Working full time in research while doing PhD dissertation

[Criminologist]

I'm about to finish up my second year in my PhD program in the social sciences and beginning to work on my dissertation. I have accepted a research position in my field in another state to start in the summer so I will be working full time while doing the PhD dissertation, rather than working as grad assistant part-time. Has anyone done this before and how difficult was it for you? I know it makes you less likely to finish the PhD but I am unusual as I would have no other responsibilities other than the job and dissertation (no family, kids, pets, hobby etc.). I still expect to finish the PhD in 4 years total so 2 more years (already have a Master's), how realistic is that? 

[rising_star]

Whether or not you can finish in two years is going to depend on how disciplined you are and what kind of dissertation you're writing. If you're working with an existing data set, then it may be easier. If you know you'll be able to dedicate 1-2 hours each night plus a day on the weekend to the dissertation (so a total of ~20 hours/week), then your timeline might be doable.

[Criminologist]

I actually spent a significant amount of time this semester in the process of obtaining a secondary dataset that could be used for my dissertation. 1-2 hours per day and then one day in the weekend does sound reasonable.

 

[rising_star]

It may sound reasonable but actually doing it could prove harder. You may be tired after work and not able to muster the energy to work on the dissertation. You may not have access to the scholarly literature or to the software you need to or other types of things. It can also be harder to write and analyze data when you don't get a chance to talk through what you're working on with others. But, it is possible.

[ZeChocMoose]

It is fairly common for people in my field to do this (i.e. finish their dissertation from afar while working in the field full-time) after they have reached candidacy (i.e. completed all coursework and passed the comprehensive exam) because they can secure high paying jobs w/o having completed the PhD.  The people that I have seen to be more successful are the ones that secured their dissertation committee and defended their proposal before they left.  They also have partners who are willing to handle all the domestic things (i.e. cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc) while you are focusing on just working and dissertating.  The people that tend to struggle are the ones who leave without having defended their proposal and only a vague idea of their dissertation.  That being said - it typically takes them another 2-4 years to finish part-time with 2 years for the people with defended proposals and 4 years for the people w/o defended proposals.  Some of this is because they end up taking jobs where they have a lot of responsibility and are working 60+ hours a week which makes it difficult to find the time to do the dissertation and the energy especially if you are in charge of all the domestic stuff.  Do you know how many hours typically people work in your position?  

How supportive is your advisor about finishing from afar?  The other difficultly I have seen is people who try to finish from afar and they cannot get the necessary support from their advisor because either their advisor doesn't want their students to do this and/or their advisor is not responsive/difficult to get a hold of which makes it impossible to progress.  

And of course some people just don't finish (I would say about a 1/3) because the job and/or life just gets in the way and the motivation to finish decreases the longer you are away from the program and they have a job that they are comfortable in.  These people end up timing out of the program as we only have 5 years to finish our dissertations after we reached candidacy.  How long do you have according to your school policies?

 

[Criminologist]

I have been admitted to PhD candidacy, I have finished all coursework, passed my qualifying exam and main comprehensive exam which required me to be on campus. This was done within 3 semesters of starting so I am progressing well. I already have my idea and a dissertation topic, and secured the data. I also have already formed my dissertation committee, all of the members who agreed to be on it after knowing I was going to be working full-time. They seem to be mostly supportive of my decision and there is good communication. The only thing I am lacking is not having defended the proposal, which would likely not be until the end of my third year, then I would plan to defend the dissertation at the end of my fourth year. For my program you have 8 years total to graduate or courses expire. I'll be working regular full time 8-4. but my position is not the kind where I will have to do any work at home or when I am on vacation. I'll still be enrolled in 1 credit hour so I'll have access to library resources online, and all of the software programs (SPSS, Stata, etc) I already have. I don't think life will get in the way honestly, I consider myself quite focused and responsible. My main concern is losing motivation and progressing to slowly now that money/getting a job is no longer a concern, but I think I have gone too far in my program to quit just because of work. 

Edited April 12, 2016 by zhanggar

[ZeChocMoose]

1 hour ago, zhanggar said:

 I don't think life will get in the way honestly, I consider myself quite focused and responsible. My main concern is losing motivation and progressing to slowly now that money/getting a job is no longer a concern, but I think I have gone too far in my program to quit just because of work. 

No one that I knew who left thought they wouldn't finish - it just happens sometimes because priorities change and finishing doesn't seem as important anymore.  It is far better to accept that as a possibility and work to make sure that doesn't happen than to think that won't happen to you because you are more "focused and responsible." I also don't think that people who don't finish are flaky or irresponsible - but that is a whole other discussion...

My suggestions would be while you are still on campus is to meet with all your committee members about your proposed schedule to finish and ask them how frequently they will be willing to read drafts.  I would ask to set up semi-regular meetings at least with your advisor in the upcoming year to check in and discuss your work.  You also really want to think about concrete benchmarks you want to achieve each month (or week) to make sure you are making progress.  If you can find a writing group to attend that might be helpful and an extra support.  

Lastly, to be kind to yourself.  Learning a new job can be kinda exhausting in the first couple months especially if you have never held a full-time job before.  You might want to go light in months 1 & 2 and then start adding in more time to work on the dissertation as you become more comfortable with your job.  Good luck! 

[juilletmercredi]

I work in a non-academic research position that hires PhDs; one of my coworkers started here before he finished his dissertation and was able to finish and graduate from his full-time job. He hated it, though, and said if he could do it all over he would've delayed his start until after he finished his dissertation. He was also a lot farther along - he was in the thick of it, and he defended his dissertation within 6 months of starting the position (it may have been less than that).

Frankly, if you have not even defended your proposal I think a two-year timeline is kind of fast if you are working full-time. It took me about a year and four months to go from zero (before I started working on my proposal) to a defended dissertation, and then an additional two months to put together the revisions and do a final submission of the dissertation, and I was only working 10 hours a week. Don't underestimate how draining a full-time job can be - I work one now, about 40-50 hours a week (and I also don't have to work from home or on vacations), and I can tell you I sure don't feel like writing a dissertation when I get home from work in the evenings. It also sounds like you will be moving for this position and so on top of getting adjusted to your new job you will also be getting adjusted to a new area. And time isn't just additive, if that makes sense - IMO, you can get more done in one 6-hour chunks of time than you can in three 2-hour chunks of time. That's because you don't have to ramp up every time and get into the swing of things.

You don't think life will get in the way - but nobody does. It has a habit of getting in the way anyway.

The people I know who have managed this successfully worked a research job that was somewhat related to their PhD/dissertation work and were sometimes able to devote some time at work to writing the dissertation. For example, they may have used secondary data sources that were provided or funded by their new employer, so working on their dissertation was directly relevant to the work of the institution and so "counted" as part of their duties.

The positive thing is that you have the support of your committee. You can definitely have an ambitious goal of two years, but realize that it may stretch out to longer (maybe 3) and decide whether you are okay with that.

[Criminologist]

 

On 5/1/2016 at 0:51 AM, juilletmercredi said:

I work in a non-academic research position that hires PhDs; one of my coworkers started here before he finished his dissertation and was able to finish and graduate from his full-time job. He hated it, though, and said if he could do it all over he would've delayed his start until after he finished his dissertation. He was also a lot farther along - he was in the thick of it, and he defended his dissertation within 6 months of starting the position (it may have been less than that).

Frankly, if you have not even defended your proposal I think a two-year timeline is kind of fast if you are working full-time. It took me about a year and four months to go from zero (before I started working on my proposal) to a defended dissertation, and then an additional two months to put together the revisions and do a final submission of the dissertation, and I was only working 10 hours a week. Don't underestimate how draining a full-time job can be - I work one now, about 40-50 hours a week (and I also don't have to work from home or on vacations), and I can tell you I sure don't feel like writing a dissertation when I get home from work in the evenings. It also sounds like you will be moving for this position and so on top of getting adjusted to your new job you will also be getting adjusted to a new area. And time isn't just additive, if that makes sense - IMO, you can get more done in one 6-hour chunks of time than you can in three 2-hour chunks of time. That's because you don't have to ramp up every time and get into the swing of things.

You don't think life will get in the way - but nobody does. It has a habit of getting in the way anyway.

The people I know who have managed this successfully worked a research job that was somewhat related to their PhD/dissertation work and were sometimes able to devote some time at work to writing the dissertation. For example, they may have used secondary data sources that were provided or funded by their new employer, so working on their dissertation was directly relevant to the work of the institution and so "counted" as part of their duties.

The positive thing is that you have the support of your committee. You can definitely have an ambitious goal of two years, but realize that it may stretch out to longer (maybe 3) and decide whether you are okay with that.

I wanted to get back and post an update. I started my job about 4 weeks ago. I am not having any trouble working on it while working full time even though wake up at 7 and get back home at 5 (work from 8-4:30). I am working on it almost every day during the weekday for an hour or two, then around 10 hours max on the weekend. I was assigned to essentially write the intro/lit review for my dissertation which I have 4 months to complete, already wrote around 35 pages out of the 50 and hasn't been a month since. I still think it's reasonable to complete it within 2 years since i have the data already, setup the committee, etc. Actually I worry that the committee will be too slow to provide feedback, etc. since I am far away and can't see them in person, so if there is anything that would keep me from graduating in 2 years it would be outside my control. It helps tremendously that I'm single, no kids, pets, never married, no responsibilities. I think few people have a situation like mine with so much free time outside of work. What are your reasons why you don't feel like writing a dissertation when you get home from work? 

Edited June 8, 2016 by zhanggar