Thursday 24th January 2008
I arrived at the lab this morning and, as is customary, went into the bike shed next to the lab to lock up my bike. Nothing exciting happened. How unassumingly my day’s bike shed attendance began.
I did some work, went to ‘coffee’ (it deserves inverted commas because I don’t drink coffee—I just go for the stimulating conversation), worked a bit more and then—lunchtime. I went down to get my bike to cycle home and grab a sarnie.
The bike shed gate was already open—‘someone must already be in there,’ I thought. As it happened, it was Professor Andrew Turberfield, a biophysicist renowned for building stuff out of DNA. This kind of thing happens quite a lot. It’s a bike shed next to a physics department. There are, in fact, probably few places where you’re more likely to bump into a prof locking up his bike.
He had a violin in the huge wicker basket on the front of his bicycle. I thought this was unusual, but probably not untoward.
I had my lunch. Cheese, salad and mayonnaise sandwich. Very nice, thank you. I cycled back to the lab.
As I locked up my bike—gasp!—Andrew Turberfield again! The novelty of seeing him had worn off after the last time, and he didn’t have his violin with him any more, thus eliminating even that excitement. I speculated about the violin’s possible fate, but not for very long.
I went to a talk about quasicrystals, did some more work, went to ‘tea’ (inverted commas again), worked a bit more, and finally decided to go home.
As I walked into the bike shed, I saw Turberfield again. There he was, nonchalantly unlocking his bike like nothing had happened. I walked past him to my bike but, before I’d unlocked it, he’d cycled off into the night. A mysterious triplet of coincidences had punctuated my day.
Doing a PhD is a bit disconcerting when it comes to working hours. You’ve got three years to churn out this thesis. But it’s not quite as simple as that.
Two people’s theses could differ in length by several hundred pages. Some people’s require a raft of tedious experiments most of which go wrong; others do theirs entirely based on theory. Everyone’s project is different. Everyone’s non-research workload is different too: some people have a taught course in their first year, others give tutorials or demonstrate in the practical labs. There are seminars, conferences and afternoon talks. Everyone gets to the lab at different times—some people are there at nine on the dot every morning, others roll up at eleven, but might not leave ’til six or seven at night. What the Hell is one supposed to do?!
It was a question I had often ruminated upon. Until today.
I now know that my workday rhythms are very well correlated with those of Professor Andrew Turberfield, a man who in 2006 was named by Scientific American as one of the ‘research leaders’ in the 2006 ‘Scientific American 50’.
I think this is conclusive proof that I’ve got the how-hard-to-work-for-your-PhD thing nailed.
« Tuesday 8th January 2008Tuesday 29th January 2008 »
- comments (4)
send to a friend
rss- bookmark with:
Tom F says
01:56:24 25/01/2008
Can you take days off whilst doing a PhD, or are you expected to be working everyday for 3 years? This is obviously in terms of undergrad, during which you're supposed to work everyday, and go to 9am lectures, and write essays of 3000 words for your tutorial throughout a week.
Arts students can (probably) get through an Oxford BA with about 6 hours concerted effort a week. Does the same ring true for the people who actually understand what they're writing about?
Patel says
20:55:41 25/01/2008
Have you carried out a reliable study to demonstrate that Professor Turberfield's workday rhythms are the same each day ? How can you be sure that the sample you took is representative of his typical behaviour ? Maybe he normally works 15 hour days - which would explain why todays bizarre traveling coincidence hadn't occurred previously, and might suggest you are not working nearly hard enough!
Or maybe this was the first time he'd bothered to pop in since Christmas, in which case, lighten up Dude.
Statto says
14:57:40 26/01/2008
I’m not sure exactly how days off are dealt with yet, but DPhils are fairly flexible in that regard. You are given varying amounts of holiday depending on your research council, but there appears to be no formal system for logging these holidays save perhaps the notion that it’s best to check with your supervisor before taking a long time off.
Also, though you’ve only generally got three years of funding, you can take, and I know of several people who for various reasons have taken, many years longer than that. Topical example: Brian May…
The arts–sciences divide still seems to reign by the time one is doing a DPhil. The scientists do (roughly) 9–5, Monday–Friday in the lab; the arts students laze about at home, pop to the odd seminar, and maybe do an afternoon’s work in the department once a week…
Matel says
16:57:23 26/01/2008
You know that they say about assume - it makes an ass of you and me!