New Jersey Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Anyone have a Phd?
Were you able to get it while working full time? Is that even possible? Were you married at the time? Thanks
Re: Anyone have a Phd?
I do. Completing my dissertation research was my full time job while in grad school, but my PhD is in science and that is the standard in that field. It would not have been possible in my program and the expectation was that you were in the lab during business hours (And of course, lots of time outside of those hours). I'm not sure what field you are in and if it might be different for other areas.
ETA-my first year in grad school was all of my classes, plus serving as a T.A., in additoin to research, so that first year there was no way I could have done anything else.
We were not married during grad school.
BFP #2: 11/16/11: M/C at 7 weeks
BFP #3: 03/24/12: C/P 03/28/12
BFP #4: 04/26/12: please be our baby
My husband is a few months from graduating with his PhD. It is absolutely a full time job and there's no way he could work f/t around it (in fact, because of childcare costs *I* can't work f/t while he completes it because of his travel schedule and the amount of time he spends researching). He works 80+ hours a week, travels quite a bit for conferences and to meet with other researchers around the country and his head has to be in it 100% of the time. It's a very long road, but in our case there's a light at the end of the tunnel. His PhD will be in Chemical Engineering, they pay him a reasonable stipend to live on (it's tight for us, but manageable) and he has a lot of career paths open to him at the end. He's currently on the job market and looking for chemical positions, but also finance positions where he would start fairly high up.
I was working on my PhD as well, but chose to stop because the job prospects were slim to none. I was doing my PhD in history and the only outlet for that degree is as a historian/professor, but there were 12 graduates per opening every year. I knew people with that PhD who were working in grocery stores and bookstores because they couldn't find anything else. That was also funded, so free tuition, health insurance, etc and a stipend to live on, although the stipend in that field was significantly less than a stipend in the sciences.
DH started his PhD a year after we got married, the week our daughter was born (she was a surprise pregnancy when he was halfway through the application process). We had some savings going in that is now exhausted, but he will be graduating with less debt than we started with (we finished paying off our car and continue paying down my student loans in this time).
If you or your husband is considering it, I would make sure this is what you want in the end. Look into job prospects getting out. What career options will be available and will the investment of 5-12 years (depending on your field, sciences tend to be on the shorter end, social sciences and liberal arts can take over 10 years) at little money and high stress be worth it in the end. You have to have a lot of passion for your work and be very self-motivated to do a PhD.
Almost. I started taking classes in fall 05, right after we were married. I have completed all 60 "course" credits in the classroom, completed my practicum, and have passed my qualifying exams so I am a doctoral candidate. I am now getting ready to present my preliminary proposal.
While in school p/t, I have worked full-time throughout, completed a second-story home addition/renovation, and took off time when our little one was born - so it is possible to have a "life" in my field. My degree will be in the humanities (communication). I 100% agree that one must be self-motivated to do this as there is no one hounding you to move on to the next step in the process...good luck!
I don't know what field you're in, I'm in the sciences as well and finishing my Master's degree, will probably go for PhD later. When I started school, I was already married, and then I had my son halfway through my degree. I have been employed full-time for most of it (I was laid off for a few months.) My experience so far has been that there are a few ways it can be done depending on your program and the amount of family and work support you will have. Master's degrees often are at the bottom of the list for getting funding so I went the route of going part-time and have been at jobs with tuition assistance to pay for it. For a while, I was also the primary earner and the job that carried our family's benefits so we weren't in a position for me to consider full-time.
There are programs which allow part-timers, which I've looked into. My program at Rutgers could be done part-time initially for the coursework, which I've done half of for the Master's degree. Seton Hall offers part-time opportunities as well. In science, the reality is that there has to be full-time research, and when I say full-time, that means probably well over 40 horus/week.. Whether that research is done at school, or at a workplace is dependent upon your program, your advisors, and your place of employment. I've known a few people who with the support of their companies were able to get a PhD part-time with their dissertation being on something they are working on at work. Part-time though will take a really long time. In my program, I'm looking at 10 years if I do part-time. I've known many others who did just school full-time. My program allowed me to stay part-time while on the MS track, but could convert over to the PhD track if I had a professor guarantee my funding, maintained a high GPA, and pass the qualifiers.
The events in my own life around my family were what led to the decision that the PhD will wait a few years. It's not an easy balance between home, family, work and school and I had to accept that a lot of things would fall by the wayside in the 4 years it took to get a master's degree. I don't want to continue this for 10 more years. This is why I know when I want to get the PhD, I'm going back fulltime. We need to wait until we're at a point where we can let go of my job to do so.
Yes, if you're in a f/t program (which most are) you generally do have to sign that. My husband *is* allowed to tutor through the university but that's it (his program funds well, as does the tutoring). When I was in grad school I had to sign that as well, and in 2005 the TA salary was under $13K in my field (his is significantly higher). My husband is at Columbia, his friends all had similar restrictions at MIT, Harvard and Rutgers.