The Precarious Summer Vacation of a PhD Student
For most people, the image of being a student is probably one of habit. With a set schedule of classes, seminars, and exams, students know where to go when, and when there are no classes, they spend a significant amount of time in libraries and study rooms completing their assignments and prepare for exams. The student life is imagined to be a very regimented one, where the student would know exactly where to go and what to do during the course of their semesters. Their only free time would be during summer and winter vacations when they are free to take up jobs or internships in preparation for full-time jobs.
That impression of the student life is more or less applicable for undergraduates and even for Master's students who complete a set number of courses for graduation. But at the Ph.D. level, such depiction becomes a bit of stretch. Sure, Ph.D. students are still required to take a certain number of courses, where they build up necessary skills to conduct independent research. But even when compared to Master's students, the number of courses are so few and the coursework such a small portion of the overall degree-acquiring process that the regimented student life is not really there.
Instead, Ph.D. students are required to independently create their own schedules for conducting research, with a vague goal of when to complete and hand in a dissertation for defense. When to collect data, when to do the analyses, and when to actually write the dissertation are mostly up to the student him or herself, often with little guidance from academic advisors, who are generally too busy with their own teaching and research to micromanage. The fact that the schedule is self-created means that the Ph.D. student can have no vacation or have vacation all the time, depending on how meticulously research is done.
For the unorganized, having so much leeway can be an enormous source of anxiety. With the deadline for submitting dissertation years in the indeterminable future, the present seems to be awash with opportunities to procrastinate and work on matters not directly related to the dissertation. On the contrary, those who are really anxious to finish the degree as soon as possible may be holed up in libraries day in and day out, piecing together a long research paper with little knowledge of what exactly would be good enough to be considered Ph.D.-obtaining material.
But come to think of it, the anxiety facing the Ph.D. student with no set schedules and faraway deadlines is not all too different from millions of what can only be called "precarious workers" who depend on freelanced "gigs" for income. These freelancers do have deadlines that they must hit, but no one to tell them how or when to work. Without the structure of the corporate office with their set working hours and regular meeting to report progress of tasks, it can be difficult for precarious workers to motivate themselves to work consistently, rather than rush right before the deadlines.
The result for them, like for Ph.D. student, is often the two extremes. Either they do little up until right before the deadlines, enjoying the fact that they are not busy, or they work all the time, pushing themselves way too hard to complete as many "gigs" as possible in a set amount of time in order to escape the anxiety of doing absolutely nothing. Whether the worker chooses the rush right before the deadline or works all the time, certain psychological damage from irregularity of their behavior, as measured by someone with a 9-5 job, can take their tolls on the body.
It is unfortunate that the irregularities of work experienced by Ph.D. students and freelancers are only going to be more and more common in the future. As people with regular office jobs take home their work smartphones, they are perpetually receiving work-related communications, forcing them to think about work even outside the work environment. Many would be tempted to do some work based on those off-hour communications, in essence turning themselves, at least in terms of work schedule, into freelancers with no set working hours.
In the process of working off-hours, family, friends, and hobbies are ignored, making work the only thing that is meaningful in one's life. Eventually, when work-related communications do not arrive even during off-hours, the worker becomes anxious, having nothing to do outside work. Perhaps the worker can just go the opposite direction, choosing to procrastinate on everything right up to the deadline, as the relaxed Ph.D. student would do. But if vacation is so precarious, flanked by imposing deadlines in some far-distant future, is the worker mentally ready to actually "check out" and not think about work at all?
That impression of the student life is more or less applicable for undergraduates and even for Master's students who complete a set number of courses for graduation. But at the Ph.D. level, such depiction becomes a bit of stretch. Sure, Ph.D. students are still required to take a certain number of courses, where they build up necessary skills to conduct independent research. But even when compared to Master's students, the number of courses are so few and the coursework such a small portion of the overall degree-acquiring process that the regimented student life is not really there.
Instead, Ph.D. students are required to independently create their own schedules for conducting research, with a vague goal of when to complete and hand in a dissertation for defense. When to collect data, when to do the analyses, and when to actually write the dissertation are mostly up to the student him or herself, often with little guidance from academic advisors, who are generally too busy with their own teaching and research to micromanage. The fact that the schedule is self-created means that the Ph.D. student can have no vacation or have vacation all the time, depending on how meticulously research is done.
For the unorganized, having so much leeway can be an enormous source of anxiety. With the deadline for submitting dissertation years in the indeterminable future, the present seems to be awash with opportunities to procrastinate and work on matters not directly related to the dissertation. On the contrary, those who are really anxious to finish the degree as soon as possible may be holed up in libraries day in and day out, piecing together a long research paper with little knowledge of what exactly would be good enough to be considered Ph.D.-obtaining material.
But come to think of it, the anxiety facing the Ph.D. student with no set schedules and faraway deadlines is not all too different from millions of what can only be called "precarious workers" who depend on freelanced "gigs" for income. These freelancers do have deadlines that they must hit, but no one to tell them how or when to work. Without the structure of the corporate office with their set working hours and regular meeting to report progress of tasks, it can be difficult for precarious workers to motivate themselves to work consistently, rather than rush right before the deadlines.
The result for them, like for Ph.D. student, is often the two extremes. Either they do little up until right before the deadlines, enjoying the fact that they are not busy, or they work all the time, pushing themselves way too hard to complete as many "gigs" as possible in a set amount of time in order to escape the anxiety of doing absolutely nothing. Whether the worker chooses the rush right before the deadline or works all the time, certain psychological damage from irregularity of their behavior, as measured by someone with a 9-5 job, can take their tolls on the body.
It is unfortunate that the irregularities of work experienced by Ph.D. students and freelancers are only going to be more and more common in the future. As people with regular office jobs take home their work smartphones, they are perpetually receiving work-related communications, forcing them to think about work even outside the work environment. Many would be tempted to do some work based on those off-hour communications, in essence turning themselves, at least in terms of work schedule, into freelancers with no set working hours.
In the process of working off-hours, family, friends, and hobbies are ignored, making work the only thing that is meaningful in one's life. Eventually, when work-related communications do not arrive even during off-hours, the worker becomes anxious, having nothing to do outside work. Perhaps the worker can just go the opposite direction, choosing to procrastinate on everything right up to the deadline, as the relaxed Ph.D. student would do. But if vacation is so precarious, flanked by imposing deadlines in some far-distant future, is the worker mentally ready to actually "check out" and not think about work at all?
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