time PhD, full-time work: is this a bad combination?
Outside of the US, it is quite common to work full time and study part time for a PhD (amongst other reasons, because funding is so very hard to come by, and when available hardly constitutes a living wage). It’s not all doom and gloom. I completed a research degree part-time and by distance (here, you can do 100% thesis degrees at the masters level) and here’s what worked for me: – blocked out two evenings a week for literature searching, obtaining and reading. I didn’t do this from my computer but rather went down to several libraries (that I was not affiliated with) to do all of this while in the building to reduce distraction. – another evening a week for writing up, working on other bits and pieces. – took a couple of two week trips to my university which was also the city my parents lived in. Stayed at their place and timed the trips around the bulk of my primary research analysis and writing up. I wrote up half of the thesis in a week. The key is reducing distraction. I took the
I think it all depends on what stage of the PhD you’re currently in. If you’re ABD and want to work full time, I think it is completely doable (I did it, and I’m the laziest person I know). This is especially true in the museum field. I work at a major museum and I would say that many of our assistant curators are working on their dissertations. My path was similar to that of wingless_angel. I worked two evenings a week, one full weekend day, and one half weekend day. I would add that I never would have completed the dissertation if I hadn’t been working full time. When I was a “full time student,” I worked a part-time (unrelated) job for $$ and taught two adjunct classes per semester. On an given day, I would have to choose dissertation or grading/prepping for classes. Because the classes were always coming up, I made zero progress on the dissertation and was gripped for years by financial anxiety. I finally decided that this wasn’t working and quit graduate school (as an ABD). I work
