Lectures and assignments during dissertation

[WhateverItTakes]

I'm in a PhD program. I did all the coursework and passed my exams. Now I'm in the dissertation phase.

Does anyone else have required lectures and assignments during dissertation? I have a "dissertation class" once a week with a 3 hour lecture and I have to do assignments about the lectures on top of my research and writing my dissertation. I talked to other people at the university and it seems my department is the only one that does this.

[rising_star]

I've definitely never heard of this. Are the lectures about a topic related to your dissertation? Is the class operating in a workshop model where people share and present their research to get feedback from others? I ask because I have heard of the latter, with some describing it as a waste of time and others commenting on how useful it was.

[Eigen]

You might give a field for context.

In STEM fields, for instance (I'm assuming you're not in one of those), nothing really changes while you write your dissertation.

[rising_star]

16 minutes ago, Eigen said:

You might give a field for context.

In STEM fields, for instance (I'm assuming you're not in one of those), nothing really changes while you write your dissertation.

Eigen, do you mean that STEM students are still taking courses while writing their dissertation?

[Eigen]

Can be, depending on the school. I know people who've saved electives to the end if there's a course they want to take. It's discipline and school dependent though.

Lecture courses that late in the PhD aren't as common, but something like the OP described isn't exactly a traditional lecture course.

That said, there's not usually as defined of a "writing their dissertation" phase for many STEM fields, which is why I'm assuming the OP isn't STEM. A week to a couple of months to compile everything and get everything together after you find a job/post-doc.

[WhateverItTakes]

This isn't a STEM field.

I did find another department that does this. They have a seminar course that all students are required to enroll in every semester. Based on the syllabus though, it doesn't seem like they meet every single week (only when they can find a presenter) and they don't have written assignments. Students only have to show up and ask questions.

I wish I could just focus on reading, writing, and testing. Most of the lectures aren't related to my topic, so they tend to be more confusing than helpful.

[TakeruK]

In Canada, there is no "coursework phase" and "research phase"---the courses are spread out over the whole degree so it's common to take classes up to your final year. Most students prefer to leave the last 1 or 2 years completely course-free though, but it's hardly a requirement.

Also, at my last school (also in Canada), all PhD students must take a seminar course every year on presentations. In this course, each week, a student gives a 60 minute presentation to the other PhD students about their research. They must attend 60% of the seminars to pass and they must present once per year starting in year 2 of their PhD (year 4 of grad school in Canada). The goal of this course is to learn to present your specialized sub-field research to a broad audience of experts, but not specialists (i.e. the audience are scientists from physics & astronomy). There is peer and instructor evaluation (the course is pass/fail though). The purpose of this class is to prepare students for "job talks" and other department seminars they might be invited to speak at in their final year (or in the future).

At my current school, we must complete all required coursework to reach candidacy, which must be finished within 3 years. So, for all intents and purposes, one does not have any courses in their final year. There are some exceptions: once in a while, a student will finish their PhD in 3 years (the minimum length of time required by our school) so they might still be taking courses). However, students beyond candidacy may choose to take extra (i.e. not counted as required electives) courses or get a minor (one popular one at my school is a minor in Computer Science). In small fields like mine, these extra courses may only happen once every 3-5 years, so sometimes you just have to take them when they are offered, if you want them.

Also, to echo Eigen's data point---in my field students often do not have a "writing a dissertation phase" either. The most common path is you apply for jobs (whether postdocs/industry/something entirely different) and as soon as you get a job offer, you just compile whatever you have together and defend.

If you are in the academia route, you will probably find out about jobs for Fall 2016 around Feb-March 2016. This gives you 6 months to finish, however, at my school, if you want your degree to say "2016" you must defend by June 2016 (only one graduation per year). At this point, it's up to the student to decide if they want a 2016 degree or a 2017 degree (since postdocs will allow you to start in Fall 2016 as long as you defend and thus complete all degree requirements by the postdoc start date). One advantage to the 2016 degree is that between June 2016 and the start of postdoc, your advisor may be willing to pay you as a postdoc over the summer and you get to make extra money! However, if your advisor can't do this, then you might want to stay on as a grad student so that you still get income and health benefits etc. right until you start your postdoc. Ultimately, your committee is convinced that you are ready to defend once you have a job offer.

If you are not taking the academia route, you basically will defend as soon as you need to start your next job. One person last year defended within a few weeks of signing his non-academic job offer (however, he knew this was coming since he spent 2-3 months negotiating his job contract). In my field, you don't really write a dissertation, you just combined all of your peer-reviewed articles together and maybe write an introductory chapter that binds everything together.

For some people, if you didn't make research your top priority (makes sense if you are not aiming for research positions) then you might only have 1 paper written by this time. Or, they might not have a plan for directly after graduation. This usually means you have to write a lot and it will take a lot more energy to graduate. However, without a direct plan, there may be less pressure to graduate so this is the closest thing our field has to a "dissertation phase". On the other hand, those without a direct plan may find themselves with a job offer and then usually I see these people working very long hours to get it done and get out. 

 

[WhateverItTakes]

This is in the US and I think the program is standard except for these weekly lectures and assignments. The first year (or two depending if you're full or part-time) is course work. Then there's a comp exam. Then we have a dissertation proposal. Then we work on the dissertation (reading, writing, testing). Then we have the dissertation defense.

I could have worked and some people do work on their dissertation while they're doing the coursework in the beginning. It took me a while to figure out my topic though.

Also, some people take courses while working on their dissertation if they want to learn more about another field related to their topic, but it's not required.

[fuzzylogician]

1 hour ago, WhateverItTakes said:

This isn't a STEM field.

I did find another department that does this. They have a seminar course that all students are required to enroll in every semester. Based on the syllabus though, it doesn't seem like they meet every single week (only when they can find a presenter) and they don't have written assignments. Students only have to show up and ask questions.

I wish I could just focus on reading, writing, and testing. Most of the lectures aren't related to my topic, so they tend to be more confusing than helpful.

I'm still confused about what it is that you do in this class. Do the students present their own work (workshop style)? Or are there outside presenters? What are the assignments like and how long does it take to do them? Does it matter that you get a high grade in this class, or can you just write something quick and be done with it? I know schools that have a workshop style class for ABDs (I've participated in a couple, myself) and I agree with rising_star's description that these classes can range from great to bad. It all depends on the instructor and (mostly) the other participants. I haven't heard of ABDs being required to take other kinds of classes, but I'm also not sure having to attend one class and do some homework is that onerous of a task. 

[Knitster]

I wonder if the course is to serve a similar purpose as what my program does. My program requires all students to attend talks given by invited speakers and then ask questions about their research over lunch, on a weekly basis for at least one semester. Another program requires the students to discuss an article that came out of the guest speaker's research group before the talk. Although most talks aren't directly related to our research, the purpose is to ensure that the students continue to learn about their neighboring fields even after our core courses are over, and that it is important to be knowledgeable in a breadth of subjects to some degree.

Or does the course focus on building a particular skillset?