Be realistic about a PhD

[dobeessneeze]

I am considering an MSc/PhD. It would be in an emerging area of social sciences research and would be fully funded (fees and stipend) and involve a taught Master's for one year followed by 3 PhD years. I have 2 DC (aged 8 & 14) who are home educated, DP works full time and we generally have a very full and busy life. It would be a big boost to my employment credentials, as well as an achievement of a personal ambition in an area that I feel very passionately about. But I am feeling very uncertain about how realistic it is to take on this project with everything else. I currently work around 15 hours per week from home which I would stop while studying, DH may be able to reduce to 4 days at work, and I'd have family to help a day or two per week. In theory it would be possible to do part time, but the idea of it dragging on for 7-8 years is not really any less daunting than the idea of full-time over a shorter period. I'd be really grateful for any views on what is a realistic weekly time commitment for a taught Master's, year 1, year 2, and year 3 of a PhD - I know it's supposed to be equivalent to a full time job, but that surely doesn't mean 37 hours a week sitting at a desk?

I can't afford for this to take over my life - please tell me is it possible to do a PhD and keep it firmly in its box?

It's full time, with overtime. You won't be able to HE at the same time; if you do, you'll be half arsing one of them.

I just about managed to parent at the same time, let alone HE two of them.

Particularly for industry conferences, they'll accept anyone who is prepared to pay the exorbitant fee! In my industry, conferences are about 15% phd students, 10% academics, 30% RnD staff from companies and government institutions (about two-thirds with phds) and the rest are there for marketing, recruiting, sales and general networking. Anything submitted counts as a publication, which is a (small) step towards being recognised as a subject expert.

There are also academic conferences which are normally cheaper, have more gatekeeping, have higher quality technical and cutting edge presentations, but won't get you work or business connections, and the research might not actually be real-world useful. You can submit papers to those as an individual, but they tend to be dominated by a clique of universities and you'll be viewed as a bit of an oddity.

I’m doing a PhD part-time in my forties (alongside an established career in another sector) and have found it relatively manageable so far. I’m at analysis stage and still really enjoy the process.

I often work alongside my teenage DC at the table. They are doing homework; I am correcting transcripts, writing or doing whatever needs doing at the time.

To be honest, I was put off by so many similar Mumsnet threads and delayed for several years while my DC was younger, but I got to a point when it was ‘now or never’ and just…began.

One remark on a PhD thread really helped me: ‘You will get there in the end’. Which is very simple but true...

But it helps that I have pretty much no intention of going into academia, so I am far less worried about some of the things that might preoccupy younger researchers. I live a long way from campus so also don’t get caught up in much of the extraneous activity, as it just isn’t practical for me.

The only thing that concerns me about your situation is home educating, as you will need chunks of time at some point during the process. But perhaps you will also be freed up by not being tied to school terms and requirements?

I work on one of these programmes. Contact them and ask them. They'll know what is permitted and what will work. We try hard to allow people to balance caring responsibilities with their PhD, but we won't set them up to fail, so if you came to us with that question, we'd discuss it and be honest with you.

@Maybedoctor Thanks. That's really helpful. Yes - you're right that there is an enormous amount of flexibility with home educating in terms of how we structure and use our time as a family. I have spoken to a few people who have done it with kids who have said that they haven't been able to let it take over in the same way that they would have done if they'd done it straight out of their undergrad degree. I also have no intention of going into academia!

@AChangeIsAsGood Thank you - I will talk to them. I have been a bit hesitant about sharing my concerns as I don't want them to think I'm not committed, but I think I probably need to be completely upfront for everyone's sake. My supervisor also completed hers with kids (although not home educating) and said that she would be expecting 2 1/2 hours of good work a day alongside plenty of thinking time. That feels manageable in a way that 40 hours per week does not!

I did a half-taught masters, then PhD, and now teach on a masters. Personally I think the taught masters is the most challenging part as it is very intense and inflexible if you are expecting to attend lectures/seminars and submit work regularly.

I had a baby during my PhD and went PT - essentially I carved out 2 days/week with childcare and worked Saturdays while dh looked after dd. By this means the 3 years became 5 (also did a bit of teaching). There was absolutely no hope of me doing it FT in 3 once I had dd but PT was very doable and if I had tried harder maybe I could have done it in 4 years.

I think trying the masters first and then reassessing the situation sounds good. Certainly worth serious consideration if you are keen and have funding (which is a very major advantage - and funders tend to have expectations that help keep you on track).

Yes, I've heard the Master's can be the hardest part. That's useful to know that you managed it in 5 years on 3 days per week.

No, please don’t do that. You’d be taking £100k of research funding that someone has fought hard to get as a grant or via dwindling university resources. Such money is now really hard to get and you’re in a lucky position to have been offered it.
Please don’t treat it as a personal development experiment - if you take the money, then commit to making it work, to going the whole way and producing the best and most useful science you can. Otherwise, let the chance to do so go to someone else.

A PhD consumes your existence for 60-80 hours a week at times if you are doing it well. You may be able to keep it under 50 sometimes but not when there are deadlines approaching, and only by cutting corners.
You can probably do the 1yr taught masters combined with your other commitments without too much trouble.
Subsequent to that you'll need to choose one of 3 options
1 Accept that your PhD work will be of lower quality, do the best you can slotted in with your other commitments accepting the cut corners. These will be picked up on at viva stage and you'll be given major changes to work on for 1-2 years withot stipendary funding.
2 Negotiate to spread the funding and stipend over 5 or 6 years rather than 3 and do it part-time in order to keep pace with other commitments without sacrificing the quality of your academic work
3 Rearrange yoir home life to allow you to dedicate your time to your academic work - use school and wraparound childcare for your children and buy in other support like using cleaners and meal prep services to minimise your home responsibilities.

Edited to add: I forgot to quote but I am replying to the post above about the OP ‘wasting funding’.

That’s a bit of a guilt trip! The stipend is distributed yearly so if she did decide to withdraw after the masters, then the following years of funding could be allocated to a new student. Any research consortium offering a PhD studentship is always taking some degree of risk that the person will complete or not.

That kind of ‘all or nothing’ message is exactly what puts off students like the OP who are in atypical positions and might be hesitant about committing to 4-5 years, but might turn out to be very worthy recipients of a PhD studentship.

I am living proof that you don’t need to commit to a full postgraduate journey from the outset. I began by taking just a single module of a master’s degree, unsure if I could make it work alongside a job and a toddler. I am now analysing my PhD data.

Besides, she isn’t a scientist so producing ‘useful science’ has nothing to do with it! Valuable research, yes, but the OP completing or not completing her PhD isn’t going to hold up the fight against climate change.

There is a culture of competitive overwork in academia and it doesn't have to be that way. You can (and in my opinion, should) treat it as a job. A job that occasionally has you working evenings and weekends, true, but also a job that allows a huge amount of autonomy and flexibility. That flexibility was actually very useful when my kids were young (they were both still pre-teen when I finished).

What is your ultimate aim? You say you don't want to go into academia. In that case, what would the PhD give you to take forward into the next stage of your life?

I did mine at 0.6 but later discovered that part-time for my institution meant 0.5 with no other wte possible - so I had to apply to submit early. I got it in within the five years of funded time. I don't think it is the most difficult thing I've ever done because I enjoyed a lot of it - the topic came from me, which helped.

PhDs need staying power. They are as much about training you as a researcher than they are about the topic. Very few PhDs are ground breaking research.

Yes on the staying power. Yes it is a FT job, but very flexible in a way a Masters isn't.

However, when you describe what you want from it, I too doubt whether you want to do a PhD. Industry conferences (which are expensive) will be far less academically demanding, far less rigorous and be far more helpful for what you want.

Good luck whatever you decide.

I did a phd in 4 years while working 2 days a week and with tweens/teens. What made it work-
—like pp I wasn’t looking to move into academia and so didn’t need to do much of the additional stuff or worry about publication
-excellent support at home, an understanding husband and a cleaner

Can you talk to your would-be supervisor? I think time commitment and flexibility seem to really vary by subject so she will be best placed to advise you.

Agree with pp about the culture of competitive overwork. What worked for me was to treat it like a job- sit down at 9am, finish at 5pm. Would my thesis have been 5% better if I’d done 80 hours a week? Maybe, or maybe I’d have burned out and abandoned it.

I wish people could stop promoting this notion that doing a PhD means working insane hours. I worked normal hours during my PhD, and subsequently got a postdoc at a leading university in my field, a Leverhulme ECR fellowship, and now a permanent job. Thankfully, throughout my PhD and postdoc I had good supervisors/mentors who always stressed that it's fine to work normal hours and who equipped me with the skills to do so.

Having said that, for the OP, I do think it's different to complete a PhD in less than full time (35-40) hours. And if you're committed to homeschooling, then it is really quite difficult to see how that could work.

Glad some posters have disagreed with the claims of needing to work more than a normal working week to get a good PhD. I did mine in my early 40s, funded full-time, and treated it like a normal 9-5 job (with flexibility to finish early sometimes too). It took 3 years and I then did a postdoc and got a lectureship. The main challenge was persevering and maintaining confidence in myself. But it was perfectly doable in terms of workload in a 35 hour week, and that is what the university regulations expected too. There are so many sources on the internet that make a PhD sound like it needs to involve being a workaholic, making sacrifices and damaging your mental health. It can be treated like a job, involving consistent daily work, and willpower.

Absolutely agree with the last two posters. Normal full time hours are fine. I did 35 hours a week and finished in under 3 years, and went on to a prestigious postdoc and lots more funding.

However, I was young and did not have a family at the time, so my bandwidth was different. Even so, I don't think it's helpful to claim that everyone doing a PhD is working 12 hour days.

I was home educating 3 dc, started a taught MSc and had to drop back to part time, which ended up being 3 years and I still had so much anxiety, night sweats and daily feelings of wanting to quit. If you haven't studied for a while you can forget how intense it can be, the amount of reading you are expected to do, and obviously assignments. My dc's education felt as if it took a battering too. And whilst it is a further degree, I don't think it made that much difference to my earning potential at my stage in life. The very thought of a Phd would send me over the edge.

Congratulations on the funding, and don't worry about accepting funding that could go to someone who might have a different kind of career - the funding body has made the decision they are happy to fund you, and plenty of people start out aiming for an academic/research career and do not have one, for lots of different reasons.

I am working full time, have two young children, and have just started the fifth and final year of active research on my PhD. I have a further two years writing up if I need it, but really don't want to be doing this for another two years if I can help it. I love the research, reading and writing (not so much other aspects of being a PT PhD student), but the compromises are very great.

I feel that I have four major tasks - my job, family, PhD, and my own health and wellbeing. Out of these, I can do maybe 2.5 of them at a time. My physical health and wellbeing tends to be deprioritised (on the other hand there are mental health benefits to doing something intellectually stimulating). Out of job, family and PhD, I am never able to put in what I would like to on all three, all at the same time. Over time, I hope it works out acceptably for all of them.

I would not be able to home educate at the same time - no way - but if you are doing this instead of a paid job, and if you are an experienced home educator, I wonder whether it might work out? Full time PhD students in the social sciences are usually doing other things besides their research, to earn money and gain experience in things like teaching and academic administration that are important if they are heading for an academic career (which it doesn't sound like you are?). But you need to keep it up for a long time, and you will need the active support of your family in ring-fencing sustained time and space for the PhD.

The nature of your research might also be relevant. Do you need to collect data at strange times (e.g. night shifts in a hospital/factory), over a long period or where access might be difficult and cause unexpected delays? If your data is easily available this will de-risk the project and give you time and flexibility.

Good luck!

Thanks everybody - it's really useful to have different perspectives. I'm very much reassured by those saying that it's possible to do it within the hours of a normal working week. I've just finished a 3-year foundation degree part-time (which in the end turned into a good 3.5 days a week) this year, so I'm used to fitting studying in around the family life, but it's obviously a step up again in terms of MSc/PhD. It sounds like it might just about be do-able by stopping my existing work and then adding in extra support via DH, grandparents and a decent cleaner. I'm not sure there is any wiggle room left in my domestic standards at this stage 🙄I've still got time to think about it and plan before having to make any decisions one way or the other.

Come on. I have a PhD in a lab science and have supervised many students. I never worked more than 40 hours a week, often much less. My students now work about 30 it seems to me. They are doing very well. This is either the weird academic flexing I see on twitter (where lecturers claim to work 80 hours a week) or you are an extremely slow worker. These sort of hours are not at all typical

I have a science PhD and I worked normal office hours throughout.

Having said that, I'm home schooling now and I defininitely don't have the headspace for a PhD on top of that. The home schooling is epic.

Yes, I agree the issue is headspace (which shouldn’t be underestimated) rather than elapsed time!

I did my PhD with a baby. I worked on the PhD 3 days a week and spent the rest of the week with my baby socialising at play groups and staying on top of the house etc. It took me slightly longer, about 3.5 years. Every PhD is different, and every individual is different. It's not easy, but I found it do-able. It was super helpful to have my time away from the PhD, where I was enjoying time with my child and not thinking about the research. I probably would have done a better project had I not been distracted. But then again, I passed with minor amendments so the quality was sufficient. I can't give advice, but would say you need to look at your own circumstances and work out if it's is do-able rather than worry what other people think. Good luck with the decision!

I work full time but haven’t just completed a post grad diploma level 7 and cmi accreditation. It was over 2 years and if I’m honest, my dc did suffer at times (that sounds dramatic, but they didn’t get the best of me). Dh absolutely supported me and was amazing but I think the 2 years 3 months I was doing it probably was the max and dh and dc are very happy to have me back.

How are you getting a fully funded Phd with just a foundation degree? EDITED: Sorry just saw that you intend to do the taught masters first, in which case see how that goes and then decide if you want to pursue something further.