Hi all,
been registered as a part time PhD student and have been at it for coming on 2.5 years. My transfer is coming up the end of the summer and I have to say at the moment im really struggling to get through the work load. I cover about 8-9 hours a week as Im busy working full time and have two small children that occupy my weekends. Realistically, fridays are my productive day with a little bit done during the week. By the time I get in from work its usually 6.30, dinner and getting kids to bed brings me up to 8.30 and then Im shattered. I do have the summers off and the last two have been treating the Phd as a job and dedicating around 35-40hours a week to it. Im looking for tips and/or advice on how to be more productive, currently im working on a lit review of a section that will constitute 10k words, of which im up to 6k with a couple more bits of literature to review.
As i saw any links, tips, advice etc for a part-time PhD student in the field of sociology/communications studies would be greatly appreciated. Re: my research field, its very interesting to me and will be using ethnographic methodologies when I actually get to the empirical research.
Please feel free to contribute in any way possible
Thanks

Hi, I have no real tips, I can only motivate you to hang in there. Hopefully, it will get better soon!

I am also doing a part-time phD. In my case its lab work mostly and since we have an evaluation soon I am currently working 12 hours a day minimum in the lab and normally 1-2 hours extra in the evening. The backlog of things that I would have to do for my "other" 50 % of the job is huge at the moment (and the list is getting longer literally by the minute). The only thing keeping me up and running is that my husband is very supportive and taking care of our son.