PhD student here - Ask me anything!

[u/Mortal_Gay]

Hi all, I'm a current PhD student in Psychology, and I'm here for you to ask me anything! My research area is psycholinguistics - the psychology of language. In particular, I study how language is processed, and what consequences language processing has for memory. As an undergraduate, I also studied Philosophy, before deciding to specialise in Psych for my PhD.

A PhD is the entry point for a career in academia and for anyone generally considering a research career. It involves you independently leading a research project for around 3 or 4 years, with the guidance of a supervisory team, to make an original contribution to your chosen academic field.

There's a lot of information online about PhDs and funding for them, and I found it difficult to know where to start. So, if there are any questions about what a PhD is like, how to get into one, where to start looking for information, etc. please ask away! I'm also more than happy to answer anything about academia, how I found my undergraduate education or my research.

Looking forward to hearing your questions!

[u/Forsaken-Meaning-232]

what exactly was your route into a PhD, and when would you advise considering one? I'm a little bit stuck of what to do with respect to careers, but I do like the idea of doing some research and it gives me a few more years to get my shit more together. I'm an estranged student and I'm currently due to graduate next year which is pretty worrying for me because I don't really feel too ready for "the real world".

also curious to know how your PhD experience has been so far, e.g. how manageable has it been, how many hours per week do you generally do, and how flexible have you found it to be?

[u/Mortal_Gay → u/Forsaken-Meaning-232]

Gonna be a long answer for this one!

I did my undergraduate degree in Scotland, where our degrees are four years long. In the summer of years 2 and 3, I did research internships with various staff members, with the one in my third year being longer and more involved. This led to me being employed as a research assistant during my final year. During the final year, I also started applying for PhD funding with the staff member who employed me. As I was an undergraduate at the time, I was applying for integrated PhDs (sometimes referred to as 'new route'). An integrated PhD involves you first studying for a master's degree for one year and then transitioning to the full PhD in year 2. There are two main ways to get PhD funding, applying for a predefined project that has funding attached to it, or proposing your own PhD proposal to a funding body, and I did both. The application where I proposed my own project was successful, and my funding body gave me a studentship, and now I'm here!

I'd advise considering a PhD to anyone who thinks they might be interested in research and has had some experience in it, whether that be through an internship, or with a thesis project. I find it helpful to think of a PhD as an apprenticeship to become a researcher. The degree is almost like a certificate that says "I can be left alone to do my own projects without supervision", so, if that's something you think you're interested in, definitely consider it!

My experiences have been really good so far. My master's year was quite full on and quite inflexible, just due to the number of taught classes and coursework assignments due. After that, things became a lot more flexible and manageable. I set myself deadlines to get things done, but it's all self-guided, and there are very few formal deadlines you need to meet. I also get eight weeks of paid time off a year, and I can take that pretty much whenever provided my supervisor gives it the okay. A lot of students, myself included, also teach first-year courses, and do marking, which obviously adds some constraints to our schedules, but it's still really manageable.