I have a great office at the university, quite small but only two desks, access to photocopier/printer, kitchen etc. I am sort of hotdesking with three other PhD students, but they are rarely in so I am usually on my own. Having said that, I normally go in only once a week and work from home the rest of the time. I would love to go in more often, but the uni is a fair distance from home and I have to be there to drop off / pick up the kids from school. My husband works from home one day a week, so I go to uni that day.

I have my own desk in a six person capacity office, which currently only has four people (of whom only one regularly shows up.) Because of this situation, and because I moved into the office before everyone else (it was a faculty staff room previously) it has been well decorated by me and the other guy who comes in - really quite homey now.

I work a 5/6/7 day week at the office, but don't really have much of a set routine time wise (my hours are something like 10-12 get there 4-7 leave.) The weekend is normally a half day, although I sometimes just get in the groove.

I come in 3/4 days a week. I'm in an office that for the last year has had one other full time person and a hot desk. As from next week a visiting fellow will be in here and then a new full time research fellow will get my desk from June and I'll get a small desk in the corner. I;m better off than the hot desk people who will be shoved in the coffee room (one of which is a second year full time PhD who never got allocated a desk!)

Usually try and work 9-5 Monday-Friday.

I've got my own desk in an open-plan office with other people in my research group. I recently found out that a lot of other departments in the uni implement a hot-desking policy for PhD students, which something I would hate. My desk is my own space: if I want to have it covered in papers, books and notes then I that's my choice. I don't want to have to tidy everything into a drawer every night.

======= Date Modified 08 May 2011 06:29:29 =======
Ever since I moved to the new dormitory, I have been going to the lab/ office from 10am-7pm, Monday- Friday and sometimes I come during the weekends too. I'm sharing my room with a roommate so it's not very convenient to do my works in the dorm. There are 20 other students in my lab/ office, but they are not so noisy, and it is quite motivating to see others working/studying too. But maybe I will spend more time in dorm once I start to write my thesis completely (when my all my simulations and experimental works are finish) in the hope that my roommate spend most of her time in her lab during that semester. 

At my uni, there is a hot desk room for the PhD/Masters students but there are only 20 desks for about 70 students. There are about 12 students who go in everyday and leave their stuff everywhere (so they ignore the 'hot desk' environment!) so I very rarely get a desk to work at when I go in! I've given up complaining about it....instead, I spend 3 days in the library and 2 days working from home but this means I am on my own a lot of the time.

I'm very jealous of anyone who has an allocated desk in a research office! Oh to dream...! :-)

There is a PhD space but i tend to work from home as i don't like to have to share with other students, I just can't work like that. It would be lovely to have my own office - heaven! - as I am starting to find it a nuisance to work from home

hopefully i will be working 5 days a week in the office and no days off , in a esrc studentship

======= Date Modified 09 May 2011 08:40:30 =======
From someone who's been through it, we all have plans as to how many hours a week we're going to allot to our PhD work.  That goes by the board as you approach the end.

During early literature review, I kept hours normally to about 40 hours a week (5 days by 8 hours).  Once I started practical work, this pushed to about 9.5 hours x 5 days (we weren't normally allowed to do practical work outside normal hours and at weekends), however analysis of data and background reading pushed this towards 10-11 hours.

I then started to write up alongside the practical work from just before the end of the second year, the intention being to finish on time.  That pushed the time up to about 12 hours plus 4 or 5 hours on Saturdays and Sundays.

Once write-up took hold, time input was 12 to 16 hours a day and about 8 hours a day on Saturdays and Sundays.  There were odd days I was just too knackered to think straight and I had to nothing, I admit.

Between submission and viva (bar a few days break immediately after submission), I did not let up and the 12 to 16 hour routine continued as I revised on just about anything I was likely to be asked (related subject outside the scope of but related to the PhD).

So there goes all the best laid plans of mice and men!!! :p

After viva, minor corrections and submission, I suddenly had all this spare time on my hands that I did not know what to do with.  I found the intensity of the work required a two year adjustment period to return and gear back down from hyper to normal.  This latter transition, women seem to cope better with and are normally back on a normal keel much quicker.