Hi, i just started and mostly love it as well though university bureaucracy is what irritates me about it right now, not the supervisor or the PhD process itself. Sometimes i think its factors related to the PhD (like waiting weeks to get assigned a desk, then getting one but not having a computer on it!) and not necessarily the PhD itself that may irritate some people. At least that what irritates me!!

I like the idea of people contributing a positive thread like this. I understand the need to vent, but it's important to share the good aspects too.

I feel very fortunate to be given the freedom to study something I am genuinely interested in and to (more or less) be my own boss. While naturally you need enough structure in place to get the work done, it's great being able to have a flexible schedule. (I know this generally doesn't apply in more lab-based PhDs, but for mine, in the humanities, I can rearrange my tasks to fit my social life.)

i'd enjoy mine more if i didn't feel so isolated already and didn't feel like i'd blagged my way into a funded arts place...still, i obv love the work itself...just wish i didn't feel like such a terrible tool some days when i wake up. i also enjoy teaching.

twanky- one month in!

I feel very blessed that I am thoroughly enjoying my PhD experience, which is most probably due to the fact that I have 2 very helpful supervisors and am completing mine p/t. I feel that allows me to distance myself from it and not be consumed by it Monday-Friday 9-5. However I have just begun my 3rd year so will most probably come back and give you a very different account to how I'm feeling in another year or so! :p

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I've only just started so this may change in a few weeks/months/years time but...My university is paying me to do something that I've been paying to do, for the last four years. I feel very privileged :-)

I think this is a really interesting point. Would you care to share? Is there some aspect of your experience, or combination of aspects that you think contribute to your success/enjoyment?

I am a re-entering and mature-age candidate and I feel now that I am much more able to do this than I did previously (although revisiting all the convoluted theory has been difficult as I work FT as well & only have a few hours a day to read/write). I think I now see the degree in a more realistic light & that is helpful - but I am early stages so who knows?

I would love to hear from those who have enjoyed the process as to why they think it has been that way for them? Supervision? confidence? age? programme?

Yesterday, I stole a pair of headphones from someone who had left them and spent the day burning through tomatoes and listening to music. It was, actually, a really really good day's work. I didn't want to stop when I did, but I had to go home to go and play football. After getting well and truely spanked (their squad age: 18, our squad age: 28) grabbed a crate of beer and drank with my flatmate and a few friends.

Yeah, I think I can say I like doing a PhD.

Hello! I have only been a PhD student for about 3 weeks so I am still in the phase where i'm trying to find my feet and get some sort of direction to my research... at the moment i just seem to be reading anything that vaguely mentions my main topic! But I really like the work environment here, so many clever, interesting people to chat to about ideas and what-not, some really good discussions have come up and everyone seems pretty happy to give advice! :)
So... so far so good! :D

I enjoyed a lot of my PhD - basically the working from home bit - I can go out at any time of the day without people nagging, although I do have to get work done. However, my hate of the PhD really kicked in when I had a load of non-PhD work suddenly piled on and the writing up has become unbearable. WHen you've had your worked ripped to pieces 20 times only for it to make its way back to your original version, it gets slightly tedious and soul destroying. So I did like my PhD - now I want to burn everything to do with it and sod the carbon footprint that horrible bonfire will create :-s

Good thing is is that I WILL be submitting soon and this nightmare will be over - only to start the next of REF submissions!!

Nice to see my thread has resurfaced! I stand by my original thoughts, i.e. all jobs have frustrations. It does seem that the stress at the end of the PhD is the most common cencern however. I'm only a year in and am trying to write a couple of papers, and whilst it can be frustrating, I've actually found it less stressful than "real jobs".

you see I envy people with 'real jobs' (and I'm excluding any academic career from that category) - people who have jobs that finish at 5pm and they don't think about them until 9am the next day. BLISS!

You might need to exclude school teaching from that category of 9 to 5 jobs as well, Sneaks. While the holidays are really good (and basically form the time when part-time post grads like myself get masses of reading and writing done), you still end up working much much more than the five day week and well after 5 pm more often than not. In fact most of us would work to some extent in our holidays as well but not all of the holidays (thank God) and not at the same frantic pace.

But I do like my work. However, I would find it hard if I didn't have some project outside of my paid employment-even with family, friendships, life etc...just need something that has more meaning than just meeting the employer's expectations and raising generation after generation of grateful (or quite often not so grateful) adolescents.

Hi all,

New as well, so I'm not entirely sure I am at liberty to contribute, but I'm also one of those 'jollies' who are currently loving their PhD.

I think in many respects it helps that I've been at the same university since my undergraduate, and thus know my two supervisors almost like friends, know the faculty very well, and recognise a few fellow PhDs. It's one of the reasons I chose this less prestigious University over Cambridge - people thought I was mad, but I think familiarity, ease, and comfort are paying back major dividends.

I can't pretend I haven't loved working from home as well (lots of general and theoretical secondary sources to consult). My wife leaves at 7am for work and so I don't stop from then until she returnes about 5.30pm, so I have little distraction throughout the day but also a point where I put my work down and spend the evening relaxing and re-energizing. I also at the moment do not work on the weekends, but when I hit the archives next week, I expect that will change as my time for reading drops dramatically and I'm sure I'll need to compensate.

The secret for me is that I love my subject so much that if I were not doing it right now for a PhD, I would probably be doing it for a hobby regardless. It seems to help massively if you genuinely enjoy your subject. It's also wonderful to have the kind of relationship with your supervisor that he invites you out for dinner!

So yes, add me to the 'jolly' list - jolly for being paid for doing something that is my passion. Every morning I wake up before the alarm, eager to start my research. Sickeningly positive, isn't it?!?!

Best wishes,

Halo

Well I work 9-5 each day on my PhD and don't think about it outside of that. I know a number of people (and was one for a while) that have a job that involves working way more than 9-5. One of my best friends used to work 8-6 every day with 15 minutes for lunch and then often worked at the weekend too. This is my point - you can do a PhD working 9-5, you can do a job 9-5, you can work more than that in both too.

I'm one of the definitely unhappy ones, but I think at root that's because I've never been sufficiently into what I'm doing- and I'm an arts student, which I think makes it harder to just fight through that apathy in the name of getting something at the end. I think that if I'd had more in the way of structure and supervision that might have helped make up for the lack of interest too, or even provided a stimulus for interest- but obviously that's hard to say.