My experiences as a PhD student

melancholly

Cardelia wrote: »

In my experience (three universities, four different research labs, three degrees and a postdoc) it is the students who work the longest hours who make the least efficient use of their time. Is this true of everybody? No, of course not. But it has been my experience that those students who faff, gossip, surf the internet and generally waste time are those who end up spending long hours in the lab. They're also the people who moan the most about others leaving "early" when in reality it's their own poor time-management which has led to their spending weekends catching up on work which wasn't completed during the week.

i think i'm more efficient now that i'm nearly finished, that's for certain. but a lot of being a phd student is learning how to do things - experimental design, new methods of data collection, analysis etc. so you have a steep learning curve and waste a lot of time doing things wrong - but that's the point. a phd student isn't meant to start as a perfect independent researcher; that's the end point! i think it's incredibly unfair to suggest that only lazy students work outside of hours as i know that that isn't always the case (or even often). sadly i'm in an area with 20 new publications a week that are relevant to my work. keeping on top of that is a huge task!

yes i'm on here surfing the internet, but when you have a full day set up for data entry, it's impossible to that without a break (and indeed a bad idea as mistakes creep in). i also know that i won't get it all done by 5pm doing it this way, but accuracy is more important. even when i do leave at 4.30, it's to go home and have a break and then get reading done in the evenings.

becky170

Cardelia wrote: »

But it has been my experience that those students who faff, gossip, surf the internet and generally waste time are those who end up spending long hours in the lab. They're also the people who moan the most about others leaving "early" when in reality it's their own poor time-management which has led to their spending weekends catching up on work which wasn't completed during the week.

I do agree that faffing, wasting time gossiping surfing the internet and poor time-management can result in you having to work late and working weekends. I try to be as efficient as possible (writing out weekly plans helps a great deal) and surfing the interent and writing e-mails waits until I get home (I'm on holiday at the moment which is why I'm writing this now!), but sometimes things go wrong, meetings get in the way and I've got talks to go to, so before you know it's 5pm and you still got loads to do I generally try to do 8.30am until 5.30am, I prefer to get in, do what I need to do and leave. Anyway everyone works differently, and people get more efficient as they get more comfortable with what they are doing, especially when all the trouble shooting is out the way!

bigdavieh

melancholly wrote: »

from 'what i have wrote' :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
with my multiple publications in journals and at conferences, i'm more than happy with my abilities. at least i don't insult someone else with grammar like that! i know that that particular day for me was exhausting - i don't know how you can justify extrapolating that out to the rest of my working life! i maintain that your ability to establish facts rather than inferences is too poor for you to be genuine

if you were actually doing a phd, you would realise that the time spent on your project isn't the issue. it's the fact that it consumes your entire life so that you go to sleep thinking about what type of analysis to do and wake up thinking about how to deal with a new reference that has contradictory results to your work. that is what is most stressful for me

Very good, you have managed to spot an error I have made in quickly typing a message on an internet forum and used that to avoid the other issues in the post. Well done. I could easily say "at least i don't insult someone else whilst being incapable of using capital letters when necessary" but, surprisingly, I would rather rely on more intelligent points.

Try and back out of it all you want but originally you said you worked for nine hours and that it de-humanised you in some way. I pointed out that I thought that was pathetic, not once did I try and "justify extrapolating that out to the rest of my working life". In fact, the more you post the more I get the impression you are one of these sad, pathetic individuals who spends not enough time actually working as opposed to telling anyone unfortunate to be within earshot about how hard you work and what a tough life you have. Get over yourself.

Oh, and if you could provide links to your published work that would be great. I look forward to reading it.

BubbleFrogette

No wonder bigdavieh is so angry - he lives in the knife crime, obesity and drug-addicted capital of Europe. So go easy on him.....

melancholly

hehehe definitely a troll, but i'll bite!

i would send you links to my articles (thanks for assuming that i'd only have one single published article) but i'd sooner stay anonymous thanks (i post on other boards about personal things and i don't feel the need to share my name)! i do only have 3 journal articles, but two are first author so i guess that helps. i have also done a few posters (some at very good conferences and some at less prestigious ones).

but as it goes, getting publications from phds doesn't always happen and doesn't prove that you are more or less able - some people take 2.5 years getting a new method just right and then only get one publishable result at the end. that's annoying but not uncommon. others do longitudinal studies so can't get 5 high impact factor articles out on the way. after a postdoc, you need articles; after a phd, it's a bonus but not a requirement.

i also complained about one day (which FWIW involved interviewing people with very traumatic backgrounds - 6 hours with crying people is draining and difficult). next time i'll be more careful incase some small minded idiot decides to pick holes in it.

i find the words you are putting in my mouth about complaining how hard my life is really odd - i love what i do. it gets too much sometimes and everyone has a whinge, but i have put in numerous posts on MSE that i think intellectual freedom and the chance to do what interests you far outweighs the bad side. but don't let the facts get in the way of you feeling better than everyone else!

bigdavieh

melancholly wrote: »

hehehe definitely a troll, but i'll bite!

i would send you links to my articles (thanks for assuming that i'd only have one single published article) but i'd sooner stay anonymous thanks (i post on other boards about personal things and i don't feel the need to share my name)! i do only have 3 journal articles, but two are first author so i guess that helps. i have also done a few posters (some at very good conferences and some at less prestigious ones).

but as it goes, getting publications from phds doesn't always happen and doesn't prove that you are more or less able - some people take 2.5 years getting a new method just right and then only get one publishable result at the end. that's annoying but not uncommon. others do longitudinal studies so can't get 5 high impact factor articles out on the way. after a postdoc, you need articles; after a phd, it's a bonus but not a requirement.

i also complained about one day (which FWIW involved interviewing people with very traumatic backgrounds - 6 hours with crying people is draining and difficult). next time i'll be more careful incase some small minded idiot decides to pick holes in it.

i find the words you are putting in my mouth about complaining how hard my life is really odd - i love what i do. it gets too much sometimes and everyone has a whinge, but i have put in numerous posts on MSE that i think intellectual freedom and the chance to do what interests you far outweighs the bad side. but don't let the facts get in the way of you feeling better than everyone else!

OK, this is going to be my last post on this as I think it is taking up too much of both my time and yours by the looks of it.

a) I wouldn't say I am a 'troll' - to me a troll is someone who posts the stuff to get a response but doesn't really believe what he is saying, they are just saying the thing they know will antagonise people the most. In contrast, I stand by everything I have said and they are my genuine opinions. Whether that is better or worse than being a troll I'm not sure

b) You have once again tried to use a typo I have made to score a point which isn't the most sophisticated of arguments now is it? I wasn't "assuming that i'd only have one single published article" - you already told me you had multiple publications so why on earth would I assume you only had one?

c) This infamous day of yours gets worse and worse with each message you post. I disagree that I was being a "small minded idiot". The fact is yours was one of the first messages on the thread so I quoted it and commented on it based upon what you had written. This is a board for discussions and I took what someone else had said and gave my opinion on it. What else you expect me to do I'm not sure.

d) I have not put words in your mouth. Check your posts on this thread, every single one before the one quoted above has been complaining about some aspect of doing a Ph.D. Even the flexibility being "great" was undermined by your supervisors making you feel guilty. Read back what you have written OBJECTIVELY and you will agree what I have assumed is pretty reasonable.

e) However, regardless of all that, thanks for at least having the intelligence to take the time to put down some interesting points of view as opposed to BubbleFrogette with her intelligent and insightful comments. Seriously, if that is all you have to offer to the debate I worry about the standard of your thesis.

BubbleFrogette

You really don't need to worry about my standards bigdavieh - I received my PhD several years ago and my thesis is already in the British Library. The research has been published in FEBS Letters, The Journal of Biological Chemistry & PNAS. I've left bench science now and work in Scientific IP - I pay higher rate tax and I love my job.

I suggest you worry about the standard of your own thesis since you haven't yet passed your PhD - don't go worrying about the standards of people who have already been there and done that.

pandora205

Goodness - this thread turned nasty didn't it?

For those of you who are studying, hi. There are quite a few of us on the 'Dissertation Motivation' thread, though not just at postgrad level.

(I'm on a part time taught doctorate, so rather different from a research degree. I work full time as well, plus have family etc so I'm pretty busy too).

cupid_s

I can't believe how nasty some people (person) on here is being.

I'll quickly share my experience. I was given broken equipment to use for 15 months. Everyone outside the lab agreed it would be impossible for me to get results on it (i even tried a different set elsewhere and it worked fine but I wasn't allowed to use that as someone else was at the time and it wasn't mine to use) but my supervisor was having none of it and expected me to work with it for 10 hours every day telling me i was 'almost there' for months on end. If I wanted to get any other work done so that my time wasn't being completely wasted and i had at least some data I had to do that evenings and weekends.

Needless to say I got very little done in that time. Add that to the fact that some lab experiments were 18 hours long and I had to repeat them for 6 different drugs, 4 times each. Please someone tell me how I could have finished in less than 3 years simply working 9-5 (and then I'll knock you out).

melancholly

bigdavieh wrote: »

e) However, regardless of all that, thanks for at least having the intelligence to take the time to put down some interesting points of view as opposed to BubbleFrogette with her intelligent and insightful comments. Seriously, if that is all you have to offer to the debate I worry about the standard of your thesis.

well, BubbleFrogette said what we were all thinking (at least the complete tw*t part!), so you might want to retract that.