I'm fitting a part-time PhD around everything else
Pace a part-time PhD realistically and keep it moving in the gaps between work and life.
In short
Start here, today. Look at the next four weeks of your calendar and find the times you could realistically give the PhD, including commutes or lunch breaks if they're usable. Book them in as appointments with yourself. This takes about 20 minutes.
After that, work through these steps. Choose one to jump to it.
Step by step
Tick each step as you finish it. Open a step for the how.
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Plan at part-time pace
Part-time study is often treated as roughly half the full-time load, but definitions vary, so check yours. Plan with the hours you have in an ordinary month, not a good one, and expect each stage to take noticeably longer than it does for full-time peers. Put the result in the Milestone Map so you can see what it means for the years ahead.
Choose your rhythm
Some people do best with one or two long blocks a week, such as a full Saturday or a study day agreed with an employer. Others need 30 to 45 minutes most days to keep the project warm. Long blocks suit analysis and drafting, and short sessions suit reading, coding transcripts and editing, so many people combine the two.
Keep the thread between sessions
Before you stop, write in Writing Sessions exactly what you'll do first next time, for example “reread the notes on interview 7 and start theme 3”. It takes two minutes and can save the first half hour of the next session. Keep one running notes file per chapter so you're never hunting through folders to remember where you were.
Negotiate with your employer
Ask whether your workplace offers study leave, flexible or compressed hours, or support for professional development. Frame the request around what the organisation gains from your skills and research. Get any agreement in writing, especially if it depends on one particular manager.
Stay connected to the department
Ask whether seminars can be joined online or are recorded, and go in person to one or two events each term. Set regular supervisor meetings at times that work for you, even if they're early mornings or video calls. Find the other part-time students too, because they'll understand your calendar without explanation.
Check the rules that apply to you
Find your program's rules on part-time status, minimum registration, time limits and switching between full-time and part-time. Check how part-time status affects fees and funding, and if you're an international student, whether your visa or study permit requires full-time study. Your graduate coordinator or graduate school can confirm the details.
Words you can use
Is this you? Signs to look for
- Work or family takes the session you'd planned, and the next free slot is a week away.
- Your plan quietly assumes full-time pace on part-time hours.
- Seminars and reading groups always fall at times when you're at work.
- Weeks pass with no PhD work at all, then you try to catch up in one weekend.
- You sometimes feel like a visitor in your own program.
Why this happens
Part-time doctoral students are often fitting the PhD around a job, children, ageing parents or all of them at once. The research is just as demanding as a full-time PhD, but it happens in the gaps. Gaps are expensive: every time you come back, you pay a restart cost in rereading and remembering, and that cost is often the real reason progress feels so slow.
Many departments are also built around full-time students. Seminars happen at two in the afternoon, teaching and funding go to people who are on campus, and nobody notices when you're not there. It's easy to feel that the rules weren't written with you in mind.
None of this means a part-time PhD can't go well. Plenty of people finish one, often with a sharp sense of why the research matters. It does mean you need a plan built for your actual hours, and a few habits that keep the thread intact between sessions.
Worth a look (5)
- Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day, by Joan BolkerMakes the case for short, daily writing, which suits a part-time schedule well.
- Shut Up & WriteOnline writing sessions at many different times, including evenings and weekends.
- Shut Up & Write!Free writing sessions, online and in person in over 80 countries, where you write quietly alongside others for a set time. It's a gentle push when you keep putting off your thesis.
- FocusmateBook a short video session with another person, say what you'll work on, then work quietly side by side. The free plan gives you three sessions a week.
- Time managementVitae's guide to managing research time, with simple techniques like logging your hours, separating urgent from important, and working back from deadlines.
When to bring someone in
Talk to your graduate coordinator before changing between part-time and full-time, pausing your studies or asking for an extension, since timing can affect fees, funding and time limits. If you feel cut off from the department, ask your graduate student association whether there's a part-time student representative or network. If your manager is unsupportive, your human resources department may have a study leave policy your manager doesn't know about.
Find the right person, or talk to Ify