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Asked by CarmarcoBossman to Anna, James, Joe, Leonie, Olivia on 6 Mar 2015.
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James Pope answered on 6 Mar 2015:
Hi Andrew,
This really varies by degree. For my undergraduate degree in geology, I would have about 8 hours of lectures and 12-15 hours of practical classes (looking at rocks or working in a chemistry lab). I would then have to do reading of textbooks for the lectures and write up lab reports for the practicals, but more or less my out of university work was less than my time in lectures/practicals.
That was pretty much the same for my 4 years. I enjoyed it, because it gave my week a lot of structure. During my masters degree, there was almost no practicals, but a lot more out of university work, with presentations and reports. I also had more lectures, about 15 hours a week.
A PhD is very varied, teh first year for mine was lots of reading and visiting people, like scientists at the Met Office to learn about what I was going to do. The 2nd year until the end of my 3rd year was all about running my model simulations, and the final year was about writing the work up into the final thesis and trying to find a job.
I think my workloads have been pretty varied, but the workload during my masters year was probably the hardest of all the time I spent at University. I think then I felt under the most time pressure.
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Joe Spencer answered on 6 Mar 2015:
Hi Andrew Howell.
Hard to answer this question as it varies.
During my degree the workload was quite alot in my first and second year (about 10 hours of lectures a week plus another 5 hours of lab stuff)
During my 3rd year the work load decreased as they sort of expect you to be able to manage yourself.
In my 4th year the workload was all down to how much I wanted to put in. I spent the year making graphene devices as part of a big project. I wanted to succeed so worked pretty hard on this, but it paid off as I got some very good results and a 1st class degree in physics out of it.My PhD again, pretty much the same, you get out what you put in. It’s weird because one week I can be super busy everyday and have all these deadlines and wonder how I have enough hours in the day to complete anything. Then the next week I’ll have nothing to do and be twiddling my thumbs trying to think of something productive to do.
Overall work load isn’t too bad, and whatever workload you do get it’s all worth it in the end.
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Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes answered on 8 Mar 2015:
The official workload of my PhD was one of a full time job (40 hours a week). Sometimes I got stuck with programming problems, or I would have a small writer’s block. These times I was not anywhere near 40 productive hours of work. But other times, especially in the last year, I had a lot of things that I wanted to finish, so I would work much more hours. In my experience, how much hours you spend on a PhD depends to a large extent on your own motivation.
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Anna Ashton answered on 8 Mar 2015:
Hi Andrew,
During my degree the workload wasn’t too bad. The first couple of years I’d have about 25 hours of lectures or practicals a week, and then essays and lab reports to do around that. The final year was pretty busy though, but that was partly because I worked really hard so I could get a PhD afterwards!The workload for my PhD is bigger, but in a good way! It’s because I’m working on something that no-one has looked at before so there’s loads of interesting questions that I’d like to do experiments to try and answer.
But doing a PhD is more flexible, I’m my own boss in a way because I’m responsible for my project so I can pretty much set my own deadlines. Still, doing a PhD is like having a full-time job, I usually go to uni 9.30 til 5.30 everyday.
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Olivia Lynes answered on 9 Mar 2015:
My degree was a lot worse than my PhD in terms of how much work I had to do, but that’s only because you are learning new things all the time and have a lot more deadlines. I think I had about 30 hours of contact time (lectures, labs and tutorials) each week in my degree plus all the coursework and note writing that goes alone with that.
Now I’m doing my PhD my hours are more flexible but I try to stick to 9.30-5/6 each day and my time is more focused on one subject rather than split between lots of different things. I guess that is why it seems like a lighter workload because I’m not always rushing to finish one thing so I can do the next.
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