What is the Day-to-Day Life of an Academic Like?
I am going to try to answer your question practically, below, with excerpts from my three years during my doctorate, rough schedules (I wanted to add photos but Substack is acting up), but not without first saying that different universities, different fields of study, different types of programs, and different projects will operate differently. While the day-to-day already changes between the years, at the very least, for me my schedule seemed to change seasonally as well so my winter and summer days were typically much shorter than spring and fall.
To ground us in the specifics of this schedule: I was in a research PhD program at the University of Cambridge in the Faculty of Education in the Play in Education, Development, and Learning (PEDAL) centre. Practically, what this means is there was no taught component to the PhD so I had no classes. Seminars every once in awhile to document in our PhD logbook, but otherwise, meetings were set with your supervisor and/or research centre and those were the only formal schedule expectations for the entirety of the program.
This also meant that my admittance was contingent on my own PhD project, as were my peers, so while play grounded us all, it did not mean our projects were on the same subjects by any means. Connection and collaboration were not built in with classes nor could we assume each other had the same knowledge for what we were about to spend these next years doing. Since I was an international student with a professional career prior to starting the PhD, my proposed research, my relationship with my supervisor, and the seminars I attended or groups I connected with were all informed by this fact.
Here is a break down of what a day looked like in each year, which had a fundamentally different goal, with the caveat that many days would also look very different from this too - I think that’s part of the benefit of being in academia is (sometimes) having time and space to mold your schedule to whatever that stage of a research study or paper calls for.
A schedule from my first year as a PhD student (information gathering year / writing & defending final proposal)
8:00 - wake up, make a moka pot, sit down at desk to look at emails and put tasks into to do list
9:00 - decide where I want to work from (college, coffee shop, library, gardens - if weather permitted) and begin walk
10:00 - settle into wherever I chose and begin reading two-three papers related to my research and took notes in Notion to be able to inform my literature review for my upgrade viva (this is a defense of your final research proposal; in the US it is typically called comps, comprehensive exam, and it looks a bit different for work load).
11:00 - check on emails and reply to any ‘urgent’ ones (urgent because in the grand scheme of the world, nothing in academia is every really that urgent unless it’s a safety concern)
Midday - eat lunch (either at home or at the cafe)
13:00 - attend seminar on research methods and data analysis that was appropriate to what I was proposing
14:00 - prepare for supervision meeting (writing down questions, having an update on what I was working on), navigating the appropriate background check as an international student to be able to do research with children (lots of emails, applications, etc).
15:00 - recheck/respond to any emails, and research pathways to recruitment for research (as an international student it wasn’t always obvious to me how I would be able to recruit participants and what the easiest channels were going to be).
16:00 → onwards - meet up with friends for dinner or drinks, attend college events like grad hall or formal dinners, go on a date, rearrange or decorate my flat to feel as homey as it could be for knowing it would only be for three-ish years.
My favorite bits of this time of being in academia was how much time I had that was not preregulated or predetermined for me. I really could explore whatever avenues I thought were going to be helpful for the research, whether that was improving my own skills as a researcher, becoming well versed in the foundational papers for my field, keeping up with the new research that was coming out related to my topic. I didn’t write much at this stage and I did struggle with that only because once I get going in writing, it’s such a satisfying feeling and it’s the time when things tend to make the most sense to me. But this year wasn’t for output or my own thoughts, it really was about getting my bearings and intaking information that would help me craft a strong research proposal.
A schedule from my second year as a PhD candidate (data collection & analysis)
7:00 - wake up
8:00 - start the 45-50 minute walk to the faculty, listening to a non-fiction book that was somehow related to my research (psychology, child development, education, memoirs of people in my field, writing books, etc.)
8:30ish - stop for a take-away coffee & pastry
9:00 - arrive at the faculty and decide where to work from (there were not designated desks for PhDs in the faculty) so this was a day-to-day decision; unpack everything and set up
10:00 - attend meetings with the research centre if there were any, otherwise this would turn into an email hour
11:00 - walk to grab lunch from Italian deli place
Midday - eat with friends, take an actual hourlong lunch break
13:00 - return to data analysis for one of my three analyses on data from my digital survey with play therapists, usually the reflexive thematic analysis because that requires a lot of returning to the data and playing around and revising.
14:00 - Continue data analysis or write down some of my thoughts / feelings / reactions to what I was finding. This not only was an important step in my own research process, but also would become excerpts in my dissertation discussion chapter
15:00 - espresso break, catch up with friends in the social area (brains need breaks and connection and I never felt guilty for not being ‘on’ all day or huddled over a screen each hour of each day)
16:00 - set up sand tray supplies for data collection (lots of little miniatures), print out the forms the parents and children needed to sign, put the camera on the charger, do some stretching or anything else my body was needing before entering into this research session
17:00 - sand tray session
18:00 - download photos and video onto appropriate devices, jot down any notes / observations / feelings / questions to revisit, put away all the sand tray supplies and clean up any stray sand, pack up for the day and start the walk home (usually listening to music)
19:00 - make dinner at home (I find cooking to be somewhat of a stress reliever or otherwise a good processing time so I savored this hour to unwind)
20:00 - reading, color by numbers, respond to texts, shower, clean up desk space from the week, etc.
My favorite part of this time of the PhD was being able to DO the research that I had just spent three years of my life developing (2020 was the application proposal, 2021 was finalizing the proposal, 2022 was defending the proposal and starting the work). I loved seeing what was working or not working, what was coming up that I was surprised by or curious about, what matched what other researchers were finding around the world and what didn’t match. The privilege of being able to see through an idea in this way is something I’ll always be grateful for having the opportunity to do.
A schedule from my third year of as PhD candidate writing up (analysis & dissertation writing)
9:00 - wake up and start moka pot
9:30 - sit down to write with breakfast and coffee
10:00-midday - writing. Literally any part of my dissertation that I felt compelled to write that day, I did. It was important to just keep getting words on paper.
Midday - have lunch
13:00 - walk to new location (coffee shop, college, library, friends’ house)
13:30 - edit something I had written a few weeks prior (I always find I do better editing when I have well and truly forgotten a lot of what was on the page and can’t connect to the feelings of frustration or confusion or whatever was happening within me as I was writing it)
14:00- continue editing or begin preparing the necessary information to get the manuscript ready for peer review submission
15:00-16:30 - check emails and finish any to-do list small bits that might be needed (I saved these until the end of the day because I wanted my prime motivation and energy to go to writing, and I find myself getting annoyed when I check an email off my to do list and its replied to instantly and now it’s back on my to do list, even mentally, to reply - definitely a me issue but I found the end of the day replies work best for me in light of this)
My favorite part of this phase is I really and truly could write or edit from anywhere. I loved the flexibility this gave me (when I didn’t need my big second screen) and as someone who does well in gathering inspiration and motivation from a change of scenery, it was so wonderful to be able to do what I love to do (writing) in spaces I loved. It also was incredibly satisfying to make sense of all I just did for years and put it down on paper so other people could finally understand what had been bouncing around in my brain for ages. There were times I found the PhD to be incredibly lonely because you are making original contributions, so it can’t come from anyone but you, and therefore you have a lot of interior time inside your own brain untangling your thoughts and assumptions and creating a narrative for the research, etc. This phase allowed that to come to an end because I could share chapters with people and discuss findings and genuinely connect over all the hard work I had just done.
I really thrive and enjoy being able to set my own schedule, work on whatever project or paper I was interested in at the moment (all related to the PhD of course), and do my work from anywhere, which are the main benefits I found during my time in academia.
There’s a lot of bureaucracy and formats and expectations that were not for me in academia, a huge deterrent for even considering a post-doc or attempting to gain professorship anywhere, but that’s an entirely other answer.
I know not everyone in academia has the opportunity or privilege to pursue their own ideas, their own research, their own curiosity, but I will say that was a huge draw and benefit for me, knowing I could (with the structure of a research PhD and the leadership at my research centre). That was one of the largest benefits, that I could see through my research project based on my experiences just a couple years prior. That mattered a lot to me.
There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about academia, about freedom and free time and flexibility, and while I pointed to some areas of that for myself, I do not want to send out this letter and for people to think this would guaranteed be their experience. Part of the reason I am not still in academia is the freedom and free time and flexibility are only in some areas, with some power or privilege. It is not a given, it is not universal, and it is not consistent. So even though I enjoyed my PhD experience, I wouldn’t want anyone reading this and making a decision for or against academia for themselves based on it. But I do hope it was a helpful glance into one person’s experience of schedule and perks.
Til next Sunday,
Dr. Sydney Conroy
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