Question: How much spare time do you get?

Ken Dutton-Regester answered on 12 Mar 2012:

For me, I haven’t had much spare time recently because I have been trying to finish up my thesis (or PhD). A thesis is basically a really big assignment that summarises 3-5 years of hard work (think about the size of a novel- actually my uni states that a thesis should not be bigger than 100,000 words). Once you finish it, you then become a Dr. (wooo!!). When you’re doing your PhD you are still considered a student and as such, you can sometimes feel guilty if you haven’t made progress on it (even though you have 3 years to do it, it goes by quick).

After finishing your thesis (I am about to hand mine in), you then start a job. If you decide to continue down the researcher career pathway, on average, you can work anywhere from 40-60 hours a week. Usually it’s a personal decision to how much over the standard 40 hour week you do. Obviously the more you do, the more productive you are in terms of making important discoveries and publishing your results in journals. If you are like me, you don’t mind putting in the extra hours as you get addicted to the thrill of making new discoveries (Yes, I do realise I sound like a massive nerd as I write this).

There are also a number of other directions and jobs you can choose to do once you have a PhD, and is why having a PhD is cool. Some of these jobs, such as working in industry (pharmaceutical company) have more set hours (so a standard 40 hour working week).

In summary, and in my experience, science is a flexible career so you can make it what you want to be. I know this year I am going to set time aside to start working on my fitness levels (want to work on sculpting my massive biceps, or more likely, the lack thereof).