Social welfare allowance & PHD?

baby and crumble

hey all. I'm a few months into my PhD in trinity, and money is rather tight! I'm in receipt of a scholarship, so I know I'm a lot luckier than some postgrads, but i could use some extra money.

A friend of mine has been doing her PHD for ages, and she mentioned something about the Supplementary Welfare Allowance- anyone here been in receipt of this? It seems my friend has been, but on the site it says you don't normally qualify if you're in fulltime work (over 30 hours p/w) or in fulltime education...

I'm not asking anyone to do my research on this for me, just wondering if anyone on here had managed to swing it.

thanks for any replies!!

Zo

petethebrick

Have you thought about doing some teaching with the VEC? All they require is a degree (and a TEFL cert if you want to teach that). i teach english, basic maths and computing for 8 hours a week. It's ~42eur per hour so thats a good chunk of extra money each week for little work (tues,thurs evening 6-10).

baby and crumble

Hi.

Thanks for the info, the problem with that is that it's a stipulation of my scholarship that I don't take on any outside work in my first year, and then after that it's 'preferred' that it's within some field related to my research. So I am fully planning to do tutoring and some lecturing next year in my department, but sadly tis not to be at the moment...

€42 an hour :eek: though, that's not to be sniffed at...

Red Alert

I think postgrads are paid very much near to the breadline which isn't good if the government are really serious about moving Ireland up the OECD rankings.

Fixed your title!

baby and crumble

Thank you Red Alert!!

yeah, I've broken down how many hours I work a week and offset it against the scholarship. I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaay below minimum wage! Oh well, things could be a lot worse, so I'm not going to complain. I'd just be nice to be able to afford a coke every now and again!

dory

Have you any subject you could give grinds in? I make €40/hour giving Irish grinds to people. Is your BA in any Leaving Cert subject? Even people on your BA now might be interested in what you can teach them.
No one would know who you're giving grinds to so you wouldn't upset your schol people.

Red Alert

Grinds are a handy way to go actually!

petethebrick

zoegh wrote: »

Hi.

Thanks for the info, the problem with that is that it's a stipulation of my scholarship that I don't take on any outside work in my first year, and then after that it's 'preferred' that it's within some field related to my research. So I am fully planning to do tutoring and some lecturing next year in my department, but sadly tis not to be at the moment...

€42 an hour :eek: though, that's not to be sniffed at...

I work at a university and almost every PhD student works part time -few in a field related to their study. It's not a big deal. What scholarship did you get - government scholarships generally don't allow you to tutor/lecture in the first year of your PhD

baby and crumble

Well my undergrad minor subject was geogrpahy (my major was philosophy- it's still not useful for anything!!!!) so that mightn't be a bad plan. Would have to do some refreshing, I finished my degree 5 years ago now.

My God, that's scary!

My scholarship is a mix- 1 year IRCHSS, 2 years from my School. So i really don't want to sour things with the School, or even run the risk of it just in case, you know?