Postgrad students-How many hours a week do you work?

simu

Just wondering, how many hours a week on average ppl doing postgrads spend at their work.

dudara

At the moment, I'm in here 9/10is until 8ish in the evening. It varies however, I leave earlier the evenings I'm training. I might be late other mornings.

I tend to take either Sat or Sun off for the sake of my sanity and I do a half-day the other weekend day.

Physics graduate working in elec eng dept in UCC on semiconductor transport

dictatorcat

I'd be interested in the posts here. My hours are generally 10 to 7, with fluctuations (sometimes wild ones!) about these hours. I do occasional saturdays but very rarely. The foreign postgrads and postdocs in the various labs appear to have no lives outside of college

In research, Chemistry/Physics ish stuff.

simu

If you also include what subject you're doing.

Me, I'm doing a research master's in Irish and my hours vary widely from week to week - usually 20-30 hours a week but it's been strange over the summer as I've had to travel around to different libraries.

cruiserweight

I am doing a PhD in computer science(artificial intelligence) and it varies. The latest that I would ever be in would be 10 and the earliest that I would leave would be 4, so 6 hours would the shortest day I would do! But generally 9-6, unless I have a deadline for a paper or something, then it could be anything like 8-10!

But I find it varies quite a bit depending on what I am doing. For example if I spend a week just reading 10-4 is typical, with some reading at home in the evenings.

Sarn

At the end of the day as it's your postgrad you gain or lose from the amount of time you invest. The only person you'd be fooling would be yourself.

From what I've observed and experienced it seems to depend on who your supervisor is and what field you're in (I'm a pharmacologist). In my lab it's fairly flexible, you could have people wandering in up to about midday but stay in late (or not, depending on what they were up to the night before). It's only when people start making a habit of working short days coupled with limited project advancement, that we'd start to comment on it.

Of course just because you're in work doesn't mean you are working. There's no point going 'I was in for 40 hours this week' but only doing a bit of actual work.

Hand on heart, somedays I'd work an hour or two, other days up to 9 hours (depended on what I was doing). But then I tended to work weekends (the way my experiments worked). The worst I ever did was work 3 months solid without a day off (just before I finished my PhD), almost drove me nuts, they weren't full days though. Work always seemed to go in fits and starts, crazy weeks followed by easy weeks.

Use a combination of your own judgement coupled with what your supervisor is saying to see how much time to invest.