All

Thank you for all your comments. And yes, I'm doing it out of love, personal interest and as a challenge. I currently work full-time and doing the MSc dissertation is more like being in free-fall. I'm hoping that there'll be more support or at least options to learn how to use statistical analysis of data, research methods etc.

Thank you for all your comments.

Work has funded the MSc and I'm wanting to the PhD as a personal goal, not for any career advantage (as I will be entitled to retire in the next few years). It also gives me street cred with my 20 something daughter! I seem to like academia and the MSc/PhD provide a structure / discipline for researching and writing.

How many hours a week do you think that I should be aiming to work for? The Masters takes about 12 -15 hours a week at present (with some flexibility /peaks and troughs on the dissertation).

And I'm really glad to have found this forum.

Bilbo, Thanks for the tips. I'm sort of used to working on my own somewhat as our Masters group of 12 only met every 3 months for teaching sessions at the university, and now we've finished the taught part of the programme and are doing our dissertations, we're each on our own with supervisor and tutor 180 miles away. What I miss now is being part of that immediate community as my dissertation's in a different area to most of theirs.

To offset this, I've a couple of colleagues in my professional network a colleague at work are already doing their PhDs part-time and I've a small network of close friends to bounce-off.

And I'll go through the archives to see what I can find. I'm glad I've stumbled across this forum as I've somewhere to touch base with.

I'm currently working on my MSc dissertation (part-time, distance learning) and I'm applying to undertake a PhD on the same basis.

I'm wondering what I could be letting myself in for! Any tips or advice appreciated (especially as I've returned to academia while working full-time (for many years)?.