What do you do for living?

[Scoobes]

naruball said:

MessiaH said:

naruball said:
Doing a PhD in classics. Best time of my life to be honest.

That's wonderful. What is your focus? And what do you see yourself doing once you graduate if you don't mind me asking. Classics is a very interesting and broad field. It allows for people with many different tastes and interests to jump aboard.

Glad to hear you find it interesting. I'm working on Cicero's letters and his conception of friendship (whether it was influenced by Epicurus, Plato, Aristotle). When I get my PhD I'll try to find a job as a lecturer somewhere (most likely New Zealand) and publish some articles.

I really don't get why PhD students complain about the workload. I can pretty much wake up any time, I don't have any classes or papers or exams or boring courses. I just study mostly things that I consider fascinating.

I agree with you. Classics is something so broad that it's difficult to not find anything you like.

It really does depend on the type of PhD you do. In many science and Engineering PhDs, whilst you can get away with some slack working and whilst it is very much in your control, the nature of the work mean you have to be in the lab constantly for your experiments on top of the literature you have to read.

For example, during my PhD, a lot of my time would be spent growing cells and purifying proteins which means for at least 2 days a week having 10-12 hrs (of each day) of lab work. The subsequent analyses were nearly as bad in terms of time and you're still expected to write it all up and keep up to date with the latest literature. On the other hand, I knew loads of people on computer based modelling PhDs that modelled their stuff on PC in the first two years and wrote up very quickly, so it does depend heavily on your PhD.

If you ever do find yourself struggling though:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php