Hi. I am starting a part time PhD at the University of Durham, whilst living and working in Birmingham. If you are/ were a part time PhD student, working and living in a different city, I would love to hear your experience. Thanks

Hi gc1

I'm in the final stretches of a part-time PhD myself and have tried both approaches due to a shift in registration part-way through.

These days I live in the same city as my institution and can be "on campus" quite easily when I want to be, though I tend to do most of my research in a home office (I'm in Humanities, so labs aren't an issue). However, when I started I lived in Gloucestershire whilst registered at a university in South Wales. I still managed to get plenty done, but I felt very little connection with my department and it was easy to get side-tracked if I wasn't careful.

Teaching was also a challenge when I started it. I was 'lucky' enough to have charge of a whole cohort for a core module during one year, but this meant two big commutes and a 5am alarm clock on one morning!

On the other hand, there's something to be said for having the ability to find space apart from the research from time to time - that's healthy, I think, and easier to do if you're not living right on top of it.

Best of luck with it

Mark

Hi gc1,

I am just about to submit my PhD after five years of work, I completed whilst working full-time, change jobs once and moving home twice. As with Mark, I also had to transfer my PhD between Universities due to my first supervisors retirement.

When I started I lived a distance away. To be honest, this was not a problem, I met my supervisor on a monthly basis first thing in the morning (8ish) so would travel the day before (book ]cheap last minute hotels)and prepare for the meeting the night before, I use to write little PowerPoint with the research aim, objectives, progress to date and key issues, these really helped focus the meetings.

Overall it was a great experience, but my supervisor retired and recommended a professor at my home city university, but it is really business as usual, he is just as good as my first supervisor, so really it is just less of a commute to meetings.

I am in the social sciences by the way so I had no need to worry about labs etc., and did not really need the library to much - I mainly used e-journals through my library account. As with Mark I also re-purposed the box room into a small study which became my PhD room, so I could close the door on the PhD (without worrying about the mess) and do the day job.

I am not sure what your discipline is, but I presented a paper every year at a national conference. I found the the process of writing and presenting helped me reflect on progress whilst the feedback on the paper fro the reviewers also helped me avoid some terrible mistakes, the biggest being a methodology which I incorrectly applied, so they refused the paper but provided loads of critical feedback to help me re-focus that chapter of the PhD. I also found meeting up with other part-time PhD students every so often useful.

Good luck, I am sure you will enjoy the roller coaster ride.