<p>I'm considering going to graduate school, but I'm not sure...I've heard you have almost no free time and that really worries me. Would I really have no free time on weekends or in the week? Do they really expect you to work more than 40hrs per week? :/</p>
<p>DO you mean for a PhD? If so, you will definitely be working more than 40 hours per week, but there are 168 hours in a week. Counting out the sleeping hours ( 9 hours per day), you still have 60 hours left. Let’s say you work 70 hours per week, that still leaves 30 hours of free time a week. So, you will have free time as long as you mange your time well.</p>
<p>I guess masters and then PHD. I guess 30 hours per week doesn’t sound so bad. I’m trying to decide between going to school to be a physician’s assistant or going on to grad school. I haven’t done research yet though, so I’m not sure if I’d like it and want to do it for a large chunk of my life…</p>
<p>Yea, I would suggest getting 2 or so years of research (some of it full-time) before making a decision like that. Graduate school has no hourly limit, so you work however long it takes to finish your experiments and graduate on time. This usually ends up taking a huge chunk of time out of a day. After graduate school, if you chose to stay in academia, you will also be working very long hours.</p>
<p>I would not suggest research as a path if you are worrying about the time commitment. Research is definitely for people who pursue it as a passion. Now, you can get a PhD and pursue a ton of other avenues that don’t require the huge time commitment but you will have to put up with a lot for 5 -6 years to get to that stage.</p>
<p>The two careers you have lined up are quite different, so really figure out what you want from both, in the short and long term.</p>
<p>As MaceVindaloo points out, there is no hourly limit for graduate school. At times, it will eat up your life – and other times you’ll be able to get home for dinner or go out with friends or whatever you want to do. If you can’t stand the idea of going for stretches of time when you live and breathe your field, then graduate school probably isn’t for you. That’s why everyone on this forum is so adamant about students being sure of what they want to study. You have to really love the field to get through the high stress times. But you will be able to do stuff other than work. </p>
<p>For a PhD in the sciences, when you are expected to work in a lab in addition to doing your coursework, the first two years are the toughest in terms of time commitment. When you “graduate” to working on your dissertation research full-time, you (generally) have more flexibility in the hours you keep, although, of course, you can’t leave an experiment at a critical time, and you should attend lab meetings, invited talks, etc.</p>
<p>My daughter is in her 2nd year and she is very very busy but still has time for an outside interest (music oriented.) Between coursework, teaching duties, research and meetings she is busy all day and often doing work at night. But she does get out and has a non school based social group, and well as friends at school, roomates to make dinner with etc. I think it helps her social life that she is in a college town, with short commute and everything close by.</p>
<p>For a PhD - yes, they really do expect you to work more than 40 hours a week. I’d say it’s more like a 60-hour work week, and can be more if you have to do lab work. It’s not true that you have NO free time, but it’s certainly not comparable to working a 9-5 and kicking back after work. You <em>will</em> have very little time for non-academic pursuits - but most graduate students do have a non-academic hobby or something they like to do.</p>
<p>I’m in a PhD program (third year) and I can generally take off one day a week and do minimal to no work, and then maybe an evening a week. Any more than that and I feel like I’m behind in my work. I’d say I spend on average 10-12 hours a day on academic stuff whether it’s taking classes, reading, meeting with my lab or advisors, etc.</p>
<p>You will also not be sleeping 9 hours a day. You’ll get 6-8 hours of sleep a night and that’s if you MAKE yourself go to sleep when you know you should.</p>
<p>If you are deciding between research and going to school to be a physician’s assistant I STRONGLY encourage you to get some research experience. A lot of people say you should try it and if you don’t like it, leave, but leaving a PhD program is a lot more complicated. You get emotionally invested in the work and it’s difficult to leave. Besides, to be a physician’s assistant you’re going to need some experience in the healthcare field - so why not train to be an EMT and do that for a few years while getting some volunteer research experience as well? Then you can decide what you like better, patient care or research.</p>
<p>If you are looking to go to grad school simply because you don’t want to find a job and want to delay living in the real world you are in a for a world of hurtin’. Doing a PhD is a full time job AND more. It’s also low paying and stressful. There will be some time to relax every once in a while, but don’t expect to be able to party all the time. You will definitely have to work on the weekends, 12-14 hour days sometimes, and well into the night on Fridays.</p>
<p>We have free time. And the amount of free time you have really depends on your advisor and yourself. I know lots of PhD students who don’t work weekends and have lots of free time. It really depends.</p>
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<p>And it’s the same once you enter academia. People not familiar with academia think that professors teach a few courses a year and get summers off. How cushy is that? Most professors put in well over 40 hours a week, and yes, they work in the summer even when they aren’t teaching, although obviously their schedules are much more flexible.</p>
<p>Most professionals, even with “only” a bachelors degree, are not going to work only 40 hours per week- that is for hourly employees punching a time clock who would otherwise get overtime pay. Salaried employees of all kinds, not just upper management, expect to work many more than 40 hours per week. That is one reason to enjoy your profession. If you like what you are doing you can immerse yourself in it most of your waking hours, and need to at the student level. Expect as many hours while studying to be a PA. Make your decision based on what you see yourself doing most of your time. A profession is not something you turn on/off entering and leaving your workplace. Even if you work a typical 8 hour “day at the office” you will find times when you feel you need to spend more time learning something, organizing something… Work you like is fun.</p>
<p>It depends on what you’re doing. I got a Master’s and had plenty of free time, however that is a very different animal from a PhD.</p>
<p>The fact that you are inquiring about free time during graduate school says it all. Do not apply to graduate school if you are not up to the challenge or enslavement.</p>
<p>I agree with jaberwocky. I had plenty of free-time in grad school, but this is also because my part-time job allowed me a lot of down time to do reading and school work if needed. I also was probably able to skimp on reading assignments (as we didn’t always discuss them in class) that I probably wouldn’t have been able to do as a PhD student. Really the only time it got busy for me was the last 2 weeks of the quarter when I had to write my final papers, but even then it wasn’t that bad.</p>