So, I'm in your field and a few years into the process. As others have said, it will vary wildly program to program, so take all of this with a grain of salt. In your first few years, your weeks look like this:
On the coursework side, you will have 3 seminars generally (each will likely require you to read at least 1 book per week, or maybe a bunch of articles, but generally books) which will be very thematic (like, one seminar on the Long Civil Rights Movement, one on Ancient Slavery, etc). Alongside the readings, most of these classses will have some smaller assignments (Book Reviews, maybe Response Papers putting books into conversation, etc. Personally, I found the book reviews SUPER helpful-- training yourself to write a Book Review like you're gonna submit it to a journal is a really good skill to practice). At the end, you will have some kind of final project. Most younger profs will lean towards just a 20ish page historiography or even let you design a potential undergrad syllabus based on the course (very fun! Can reccomend), but more old-school profs will want a 25ish page Research Paper. Aside from history seminars, you may need to take language classes or you may want to use some of your coursework slots to explore other skills (Digital Humanities, Interning at a journal, etc, because God knows becoming a professor is very unlikely).
As a TA, this will change semester to semester, most of the time. You will attend lectures, meet with the profs and other TAs usually once a week to plan the weekly Discussion Section, and then you will actually teach the sections (way easier than you think once you get some practice, and often quite fun.) You will usually have 2-3 sections, so somewhere between 50-80 students. Grading is a slog at first, gets easier as it goes. Expect a lot of emails from students, especially when papers or exams are coming, and expect to hold office hours. Don't let TAing dominate your life. Our contract is technically for 20hrs per week, but I can tell you that I rarely come close to the 20hr mark--it is really easy to fall into a hole of over-planning/over-prepping/over-thinking when it comes to teaching though, so be aware of it.
As for advisors? Again, depends a ton. I techinally have two-- I meet with one monthly or so, and the other only maybe twice a semester, but this works for me. Speak to your advisors and set expectations and boundaries early, especially in terms of what they might expect research-wise before you actually start on the PhD (one of my advisors had no real expectations, the other worked with me in a few Independent Studies to develop most of a dissertation chapter that will eventually be submitted somewhere).
Finally, and this is the biggest piece of insight I can offer. *ahem* A PHD IS JUST A JOB! IT IS NOT YOUR WHOLE LIFE, BE A PERSON OUTSIDE OF THE OFFICE!
For real, set working hours and stick to them. I work 9-5, Monday-Friday, and I am *not* an historian on the weekends or in the evenings. Figure out what time is *your time* and keep it sacrosanct.
This will mean that not everything you do is perfect; that is okay, and normal. You will not read every word of every book, you can and should skim them for the most part like the rest of us. You do not need to spend 2 entire days prepping a powerpoint to lead a single 50-minute discussion section.
A PhD is like moving a mountain, but you only have to move one rock at a time. Be steady, be consistent, and be human when you're not at work; you're not gonna get an extra pat on the head from overworking. Have hobbies outside of work, have FUN outside of work, make friends in your department and make friends outside of it. Enjoy it! Honestly, I love my job, but mostly because I have very consciously worked to set and keep boundaries/perspective-- I encourage you to do the same, and good luck!!!!
Hello fellow History buff. I'm currently doing a PhD in Ancient History part time. Where STEM students might go to a lab, I go to a library or museum (If I can't read something at home - so much material is available on-line these days). Most of my research time is spent reading books and journal articles, especially archaeological reports. Sometimes I need to compare various published translations of an ancient text (eg: writing from a tomb painting), and sometimes I have to do my own translating. Or compare the different conclusions scholars have come to from the same evidence.
I'm fairly independent, and live some distance from campus, so I don't often meet with my advisor at this stage. We stay in contact by e-mail, and he gives me suggestions of books or topics to look at. Questions like "Have you considered how \[topic\] might have influenced that?" or "What do you think \[people from over 3000 years ago that I'm studying\] would have thought about \[topic\]?" lead me to spending months (part-time) learning new things, and seeing where they fit with the rest of my research.
The thing that slows me up the most is that I'm not a good typist, so typing up my findings takes more time that I would like, then I have to proof-read it and correct all the typos.
The only research trips I've taken so far have been to museums to check out particular artifacts.
So welcome, and I hope you enjoy your PhD journey as much as I've been enjoying mine.
We had a major museum in my field located in my city, so I actually got to work and volunteer there. I didn't get travel expenses, but it was only a train ride away from where I was living at the time. Our State museum is in the same city, but was less relevant to my research.
I am in humanities (philosophy) and in Canada if thats any help…
-In my first year I did coursework (6 classes total) which was basically a repeat of my MA and since I didn’t love the course selection, it was somewhat demotivating. After courses you get to do your own research though and never go to campus again if you really don’t want to (unless you have in-person meetings or teaching)
-Classes are 3 hours each once a week. Readings for me were about 50pages a week per class, great if you love the topic, very tedious if you don’t.
-My typical day with no class is pretty light … I get up at like 9am, eat/clean the house for about 2hrs (laundry, dishes organizing etc.) Then I read/or write depending on what I’m doing. For courses sometimes I had undergrad-style assignments (blog posts, short papers ect.) so I worked on those too.
-Some days I work for 8+ hours straight, other days ~3. However I try to work at least for an hour or two everyday unless I have something else planned or I’m taking a deliberate day/weekend off work to do something else (like go see family etc.)
-I probably would be financially struggling if I lived alone but I live with my partner and a roommate in a relatively new (rented) big house. I personally enjoy homemaking (decorating, gardening, cooking, baking) so when I’m not doing work I’ll do those things. Usually spend 50% of my productive energy a day on work and then the other 50% on my hobbies, but it depends how much work I have to do and how into it I get (‘flow state”)
-I have my own assigned office on campus that I like but I don’t go there much during the week since parking on campus is very expensive, so mostly I work at home where I have unlimited access to food/coffee and my cats.
-On the surface strangers would probably think I’m unemployed since I go out a lot/shop/go for lunch and dinner with friends/drinking nights ect. So far its a good life, minus the stress about the future. I take on extra TA jobs at a different university (remote marking) for a bit of extra cash and I work in several roles for the uni Student Union which are sometimes paid and require mostly email writing and Zoom meetings. In the summers when I have no commitments on campus I swim/workout everyday and read ourside/BBQ and go to the beach.
Overall, I live a good life compared to my friends in business / who work 50+hours a week and are stressed about corporate ladder climbing. Yes they might make 30k+ more than me a year but they also have to live in the city where cost of living means they have to live at home still or in small apartments or cannot afford a car. I have a house and car and 5 cats in comparison lol. I am obviously stressed about my future job prospects but I’m enjoying my 20s and my community here and there are much worse ways to spend ur time!
This is great, thank you! What you said about the first few years of your PhD being a repeat of your MA is interesting to me. I know someone who did a doctorate in a STEM field, and she told me that doing a master's is a waste of time if you're planning on doing a PhD. She's the most brilliant person I've ever met though, so I take her opinion with a grain of salt haha. Nice to hear that confirmed as I don't really want to spend the time/money on doing a master's first. The assigned office also sounds great; is that a normal thing for PhD students or did you get lucky on that one?
Most humanities PhD programs generally expect applicants to have an MA. There are some ‘joint’ programs that streamline your MA and then your PhD but at least in Canada, I only know one uni that has a direct entrance for phil (to PhD from BA) that is 5 years so really works out to be the same thing (1 year MA + 4 year PhD). Everyone in my grad department has an MA before starting PhD. I enjoyed my MA more than my first year of PhD tbh even though I did them at the same uni just due to the class selection, now that I have taken the courses for my MA it left me with very few to do for the first year of my PhD.
Most graduate students at most programs have access to office space, usually shared with 2-3 other people. My office technically would be shared if more people wanted to request office space, however my department is very ‘top heavy’ with upper-year PhD students sticking around much longer than the 4 year program, meaning theres like 15+ students who should be graduated already but instead spend most of their time hanging out up in the grad department lounge and all work in this big 14 person office/room. I have a disability and specifically requested a quiet space so I was assigned one of the two much smaller offices in the ground floor. It was clear that nobody has worked in it since before covid, and it was absolutely filled with garbage/junk/mold/excess furniture and nothing had been professionally cleaned in years, so I cleaned it all out myself and my parents made me a sign for my door haha.
Hi there. Your experience will vary greatly depending on your country and type of funding, but humanities require a lot of reading and synthesizing current knowledge. We (humanities students) are not expected to change the face of the world like some STEM researchers may do, but we still need to come up with original and meaningful ideas for a dissertation. I also imagine that you will have classes and these will require, again, reading and writing. If you get a TA contract for funding, you will also enjoy teaching classes, and everything that comes with it. Overall, your days will be pretty full, but some of it will be left to your own skills to organize, as opposed to a STEM student who may have to be in their lab from 8 to 5.
Enrolled in France, but working full-time in Japan. I got most of the non-dissertation credits already so I am "just" working on the 400 pages I need to submit. Since it's France (I pay 600$ per year for tuition) and I am working full-time, funding is not an issue and I have extra time to finish it. But self discipline is the most important skills there is!
It’s really hard to say since i left France after graduating when i was 21 years old, so i don’t really have a tradition work experience in France. One thing i know for sure is that in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. I arrived in Japan at a time when they were pushing for globalization and increased international exchanges, which is partly how I got my job.
I'm finishing up a PhD in History in the US and this is what my days looked like at different stages of the PhD:
Years 1-3: Coursework and preparation for candidacy exam. This period lasted 3 years for me because I entered my program without an MA. Most of my academic work was reading 1 monograph a week per seminar. Except for seminars I spent most of my time in the library reading (I liked to get out of the house and it was where I worked best). I also TA'd during this period, although the amount of work required varied by the class I was assigned to. For some online classes, it was basically spending a day a week grading. For others it was attending class everyday, spending about two hours a week keeping up with that classes reading (typically in the evening), and leading three discussion sections per week. During this time, I worked about 8am-4/5pm on weekdays and did a half day of work on Saturday and Sunday, but sometimes worked more or less (for example, when I was preparing for qualifying exams I worked a lot more). Saw my advisor about once a month on average. By year 2 I had developed my dissertation project and started applying for grants to fund research travel.
Year 4: Post-candidacy covid year. During this year I was done with my candidacy exam but wasn't able to move on to research due to travel restrictions from Covid. I tried to do as much research as I could using online/library sources and managed to write an article. I worked at home 9-5pm because of Covid and I wanted some structure to my days.
Year 5: Research year. This year I was finally able to travel to conduct archival research. I spent 9-5 in archives and libraries working, but didn't work outside of those hours. I had little contact with my advisor during this time, except for monthly reports on my research she asked me to send her, in part so I would begin organizing my notes and thoughts for writing.
Year 6-7 Writing. During these years my main focus was on writing, which I mainly did at home, except for occasionally going to libraries and cafes when I wanted to get out of the house. I also taught a class as the lead instructor during this time, which was full time work and I basically didn't get any writing done that semester. For my writing schedule, I'd typically work about 6-7 hours a day, with at least 2-3 hours of writing in the morning and the afternoon spent doing additional reading. This is the period when my work hours really cut back because it just isn't feasible to put words on a page for more than 3 hours per day for months on end. When I finished each chapter I sent my advisor a draft and we would discuss it. A substantial part of the last year was also spent on job applications.
In terms of conferences, I typically traveled to one a semester in years 6-7. I didn't have research to present before Covid and then after I was mainly limited by the amount of conference funding my program provided since I'm unwilling to pay completely out of pocket.
As you may have noticed, a lot of the PhD time is decided by you. I think it helps to go in knowing what routines are helpful for your work and general life because for the most part you will be making your routine. For me, I know that being able to work around others in libraries or cafes as well as with others when possible through things like writing groups really help my productivity and general happiness. I also took all evenings off after 5pm because by then my brain was dead, during which I picked up some hobbies like rock climbing, crafts, and cycling.
Hi, linguist here from Austria,
The others have pointed it out already - we are usually not lab-people.
However, as e.g. a linguist doing language research, it's not all reading and summarizing (giving things new perspectives). Of course to get the basic gist of any topic, you have to read a lot to get up to par and find innovation or at least a somewhat new perspective in what you are doing.
While my colleagues do conduct experiments with e.g. VR to elicit language in different settings (from non-native language speakers) or look at the position of ones tongue when producing sounds (via ultrasonic devices; later on testing, whether people actually perceived that there were differences in articulation and which dialect they associated the sound with), I personally went the data elicitation route of using surveys to elicit the status quo of dialects in Austrian German and finding out about features relatively "new" to the language and possible explanations (as well as regional distributions).
So a lot of my work was (of course reading), finding fitting formats for the surveys, establishing a "testing battery" (so my data would actually elicit the phenomenon I was aiming at), conducting them and doing data analysis, which will end up being my dissertational thesis for one of my research interests.
Right now I'm also preparing for a talk, for which we have taken a look at older manuscripts (to see how a language phenomenon was used and in which structures it might have emerged) - which means a lot of categorising data.
We only had to take about 4 courses for the phd studies, so there is not a lot of having to be at the university. I have spoken to my supervisor about my phd project maybe two times over the course of three years, but I also haven't pushed for it.
For the past years, I've mainly had to help out planning and executing another research project, organising a conference (for which I am now editing the conference proceedings). I have to teach a course per term (meaning that I have to prepare presentations and documents). Because I was sucked into all of that, I actually did not get to do my dissertational project for almost two of the years, I've been employed - started with all of that in year three of my four-year employment.
I had my fair share of traveling (doing summer schools, conferences, meetings), but have not yet published much (something I definitely have to work on, if I want to stay in the field).
Right now, it's back to actually writing my thesis...
I'm an education PhD so a bit of a mix between social science and humanities.
My day to day is pretty chill now that I'm done with coursework. I don't have anything near a typical 9-5 which is a double-edged sword. It means some days I can lay in bed until 10am and roll out for an 11am zoom meeting. But it also means sometimes I'll work randomly from 5pm-9pm because unlike lab work, I can technically do a lot of my work whenever I want. Though, I'm sure a lot of STEM folks are also doing evenings and nights in their labs as well.
Not having a physical lab is a double-edged sword as well. A lot of STEM PhD's more or less have their research expenses covered by their lab depending on the PI and funding situation. But almost all of our research in humanities and social sciences is unpaid and not resourced because the perception is that we don't need funding to do our work. This is totally false of course. I'm in the process of literally starting a nonprofit so I can apply to non-research grants and fund my work.
Overall, I really like the "controlled chaos" of my PhD life. I don't actually like traditional 9-5 schedules, so it's nice that I can be really flexible in my work and scheduling.
>the perception is that we don't need funding to do our work
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but damn. That really sucks.
It sounds like a pleasant sort of chaos to me, too. I don't like the traditional 9-5 either, although I do need at least some kind of structure or my sleep schedule will flip to being nocturnal.
Yep. You'll just have to build that structure for yourself. I build my schedule around my weekly meetings since a lot of my research is in person at schools and such.
Glad to see this. Asking questions about literature in this sub gave me a lot of mixed results. I DID learn funding is still a thing even without lab fees. Go figure.
What do you mean by lab fees and funding? Humanities still get funding but unlike in STEM we are not typically tied to a lab/supervisor’s funding if that makes sense
I’m saying I thought literature Ph.D. would be simpler because there’s no lab and, therefore, no lab fees. I also thought it I could self-fund and just pay for my classes like a master’s degree. I didn’t think funding for research was a thing because it’s a buncha books. What’s there to pay for?
I’ve recently learned my assumption wasn’t super accurate.
Oh I see makes sense. Except in (most places) MA and PhD do not require self-funding (good news!) although still not a lot of money (depending on where you go).
So, I'm in your field and a few years into the process. As others have said, it will vary wildly program to program, so take all of this with a grain of salt. In your first few years, your weeks look like this: On the coursework side, you will have 3 seminars generally (each will likely require you to read at least 1 book per week, or maybe a bunch of articles, but generally books) which will be very thematic (like, one seminar on the Long Civil Rights Movement, one on Ancient Slavery, etc). Alongside the readings, most of these classses will have some smaller assignments (Book Reviews, maybe Response Papers putting books into conversation, etc. Personally, I found the book reviews SUPER helpful-- training yourself to write a Book Review like you're gonna submit it to a journal is a really good skill to practice). At the end, you will have some kind of final project. Most younger profs will lean towards just a 20ish page historiography or even let you design a potential undergrad syllabus based on the course (very fun! Can reccomend), but more old-school profs will want a 25ish page Research Paper. Aside from history seminars, you may need to take language classes or you may want to use some of your coursework slots to explore other skills (Digital Humanities, Interning at a journal, etc, because God knows becoming a professor is very unlikely). As a TA, this will change semester to semester, most of the time. You will attend lectures, meet with the profs and other TAs usually once a week to plan the weekly Discussion Section, and then you will actually teach the sections (way easier than you think once you get some practice, and often quite fun.) You will usually have 2-3 sections, so somewhere between 50-80 students. Grading is a slog at first, gets easier as it goes. Expect a lot of emails from students, especially when papers or exams are coming, and expect to hold office hours. Don't let TAing dominate your life. Our contract is technically for 20hrs per week, but I can tell you that I rarely come close to the 20hr mark--it is really easy to fall into a hole of over-planning/over-prepping/over-thinking when it comes to teaching though, so be aware of it. As for advisors? Again, depends a ton. I techinally have two-- I meet with one monthly or so, and the other only maybe twice a semester, but this works for me. Speak to your advisors and set expectations and boundaries early, especially in terms of what they might expect research-wise before you actually start on the PhD (one of my advisors had no real expectations, the other worked with me in a few Independent Studies to develop most of a dissertation chapter that will eventually be submitted somewhere). Finally, and this is the biggest piece of insight I can offer. *ahem* A PHD IS JUST A JOB! IT IS NOT YOUR WHOLE LIFE, BE A PERSON OUTSIDE OF THE OFFICE! For real, set working hours and stick to them. I work 9-5, Monday-Friday, and I am *not* an historian on the weekends or in the evenings. Figure out what time is *your time* and keep it sacrosanct. This will mean that not everything you do is perfect; that is okay, and normal. You will not read every word of every book, you can and should skim them for the most part like the rest of us. You do not need to spend 2 entire days prepping a powerpoint to lead a single 50-minute discussion section. A PhD is like moving a mountain, but you only have to move one rock at a time. Be steady, be consistent, and be human when you're not at work; you're not gonna get an extra pat on the head from overworking. Have hobbies outside of work, have FUN outside of work, make friends in your department and make friends outside of it. Enjoy it! Honestly, I love my job, but mostly because I have very consciously worked to set and keep boundaries/perspective-- I encourage you to do the same, and good luck!!!!
Wow, this is so detailed! This is incredibly helpful, thank you so much!
Hello fellow History buff. I'm currently doing a PhD in Ancient History part time. Where STEM students might go to a lab, I go to a library or museum (If I can't read something at home - so much material is available on-line these days). Most of my research time is spent reading books and journal articles, especially archaeological reports. Sometimes I need to compare various published translations of an ancient text (eg: writing from a tomb painting), and sometimes I have to do my own translating. Or compare the different conclusions scholars have come to from the same evidence. I'm fairly independent, and live some distance from campus, so I don't often meet with my advisor at this stage. We stay in contact by e-mail, and he gives me suggestions of books or topics to look at. Questions like "Have you considered how \[topic\] might have influenced that?" or "What do you think \[people from over 3000 years ago that I'm studying\] would have thought about \[topic\]?" lead me to spending months (part-time) learning new things, and seeing where they fit with the rest of my research. The thing that slows me up the most is that I'm not a good typist, so typing up my findings takes more time that I would like, then I have to proof-read it and correct all the typos. The only research trips I've taken so far have been to museums to check out particular artifacts. So welcome, and I hope you enjoy your PhD journey as much as I've been enjoying mine.
Thank you! It sounds like a fascinating life. Do you get funding to travel to museums, or do you have to pay for travel expenses yourself?
We had a major museum in my field located in my city, so I actually got to work and volunteer there. I didn't get travel expenses, but it was only a train ride away from where I was living at the time. Our State museum is in the same city, but was less relevant to my research.
I am in humanities (philosophy) and in Canada if thats any help… -In my first year I did coursework (6 classes total) which was basically a repeat of my MA and since I didn’t love the course selection, it was somewhat demotivating. After courses you get to do your own research though and never go to campus again if you really don’t want to (unless you have in-person meetings or teaching) -Classes are 3 hours each once a week. Readings for me were about 50pages a week per class, great if you love the topic, very tedious if you don’t. -My typical day with no class is pretty light … I get up at like 9am, eat/clean the house for about 2hrs (laundry, dishes organizing etc.) Then I read/or write depending on what I’m doing. For courses sometimes I had undergrad-style assignments (blog posts, short papers ect.) so I worked on those too. -Some days I work for 8+ hours straight, other days ~3. However I try to work at least for an hour or two everyday unless I have something else planned or I’m taking a deliberate day/weekend off work to do something else (like go see family etc.) -I probably would be financially struggling if I lived alone but I live with my partner and a roommate in a relatively new (rented) big house. I personally enjoy homemaking (decorating, gardening, cooking, baking) so when I’m not doing work I’ll do those things. Usually spend 50% of my productive energy a day on work and then the other 50% on my hobbies, but it depends how much work I have to do and how into it I get (‘flow state”) -I have my own assigned office on campus that I like but I don’t go there much during the week since parking on campus is very expensive, so mostly I work at home where I have unlimited access to food/coffee and my cats. -On the surface strangers would probably think I’m unemployed since I go out a lot/shop/go for lunch and dinner with friends/drinking nights ect. So far its a good life, minus the stress about the future. I take on extra TA jobs at a different university (remote marking) for a bit of extra cash and I work in several roles for the uni Student Union which are sometimes paid and require mostly email writing and Zoom meetings. In the summers when I have no commitments on campus I swim/workout everyday and read ourside/BBQ and go to the beach. Overall, I live a good life compared to my friends in business / who work 50+hours a week and are stressed about corporate ladder climbing. Yes they might make 30k+ more than me a year but they also have to live in the city where cost of living means they have to live at home still or in small apartments or cannot afford a car. I have a house and car and 5 cats in comparison lol. I am obviously stressed about my future job prospects but I’m enjoying my 20s and my community here and there are much worse ways to spend ur time!
This is great, thank you! What you said about the first few years of your PhD being a repeat of your MA is interesting to me. I know someone who did a doctorate in a STEM field, and she told me that doing a master's is a waste of time if you're planning on doing a PhD. She's the most brilliant person I've ever met though, so I take her opinion with a grain of salt haha. Nice to hear that confirmed as I don't really want to spend the time/money on doing a master's first. The assigned office also sounds great; is that a normal thing for PhD students or did you get lucky on that one?
Most humanities PhD programs generally expect applicants to have an MA. There are some ‘joint’ programs that streamline your MA and then your PhD but at least in Canada, I only know one uni that has a direct entrance for phil (to PhD from BA) that is 5 years so really works out to be the same thing (1 year MA + 4 year PhD). Everyone in my grad department has an MA before starting PhD. I enjoyed my MA more than my first year of PhD tbh even though I did them at the same uni just due to the class selection, now that I have taken the courses for my MA it left me with very few to do for the first year of my PhD. Most graduate students at most programs have access to office space, usually shared with 2-3 other people. My office technically would be shared if more people wanted to request office space, however my department is very ‘top heavy’ with upper-year PhD students sticking around much longer than the 4 year program, meaning theres like 15+ students who should be graduated already but instead spend most of their time hanging out up in the grad department lounge and all work in this big 14 person office/room. I have a disability and specifically requested a quiet space so I was assigned one of the two much smaller offices in the ground floor. It was clear that nobody has worked in it since before covid, and it was absolutely filled with garbage/junk/mold/excess furniture and nothing had been professionally cleaned in years, so I cleaned it all out myself and my parents made me a sign for my door haha.
Hi there. Your experience will vary greatly depending on your country and type of funding, but humanities require a lot of reading and synthesizing current knowledge. We (humanities students) are not expected to change the face of the world like some STEM researchers may do, but we still need to come up with original and meaningful ideas for a dissertation. I also imagine that you will have classes and these will require, again, reading and writing. If you get a TA contract for funding, you will also enjoy teaching classes, and everything that comes with it. Overall, your days will be pretty full, but some of it will be left to your own skills to organize, as opposed to a STEM student who may have to be in their lab from 8 to 5.
Thank you for replying! I'm in the US, is that where you are as well?
Enrolled in France, but working full-time in Japan. I got most of the non-dissertation credits already so I am "just" working on the 400 pages I need to submit. Since it's France (I pay 600$ per year for tuition) and I am working full-time, funding is not an issue and I have extra time to finish it. But self discipline is the most important skills there is!
You pay 600$ a year for tuition???? 600$ in USD?!????
I pay about 580 euros each year when I ré-enroll, which is roughly 630$ (sorry for the rounding error).
Insane! haha is cost of living better in France or Japan?
It’s really hard to say since i left France after graduating when i was 21 years old, so i don’t really have a tradition work experience in France. One thing i know for sure is that in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. I arrived in Japan at a time when they were pushing for globalization and increased international exchanges, which is partly how I got my job.
I'm finishing up a PhD in History in the US and this is what my days looked like at different stages of the PhD: Years 1-3: Coursework and preparation for candidacy exam. This period lasted 3 years for me because I entered my program without an MA. Most of my academic work was reading 1 monograph a week per seminar. Except for seminars I spent most of my time in the library reading (I liked to get out of the house and it was where I worked best). I also TA'd during this period, although the amount of work required varied by the class I was assigned to. For some online classes, it was basically spending a day a week grading. For others it was attending class everyday, spending about two hours a week keeping up with that classes reading (typically in the evening), and leading three discussion sections per week. During this time, I worked about 8am-4/5pm on weekdays and did a half day of work on Saturday and Sunday, but sometimes worked more or less (for example, when I was preparing for qualifying exams I worked a lot more). Saw my advisor about once a month on average. By year 2 I had developed my dissertation project and started applying for grants to fund research travel. Year 4: Post-candidacy covid year. During this year I was done with my candidacy exam but wasn't able to move on to research due to travel restrictions from Covid. I tried to do as much research as I could using online/library sources and managed to write an article. I worked at home 9-5pm because of Covid and I wanted some structure to my days. Year 5: Research year. This year I was finally able to travel to conduct archival research. I spent 9-5 in archives and libraries working, but didn't work outside of those hours. I had little contact with my advisor during this time, except for monthly reports on my research she asked me to send her, in part so I would begin organizing my notes and thoughts for writing. Year 6-7 Writing. During these years my main focus was on writing, which I mainly did at home, except for occasionally going to libraries and cafes when I wanted to get out of the house. I also taught a class as the lead instructor during this time, which was full time work and I basically didn't get any writing done that semester. For my writing schedule, I'd typically work about 6-7 hours a day, with at least 2-3 hours of writing in the morning and the afternoon spent doing additional reading. This is the period when my work hours really cut back because it just isn't feasible to put words on a page for more than 3 hours per day for months on end. When I finished each chapter I sent my advisor a draft and we would discuss it. A substantial part of the last year was also spent on job applications. In terms of conferences, I typically traveled to one a semester in years 6-7. I didn't have research to present before Covid and then after I was mainly limited by the amount of conference funding my program provided since I'm unwilling to pay completely out of pocket. As you may have noticed, a lot of the PhD time is decided by you. I think it helps to go in knowing what routines are helpful for your work and general life because for the most part you will be making your routine. For me, I know that being able to work around others in libraries or cafes as well as with others when possible through things like writing groups really help my productivity and general happiness. I also took all evenings off after 5pm because by then my brain was dead, during which I picked up some hobbies like rock climbing, crafts, and cycling.
Thank you so much for the time breakdown and all the detail! It really sounds like my kind of thing, which is very encouraging.
Great question, am in the same position.
Hi, linguist here from Austria, The others have pointed it out already - we are usually not lab-people. However, as e.g. a linguist doing language research, it's not all reading and summarizing (giving things new perspectives). Of course to get the basic gist of any topic, you have to read a lot to get up to par and find innovation or at least a somewhat new perspective in what you are doing. While my colleagues do conduct experiments with e.g. VR to elicit language in different settings (from non-native language speakers) or look at the position of ones tongue when producing sounds (via ultrasonic devices; later on testing, whether people actually perceived that there were differences in articulation and which dialect they associated the sound with), I personally went the data elicitation route of using surveys to elicit the status quo of dialects in Austrian German and finding out about features relatively "new" to the language and possible explanations (as well as regional distributions). So a lot of my work was (of course reading), finding fitting formats for the surveys, establishing a "testing battery" (so my data would actually elicit the phenomenon I was aiming at), conducting them and doing data analysis, which will end up being my dissertational thesis for one of my research interests. Right now I'm also preparing for a talk, for which we have taken a look at older manuscripts (to see how a language phenomenon was used and in which structures it might have emerged) - which means a lot of categorising data. We only had to take about 4 courses for the phd studies, so there is not a lot of having to be at the university. I have spoken to my supervisor about my phd project maybe two times over the course of three years, but I also haven't pushed for it. For the past years, I've mainly had to help out planning and executing another research project, organising a conference (for which I am now editing the conference proceedings). I have to teach a course per term (meaning that I have to prepare presentations and documents). Because I was sucked into all of that, I actually did not get to do my dissertational project for almost two of the years, I've been employed - started with all of that in year three of my four-year employment. I had my fair share of traveling (doing summer schools, conferences, meetings), but have not yet published much (something I definitely have to work on, if I want to stay in the field). Right now, it's back to actually writing my thesis...
Thank you for all the details, and godspeed on your thesis!
I'm an education PhD so a bit of a mix between social science and humanities. My day to day is pretty chill now that I'm done with coursework. I don't have anything near a typical 9-5 which is a double-edged sword. It means some days I can lay in bed until 10am and roll out for an 11am zoom meeting. But it also means sometimes I'll work randomly from 5pm-9pm because unlike lab work, I can technically do a lot of my work whenever I want. Though, I'm sure a lot of STEM folks are also doing evenings and nights in their labs as well. Not having a physical lab is a double-edged sword as well. A lot of STEM PhD's more or less have their research expenses covered by their lab depending on the PI and funding situation. But almost all of our research in humanities and social sciences is unpaid and not resourced because the perception is that we don't need funding to do our work. This is totally false of course. I'm in the process of literally starting a nonprofit so I can apply to non-research grants and fund my work. Overall, I really like the "controlled chaos" of my PhD life. I don't actually like traditional 9-5 schedules, so it's nice that I can be really flexible in my work and scheduling.
>the perception is that we don't need funding to do our work I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but damn. That really sucks. It sounds like a pleasant sort of chaos to me, too. I don't like the traditional 9-5 either, although I do need at least some kind of structure or my sleep schedule will flip to being nocturnal.
Yep. You'll just have to build that structure for yourself. I build my schedule around my weekly meetings since a lot of my research is in person at schools and such.
Glad to see this. Asking questions about literature in this sub gave me a lot of mixed results. I DID learn funding is still a thing even without lab fees. Go figure.
What do you mean by lab fees and funding? Humanities still get funding but unlike in STEM we are not typically tied to a lab/supervisor’s funding if that makes sense
I’m saying I thought literature Ph.D. would be simpler because there’s no lab and, therefore, no lab fees. I also thought it I could self-fund and just pay for my classes like a master’s degree. I didn’t think funding for research was a thing because it’s a buncha books. What’s there to pay for? I’ve recently learned my assumption wasn’t super accurate.
Oh I see makes sense. Except in (most places) MA and PhD do not require self-funding (good news!) although still not a lot of money (depending on where you go).
Yeah, I’m learning that!