

My degree requirements are 11 courses in total. We are on the quarter system (courses are 10-weeks long) so it supposedly the equivalent of 8 semester-length courses.

 

We have six core courses that we must take in our first year. We also have five elective courses that we can take anytime before the end of our 3rd year (all courses must be complete before we can advance to candidacy and the University requirement is that we must reach candidacy by the end of Year 3. Usually, students finish all courses by the end of 2nd year (and usually pick up an on-the-way Masters at that point) and it feels like there is an "expectation" that we finish all (or all but one) courses by the end of Year 2.

 

Some people (like me) want to front-load courses and finish everything in 4 quarters (i.e. by December of my 2nd year) while others take 5 or 6 quarters (end of 2nd year). Some courses might only be offered every other year, and if you can't take it in year 1 due to a conflict with a core course, then year 3 is the only option. As you might imagine, once-every-2-year courses are a priority in year 2 because year 4 is too late to take more courses. So, when you decide on a course plan this summer, I'd second GeoDUDE!'s advice to talk to your advisor to find out what future courses will look like and have a rough plan for the next few years.

 

You mentioned TAing here too so just for completeness, the TA requirement in my program is one quarter each in our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years (15 hours per week, 10 weeks/quarter). However, we have way more students than TA positions (there are basically no undergrad courses in our program, all the undergrads take grad courses) so some 4th year students get exempt from TAing if there aren't enough spots (they assign 2nd years first, then move upwards). Our funding/stipend is not tied to TA work, so we get paid the same whether we TA or not. Some of our TA assignments require a lot of time (e.g. field trips) so the professors try to balance assignments based on time committed in the past and interest (e.g. if there are five 4th year students but only 3 TA spots left, the ones who are interested will get it). Overall, it seems to work out pretty well and the ones that want to TA will get to do it while the ones that prefer to do other things aren't forced to. Even though the assignment system isn't 100% transparent, I don't think it causes a lot of issues since the overall TA load is so small. Most positions don't use up all 15 hours per week, but even if they did, this would only be 150 hours per year, and only 450 hours total in your whole degree! I know many other programs require 20hrs/week for all your years, and 20hrs/week would be something like 600 hours in just one year (~30weeks).

[Threeboysmom]

I was just thinking about this topic as a mom of three.  I really want to speed up the process yet I'm not sure if I can handle nine hours a semester.  My program is 60 hours long.  I have 45 hours left.  I would like to speed things up.  I would like to work in my field some and then go for my Ph.D.  If I don't finish my masters early at this pace when I'm done I will be 40.  For some reason I have  a hang up about starting my Ph.D at 50.  sigh.  Great advice given here I will speak with my adviser.