<p>Hey everyone! I am (hopefully) a to-be graduate student going for my PhD in the US. Originally I am from Europe and things are handled somewhat differently here. So I was just wondering.. do grad students get days off or breaks? Of course I am motivated and don't mind working but a couple days off never hurt. :) I don't think it'd be smart do ask that during an interview..</p>
<p>Well, there are certainly weekends, holidays, etc. Of course, some of that time should be spent studying and/or doing research.</p>
<p>Being a graduate student is like being a student and having a full-time job. Leisure time can be at a premium.</p>
<p>Well, without knowing what your focus will be, it’s hard to know what kind of breaks/vacations you will get. I doubt there is any field/focus that doesn’t allow students to have at least 1 or 2 weeks a year.</p>
<p>My field is in biology and I can speak from my experiences. The short answer is it depends on your research and your PI … </p>
<p>I worked in one lab that had a colony of zebrafish. The PhD student was responsible for taking care of them. However, he was able to have time off if he found someone to cover. On the flip side of that, I am currently doing research studying insect ecology and this research is seasonal. I have break from research from end of NOV until mid-April. I also work in an watershed algal monitoring lab and the PI is very relaxed about time off. His view is that I need to get my monthly samples completed, regardless if I do them all in 2 weeks or spread them out over the entire month. </p>
<p>As I said, this is from my experience and every PI/lab have different idea of the appropriate amount of time off.</p>
<p>I am due to start my internship in a lab. My PI told me not to even think about work-life balance, he said when he was a grad student and post-doc, we was working 90-100hrs a week. Thats roughly 12-14hours per day. Sleeping overnight in the lab is pretty common as everybody has their own sleeping bags!! Public holidays = extra time to work. I hope I am in for something real hard and hope that I can take the heat.</p>
<p>Oh wow, that would definitely be a downside… 
I am thinking about a PhD in the life sciences. I don’t mind working hard but I’d still like to have somewhat of a private life…</p>
<p>Making plans like holidays/family events are up in the air until close to the date, so if your family expects to see you, they may be very disappointed.
Think long and hard if you want 6 years of your youth devoted to long hours and low pay with no guarantees.</p>
<p>Hmm, perhaps I should rephrase my question. It is set that I want to go for a PhD and I realize all the downsides of being a grad student, I am just thinking about where I want to do it. Where I am from, PhD students are employed by the university and while the pay is low and they definitely work 40+ hrs/week, they get all the benefits normal employees receive. This includes the standard amount of days off, 15-20 days/year. Is there a similar rule of thumb for PhD students in the U.S.?</p>
<p>There is no rule of thumb that I’m aware of. From the above posts and what I said in my original post, it is all up to your PI.</p>
<p>It is indeed all up to the PI - if they say you can be gone, then you can be gone, if not then you stay. Most advisors are NOT trying to kill you (I have never met a 100hr a week student), but your ability to take leave will depend a lot on the progress of your research and your assigned tasks - fall behind and you can kiss vacations goodbye, keep ahead of things and you can probably take a decent amount of time off. And of course you do have schedule constraints related to your research and your professor’s schedule - if your planned vacation time overlaps your PI’s conference schedule, or if your research requires your attendence during that time, then you better find a new vacation.</p>
<p>Much of this of course assumes in-house funding, like a TA or RA position. If you have external funding (I do, through my employer) then your schedule is generally your own. I take vacations and days off when I choose, and my advisor doesn’t really have any leverage to prevent me so long as I keep up with my research.</p>
<p>Yea i agree too, its all up to the PI. Some sadistic PIs will expect their students to work like a horse. some cool PIs will just generally be relaxed about your schedule as long as you have data to present during the lab meeting. do note that my current PI is like that, the PIs I worked for in the past tend to be very relaxed about such stuffs.
But obviously you can see the publications output, the hardworking PI lab usually have top-notch publications in Nature, Science while the relaxed PIs lab tend to publish in lesser known journals. I guess there is a tradeoff for everything.</p>
<p>I would advise you to find out more on the PI temperament and also on the lab culture, are they happy, productive? I read some pretty horror stories of grad students who were literally worked to the bones and were buried under so much stress. e.g. is Jason Altom. go google and read his story. I try to brace myself up for the long journey if I chose to pursue a PhD. This is a prob 5-6 yr journey, you won’t want it to be an unhappy one.</p>
<p>Agreed on checking out the lab culture. I talked privately to grad students in all the lab groups where I was accepted so that I could better understand what it would be like if I enrolled. It was probably the single biggest factor in choosing my school.</p>
<p>Thanks for your answers… I guess I’ll see what the lab culture is like when I do lab rotations and hopefully I’ll find a group with a more relaxed atmosphere. 
Of course there are always times when you have to work more and others when you don’t, but there has to be a balance for me.</p>
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<p>Not sure about other schools, but I know mine has two weeks of vacation guaranteed for all grad students no matter what your funding comes from. That said, lab culture definitely decides if you will be spending your weekends in lab or not. </p>
<p>I know in my current lab most people work around 40 hours a week, yet we still manage to put papers in Science, Nature, and those journals. I think a lot of it depends on your field and what sort of experiments you’re running. Obviously if you’re doing something that requires massive amount of trials then it’ll require a lot of work. For my own research the biggest issue is getting my experiment working. Once it works I can usually do everything I need for a paper in about a week.</p>
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<p>Be careful here. I know that with some PI’s (read: many PI’s) including my own, if you start making progress too rapidly, their expectations will rise radically and then once the progress slows back down you will end up working overtime to try and maintain that rate to keep the advisor happy. I realize that is somewhat cynical, but it legitimately does happen sometimes.</p>
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<p>I know that feeling well. Ah the price we pay to spend only 75% of the time in front of a computer instead of 100% like the poor souls doing numerical work…</p>
<p>I’ve heard some grad programs pay to send their grad students on trips to keep them from burning themselves out, but maybe that is not common.</p>
<p>^to conferences to present a paper</p>
<p>I know of a research group that goes to a retreat once a year or so, but they’ve got more money than they know what to do with, so that’s an option for them.</p>
<p>With my group we generally only get funding to go to conferences we can drive to. :(</p>
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<p>Honestly I believe profesosrs like that are exploiting their graduate students and post-docs. There’s no reason why you can’t be a successful graduate student and not work 14 hour days, or even 12 hour days on a regular basis, even in the life sciences. I think it’s pretty common for grad students to work 60-80 hours a week and I know that I’ve rejoiced on many a public holiday because it would give me more time to write. I actually look forward to Christmas break for relaxing but also for the writing time! But 100-hour weeks are ridiculous. We’re not investment bankers.</p>
<p>It also depends largely on your advisor…it’s really nice that your university gives grad students standard benefits because that is definitely not the norm. My PI is really laid back and does not believe in grad students working 16 hour days. He also does not believe in coming in on Fridays or working on your birthday, lol. I still get a lot done, but have a reasonable work-life balance. And this is from a guy who is currently juggling like three grants and is writing more, so he’s productive.</p>
<p>I usually take off around a day and a half, maybe 2 days, per week. And I go home for a week 1-2 times a year. Sometimes I take a few days or a week “off” at the end of the semester, but that really just means doing work in NJ with my family instead of at school.</p>
<p>A note about external funding. People will say that your schedule is essentially your own, more so than an in-house position. That’s theoretically true but in practice, if you are working with your advisor as a PI in his lab it’s not really that true. You have more flexibility than the students on TAships and RAships - for instance, I only TA when I want to, and I only come into my cubicle when I want to, because I prefer to work at home. I was also able to take a non-academic internship this summer when otherwise I’d have to maintain my 20 hours a week as an RA, and I can generally tell instead of ask when I need to take some downtime. On the other hand, though you are still expected to work for your advisor. In fields where you need his or her data to write your dissertation and get published, it’s unwise to bring up the fact that you have external funding so you don’t have to do anything, lol. I know that sounds silly, but I actually have a colleague who has external funding and brings it up ALL THE TIME that she’s not actually required to do anything she doesn’t want to. My PI does NOT like it.</p>
<p>I guess her advisor isn’t actually required to graduate her if he doesn’t want to :D</p>
<p>In general, graduate students tend to take off 2-3 weeks per year, although they, like their PIs, are tied to the academic calendar, especially the first two years when they are taking classes. Some universities include a statement in the funding letter that students are allowed only two weeks of vacation, although the reality is generally slightly more. Other universities don’t state it officially while still expecting students to adhere to a similar schedule. Some graduate students disappear during the summer, and this is frowned upon; these students are usually those that are on shaky ground to begin with because they don’t understand the nature of being a graduate student.</p>
<p>And others are correct: much depends on the PI. Some will expect you to adhere to the two week policy while others will be more lenient. </p>
<p>At times, you will feel as though you are working every minute of every day, and at others, you will find that you have more or less a normal working schedule. You <em>will</em> be able to have time to go out with friends during non-crunch times. You <em>will</em> be able to go home to Europe for a week or so, especially around the winter holiday break and at some point in the summer. You will NOT be able to go home for a couple of months. I don’t know of any PI who will continue to support you if you become one of those disappearing graduate students. The program will fund you to perform research, and it will not look kindly on prolonged absences.</p>