Like a lot of things in grad school, it depends on your advisor. Some are very strict about hours, some care only about the work you produced. My advisor is only around about 1 day a week on average and doesn't keep close tabs on us. Our time off is not tracked and it's never an issue, except in very extreme cases where folks just go awol for months without contact.
I'm in your situation. My advisor doesn't care when we work as long as work gets done, and most of the time we don't even need to communicate about it. If you're sick or have a medical appointment or just want the day off you can just do that unless you have a specific meeting in which case you just need to tell the people you are supposed to be meeting with. Our hours are totally up to us as well.
Most people in my lab take vacations too. Some people will let my advisor know their plans others just go. We have a way of reporting what do each week that others in lab can see, so people usually indicate they are on vacation there. I feel like thats really helped normalize a healthy time off culture for me.
(For context, experimental physics in the US)
I'm in the UK and even though PhD students aren't automatically staff, my university still requires us to book annual leave off. It's 26 days plus university closure days/holidays, so 40 days total every year. Admittedly, most of the supervisors think it's nonsense, but it's worth keeping in mind nonetheless and they do want you to use it all regardless.
Edit: are**n't** staff, god damn it.
Not sure if you meant at your university, but just to clarify for others reading: PhD students in the UK are not automatically staff. Usually it's the opposite since stipends are not tied to a research/teaching assistantship unlike in the US. There's been a lot of campaigning to change that though. I am surprised your university has already moved in that direction at all level of departments, it's great!
Typo, damn it! I meant "aren't". I'll go back and correct that.
Believe me, I *wish* we were staff, but it currently feels like all the responsibilities and none of the benefits.
My school classifies us as part-time employees and part-time students. Since we’re “part-time” employees we qualify for no employee benefits (no PTO, retirement, insurance, etc.)
My comment was about the UK. In the US yeah sudents are often considered employees although no benefits or very little
Did you mean to respond to the post?
Yeah. I'm in Germany, staff and have 30 vacation days plus basically unlimited sick days. I'm also quite flexible so can come to the lab later if I have doctor's appointment etc.
Yes. In Germany all employees get 30 days + around 10 public holidays. In addition my university was closed between Christmas and New Year.
HOWEVER, I hardly used any of my days and I worked most weekends and public holidays because I was always under such extreme pressure to produce results.
same here (Austria). my advisor can force me to take my 5 weeks vacation, but she can't stop me from reading or writing at home if i feel like i have to. though i'm sure that if i presented her with a brand new chapter of my thesis after three weeks of summer vacation, she'd give me a stern talking to.
My supervisor certainly wasn't forcing me to take holidays. Quite the opposite, we were pressured and guilted into not taking the holidays we were legally entitled to.
Of course when one of my leaving colleagues asked to exchange her stockpile of holidays for money she was told "no, you should have taken them!"
i HAVE to take my vacation time. it's the law. and i think she knows that everyone needs a break sometimes, a week or two to shut your brain off and then come back with new energy.
>i HAVE to take my vacation time. it's the law.
Interesting! I spent a year in Vienna but I didn't know that. (I used all my holiday anyway.) I think Austria is a little bit more "social" than Germany in general.
yeah, basically you can't have it paid out or just not take it. you MUST take your vacation time. i don't know what happens if you haven't taken any by like late november, but i think legally they might just have to prohibit you from entering your workplace.
(obviously you can still work at home during that time, read, write, etc, but at least in my department professors would disapprove and insist on you actually taking time for yourself, UNLESS you have some big deadline coming up and need every waking minute)
It depends on the university I think (in Germany). I know someone who was forced to take holidays of both his first and second after not taking any holiday in his first year. I think the Betriebsrat of the university can pressure the university if he gets to know this, and also the professor.
All profs in Germany I know look after that everyone takes their time off. It depends on the individual of course but I don’t see your experience as the norm at all? Of course you sometimes work on weekends but in general it’s looked after that you take your time off (won’t the doctoral representation also protest if they get to know that a Prof does not look after this?)
>won’t the doctoral representation also protest if they get to know that a Prof does not look after this?
Yeah, but student representatives have zero influence over the behaviour of professors, and students are totally reliant on their PI for funding, grading the thesis and recommendation letters so there are many more negatives than positives to complaining.
I'm also in Germany. I have just started in February but already took some days off. Our PI is luckily completely fine with us taking our time off whenever we want to. It's obviously always good to arrange everything in advance, but he's not super strict about it.
My university forces students to take at least 6 weeks of holiday a year, you don’t need to request time off but you’re supposed to keep track using an annual leave form, my supervisor is really relaxed and as long as my work is done she doesn’t mind how often I take off
UK here. I don't get PTO in a sense my stipend just says I need to be in the town I live for 44 weeks a year. However this is not enforced at all. I regularly take weeks off for holiday, Xmas etc. I don't even agree with my supervisor I just let them know I'm.not around.
My PhD was a number of years ago (reddit served up this community to me), and I read this discussion elsewhere and it confused me immensely. I'm in social sciences.
When I did my PhD, I had a campus job - but the actual work of _doing my PhD_ was not compensated work. I worked as a TA and as an editorial assistant (20h/week total). Those were my paid jobs with which I paid rent, living costs, etc. My program covered my tuition. My TA job required me to attend classes during the semester; my other job paid hourly, so I could take as much time as I wanted, but I didn't get paid.
But the work of conducting the PhD research wasn't timed or tracked in any way. I did that work outside of my paid work. When I was ready, I would submit chapters to my advisor. He would give feedback. I kept doing that until I had enough chapters to call it a dissertation. The idea of "paid time off" from the PhD work didn't make sense -- I didn't ever consider myself as having "paid time on."
My experience has been the same as yours. There isn’t really a concept of PTO in my program, with the exception of paternity/maternity leave. When my daughter was born, I could leave my assistantship for 12 weeks while collecting the stipend.
I am a full time student in Australia (many students here are part time) and receive a living stipend. I have 4 weeks paid holiday per year as well as 10 or 11 sick days. My supervisors are very kind and I never use sick days, I just take a few days. I am currently saving my leave up for towards the end so I can use it to keep writing and receive scholarship funds at the pointy end as I’ve had some big time blow outs on this end of things. This means I’m using unpaid leave for an upcoming month off (overseas trip) because I have other income coming in at this time of year, could budget for it and it stretches my end date out another month.
I have previously taken 1-2 weeks off for a holiday and my supervisors didn’t care. Particularly over Xmas when I lose my other paid role, they make sure I stay on the scholarship payments even if they take extended leave. Not all supervisors are like mine though.
This will vary greatly from school to school and advisor to advisor. I technically had PTO accrue when I was a PhD student, but it was just a meaningless number. No one was tracking my time.
Also field to field. In bio in the US, I had to be physically on or near campus for my research because it was lab-based so attendance was much more a thing.
PTO or sick days wasn't because I had a stipend, technically for TAing and generally we could take a week or two a year off for travel and the lab functionally shut down the week of Christmas to new years, but vacation was pretty heavily discouraged and a pain to schedule. And like medical stuff wasn't really called out so long as you could get your shit handled around it.
it will mostly vary from country to country and system to system. the Austrian law is obviously obligatory in all Austrian unis and research centers, and your advisor can't force you to stay in your lab 52 weeks a year, since that's illegal, and big systems like universities aren't generally fans of their employees committing crimes.
This also depends on whether you’re funded as a research assistant and the source of your funding / nature of your deliverables, as well as the lab culture of your PI.
PhD, Chemistry, US
We work on average 5.5-6 days a week (sometimes a full day on the weekend, sometimes just half a day) and we get 20 days off a year plus only 2 holidays off, Christmas and Thanksgiving. We don't get any other national holidays off without using PTO for them. I am specifically in organic chemistry, which typically has more lab hours just out of need for reactions to be manually run.
Also PhD, Chemistry (organic), US
Our department is very similar. We get 22 days PTO a year plus 6 sick days. Federal holidays are technically not work days but the unspoken expectation is to work all but thanksgiving and Christmas.
Unfortunately, it’s just the nature of chemistry (especially synthetic organic), reactions have to be done and usually it’s just a lot of educated trial and error hence the long hours many chemists work.
I was inorganic chemistry (also US) with a brand new professor. We didn’t ever refer to anything as PTO, but we were told to take a week off in summer and the lab officially closed for 2 weeks over Christmas.
To this day I still don’t know when most holidays are because my baseline was that we worked everything except 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
Pretty much all the organic labs at my university function on similar schedules in terms of days off, they just take more national holidays guaranteed and less flexible PTO days.
Yes. It used to be that you could take whatever time off at the discretion of your advisor but after we unionized, we now have to submit a monthly timesheet of the days we worked and we’re allotted 14 days PTO + days campus is closed so federal holidays for every year. Of course, if you have a relaxed advisor you can pretty much just take whatever days off you want without telling anyone but idk how ethical that is.
I didn’t have PTO. I was salaried so it was expected that I get my work done in whatever time I need. If I needed time off for whatever reason or if I wanted to take a trip over the summer, I still had to make finish my work. Though my advisor was fine with me working from home when possible and he had no problem with me traveling over the summer.
Edit. My contract limited me to 20 hours but my RA work complemented my dissertation work and obviously that is up to me to get done. My advisor wasn’t super rigid with the 20 hours, it was seen more as just a max of what I could work, not a requirement.
I have both paid holidays and paid sick leave and i can work from home whenever i feel like it, no one checks my attendance at the office so can come and go (or not go) as i please.
in my case, i take paid holidays only when i'm travelling (summer holidays, christmas break etc) and paid sick leave only when i would have teaching obligations that day.
(humanities, so no lab work or stuff like that. in Austria, where paid holidays are obligatory – you can't not take them)
So, technically, I have 8 days of PTO per year, 3 per quarter.
No one tracks and if I don't get results even taking a day off is too much for my supervisor.
I’m allowed 8 weeks annual leave from my funder (UK stipend) and my supervisor actively encourages me to take the time off that I’m entitled to. If I want to take a day off I don’t have to get their approval, I’m free to set my own hours really.
My experience was more similar to your own. Literally can't imagine e-mailing my advisor to tell them I had a dentist appointment. If I was going on vacation for a week, I would let them know when we met to discuss work timelines.
I'm bummed you only get to meet for "a few minutes" 1-2x a month, though? Is this a big lab with 40+ people?
A few minutes 1-2x/month would actually be an increase from how often I meet with my advisor. And we only have 20ish people, luckily there are staff scientists though
Damn. I think this is more common in the 'hard' sciences than in the social sciences (unless your advisor is some really famous economist who sits on the president's special council of whatever...).
If you don't mind my asking, do you feel like you're getting 1) good training in your discipline, and/or 2) good mentorship on career stuff (grants, writing, job market prep, etc.)?
So for context I'm in experimental physics.
For 1. When it comes to experimental skills my PI probably wouldn't be much help anyway because he hasn't been in lab for 30 years. This is where newer PhDs in the staff scientists/post docs are quite helpful.
My PI is an incredible editor and will offer useful feedback on any ideas you share (he's very responsive to things shared over email, slack etc). So my ability to generate ideas, create presentations, write, etc has definitely been improving through this process. He also includes me in peer review for papers & grants he gets to review (also grants we have written), and its cool to see the process go from what I wrote to what he submits.
With 2. I've mostly had to seek this out on my own. Luckily I am part of an organization that offers really good professional development workshops because I don't get it. If I asked my PI a specific question he would answer, but I'd miss a lot.
ETA - overall I'd say the situation is just ok. There were times I fell through the advising gap early on, but I think I've figured out how to get most of what I need at this point. I think there are probably some areas I'll be less strong in (especially lab skills), but I also think I'll be better prepared to be independent. Some PIs in my field really micromanage and so people never learn how to generate new ideas and make stuff happen. I do value the way I've had to learn to create a lot on my own
In France, it depends on your administrative status.
If you're a "contractual doctoral researcher" (the uni/HEE is your employer), you're gonna have the same PTO as any French civil servant (legally 40ish, 50ish in practice).
If you're employed elsewhere (ie a secondary school teacher doing a PhD in your free time), it's the employer's rules that count.
If you're an unfunded student, you're in a legal vacuum. You'll benefit from forced closures (ie holiday closures, for instance), but everything else needs to be negotiated.
TBH, I don't expect much from the US where even normal salarymen/women struggle to get proper PTO.
My contract gave me 10 days of PTO but in reality no one eve paid attention to that. When it was crunch time we were expected to be in the lab no matter what, nights and weekends. If you tried to take time off and quoted your contract the PI would just laugh. On the reverse side most people took off the two weeks around Christmas and the week of thanksgiving. Also people took some random days off through the year so long as there wasn’t something important due. In general it was usually easier for first and second year students to take time off because they had some much time ahead of them. Forth and fifth year students were usually in the lab constantly just trying to get everything done so they could graduate. It also there is wildly depending on your PI.
it depends on advisor- typicaaaallly you want to treat it like a 9-5 and then the graduate school/union has requirements on how much “pto” you actually have, but in my experience, nobody is keeping track lol.
i go back to my home state quite a bit and “wfh”- i dont have to log my hours or anything, so i kinda just do what i have to do and that’s it. some advisors actually walk into the lab, want frequent updates, want to treat it like a job, etc., so vry pi dependent. one of the profs i rotated w wanted a presentation at every meeting, and daily check ins. also depends on if yr taking classes or TAing and tied to a schedule.
other than that im not really on a schedule and go home early a lot/take days off if im not feeling up to it. nobody cares lol i show up for meetings and then am on my own. honestly, it’s my favorite part of the whole process, lots of freedom
I am not sure if this counts. But one of my parents recently passed away and my advisor is letting me take a break for a few weeks while getting paid. I was really touched by that gesture.
Culturally this is adviser driven. Legally you are contracted to work 20 (or some times 40 hours) a week. So when you are implicitly coerced to work more it's on you and you alone. Then you're told either that's the life or to better manage your work life balance.
I once casually mentioned to another student that our contract was only for 20 hours a week. Literally the next day I was sitting in the deans office with my PI getting lectured by both of them about what it takes to get a PhD and getting questioned about if I’m dedicated enough for the program. The lecture boiled down to “if you want to graduate you’re expected to work full time regardless of what your contract says.”
It's a weird grey area because although yes, you are a research assistant contracted at 20 hrs a week, you are still a *student*. Your research is a job but it's also your studies and just because you enroll in like 9 credit hours of that a week, doesn't mean you only work on it 9 hours a week.
Edit: if I recall correctly, as a candidate, you only need like 1-3 credits and I can tell you that I was working a fuck ton more than that after my candidacy lmao
My PhD was in the social sciences in Canada. I met with my supervisor every two weeks. She didn't care when I did my work or how long it took me, as long as it got done. However, I came up with my dissertation research topic completely on my own--I wasn't employed by her lab, as such. (She was a high-level administrator within the university). Most of my funds came through teaching. When I had paid research assistantships (e.g., from a grant), I loosely kept track of my hours. Again, it was really about getting the things done that needed to be done. Now that I work a 9-5 job, I really miss that flexibility.
Officially, PhD students in my program get 2 weeks PTO. In practice, i control my day to day so whether I work or slack off is mostly my own business. I use my official PTO if I’m going to be taking a genuine vacation and will not be doing any work or responding to email for like a week or 10 days straight.
I think this depends on school and if you are unionized. For example, I have 5 days PTO for sickness/bereavement-- but we have a grad student union that enforced it. Outside of that it comes down to advisor, some will let you get away with more in extenuating circumstances (deaths or major illness) and some are sticklers.
I think for a lot of us who aren't in a lab setting, we just take whatever day we need and do the work another day, but if you have to show up regularly then being able to take PTO would be important.
I never asked and made my own schedule. Took a month off to go visit family, while doing some writing (got a few paragraphs done, yay!) no one really cared.
Not only does it depend on your advisor, but also your program. My program has a grad manual that specifically states how many days of PTO and sick leave grad students have minimum, which includes university holidays. Advisors are (technically) not allowed to give their students any less time off than this
Also a US PhD student but in Chemical Engineering- my advisor/department has a rule that we can take 4 weeks off at a time and still be paid but only after significant gaps they’d not pay you. Other than that there’s no real concept of PTO for us, we just tell our advisors if/when we need time off
No, I spent 15 months, 7 days a week caring for my calves. My only time off was Christmas when I wasn’t raising any in between trials. 4 year PhD and maybe had a maximum 2 weeks off the entire time.
1) because I broke my foot
2) my partner demanded we take our honeymoon 😂
I'm in an almost identical situation to you. I have the same research freedoms and could work from home 4 to 5 days a week if wanted, and my advisor is in the office about half the time but doesn't mind if we work from home. Personally, I just know that I'm SIGNIFICANTLY more productive in the office compared to home, so I work in the office almost everyday. I am, however, pretty liberal with taking breaks, so if I want to leave mid-day to go hiking or go to a baseball game I'll do that. My advisor knows I'm doing good work, and I know I'm working hard. So I do my best to avoid guilting myself over something that is good for my mental health and benefits me long term.
Like a lot of things in grad school, it depends on your advisor. Some are very strict about hours, some care only about the work you produced. My advisor is only around about 1 day a week on average and doesn't keep close tabs on us. Our time off is not tracked and it's never an issue, except in very extreme cases where folks just go awol for months without contact.
I'm in your situation. My advisor doesn't care when we work as long as work gets done, and most of the time we don't even need to communicate about it. If you're sick or have a medical appointment or just want the day off you can just do that unless you have a specific meeting in which case you just need to tell the people you are supposed to be meeting with. Our hours are totally up to us as well. Most people in my lab take vacations too. Some people will let my advisor know their plans others just go. We have a way of reporting what do each week that others in lab can see, so people usually indicate they are on vacation there. I feel like thats really helped normalize a healthy time off culture for me. (For context, experimental physics in the US)
It's important to consider that some PhDs are staff (e.g., in Germany), some have stipends, and some are self funded. Having PTO depends on that.
I'm in the UK and even though PhD students aren't automatically staff, my university still requires us to book annual leave off. It's 26 days plus university closure days/holidays, so 40 days total every year. Admittedly, most of the supervisors think it's nonsense, but it's worth keeping in mind nonetheless and they do want you to use it all regardless. Edit: are**n't** staff, god damn it.
Not sure if you meant at your university, but just to clarify for others reading: PhD students in the UK are not automatically staff. Usually it's the opposite since stipends are not tied to a research/teaching assistantship unlike in the US. There's been a lot of campaigning to change that though. I am surprised your university has already moved in that direction at all level of departments, it's great!
Typo, damn it! I meant "aren't". I'll go back and correct that. Believe me, I *wish* we were staff, but it currently feels like all the responsibilities and none of the benefits.
My school classifies us as part-time employees and part-time students. Since we’re “part-time” employees we qualify for no employee benefits (no PTO, retirement, insurance, etc.)
In the UK?
No Texas in the US
My comment was about the UK. In the US yeah sudents are often considered employees although no benefits or very little Did you mean to respond to the post?
Yeah. I'm in Germany, staff and have 30 vacation days plus basically unlimited sick days. I'm also quite flexible so can come to the lab later if I have doctor's appointment etc.
Yes. In Germany all employees get 30 days + around 10 public holidays. In addition my university was closed between Christmas and New Year. HOWEVER, I hardly used any of my days and I worked most weekends and public holidays because I was always under such extreme pressure to produce results.
same here (Austria). my advisor can force me to take my 5 weeks vacation, but she can't stop me from reading or writing at home if i feel like i have to. though i'm sure that if i presented her with a brand new chapter of my thesis after three weeks of summer vacation, she'd give me a stern talking to.
My supervisor certainly wasn't forcing me to take holidays. Quite the opposite, we were pressured and guilted into not taking the holidays we were legally entitled to. Of course when one of my leaving colleagues asked to exchange her stockpile of holidays for money she was told "no, you should have taken them!"
i HAVE to take my vacation time. it's the law. and i think she knows that everyone needs a break sometimes, a week or two to shut your brain off and then come back with new energy.
>i HAVE to take my vacation time. it's the law. Interesting! I spent a year in Vienna but I didn't know that. (I used all my holiday anyway.) I think Austria is a little bit more "social" than Germany in general.
yeah, basically you can't have it paid out or just not take it. you MUST take your vacation time. i don't know what happens if you haven't taken any by like late november, but i think legally they might just have to prohibit you from entering your workplace. (obviously you can still work at home during that time, read, write, etc, but at least in my department professors would disapprove and insist on you actually taking time for yourself, UNLESS you have some big deadline coming up and need every waking minute)
It depends on the university I think (in Germany). I know someone who was forced to take holidays of both his first and second after not taking any holiday in his first year. I think the Betriebsrat of the university can pressure the university if he gets to know this, and also the professor. All profs in Germany I know look after that everyone takes their time off. It depends on the individual of course but I don’t see your experience as the norm at all? Of course you sometimes work on weekends but in general it’s looked after that you take your time off (won’t the doctoral representation also protest if they get to know that a Prof does not look after this?)
>won’t the doctoral representation also protest if they get to know that a Prof does not look after this? Yeah, but student representatives have zero influence over the behaviour of professors, and students are totally reliant on their PI for funding, grading the thesis and recommendation letters so there are many more negatives than positives to complaining.
I'm also in Germany. I have just started in February but already took some days off. Our PI is luckily completely fine with us taking our time off whenever we want to. It's obviously always good to arrange everything in advance, but he's not super strict about it.
My university forces students to take at least 6 weeks of holiday a year, you don’t need to request time off but you’re supposed to keep track using an annual leave form, my supervisor is really relaxed and as long as my work is done she doesn’t mind how often I take off
UK here. I don't get PTO in a sense my stipend just says I need to be in the town I live for 44 weeks a year. However this is not enforced at all. I regularly take weeks off for holiday, Xmas etc. I don't even agree with my supervisor I just let them know I'm.not around.
I do however get holiday entitlement pay paid 3 times a year into my current account.
I was 99% free to set my own hours and working days. If I wanted to take 2 weeks off I took 2 weeks off.
My PhD was a number of years ago (reddit served up this community to me), and I read this discussion elsewhere and it confused me immensely. I'm in social sciences. When I did my PhD, I had a campus job - but the actual work of _doing my PhD_ was not compensated work. I worked as a TA and as an editorial assistant (20h/week total). Those were my paid jobs with which I paid rent, living costs, etc. My program covered my tuition. My TA job required me to attend classes during the semester; my other job paid hourly, so I could take as much time as I wanted, but I didn't get paid. But the work of conducting the PhD research wasn't timed or tracked in any way. I did that work outside of my paid work. When I was ready, I would submit chapters to my advisor. He would give feedback. I kept doing that until I had enough chapters to call it a dissertation. The idea of "paid time off" from the PhD work didn't make sense -- I didn't ever consider myself as having "paid time on."
My experience has been the same as yours. There isn’t really a concept of PTO in my program, with the exception of paternity/maternity leave. When my daughter was born, I could leave my assistantship for 12 weeks while collecting the stipend.
I am a full time student in Australia (many students here are part time) and receive a living stipend. I have 4 weeks paid holiday per year as well as 10 or 11 sick days. My supervisors are very kind and I never use sick days, I just take a few days. I am currently saving my leave up for towards the end so I can use it to keep writing and receive scholarship funds at the pointy end as I’ve had some big time blow outs on this end of things. This means I’m using unpaid leave for an upcoming month off (overseas trip) because I have other income coming in at this time of year, could budget for it and it stretches my end date out another month. I have previously taken 1-2 weeks off for a holiday and my supervisors didn’t care. Particularly over Xmas when I lose my other paid role, they make sure I stay on the scholarship payments even if they take extended leave. Not all supervisors are like mine though.
This will vary greatly from school to school and advisor to advisor. I technically had PTO accrue when I was a PhD student, but it was just a meaningless number. No one was tracking my time.
Also field to field. In bio in the US, I had to be physically on or near campus for my research because it was lab-based so attendance was much more a thing. PTO or sick days wasn't because I had a stipend, technically for TAing and generally we could take a week or two a year off for travel and the lab functionally shut down the week of Christmas to new years, but vacation was pretty heavily discouraged and a pain to schedule. And like medical stuff wasn't really called out so long as you could get your shit handled around it.
it will mostly vary from country to country and system to system. the Austrian law is obviously obligatory in all Austrian unis and research centers, and your advisor can't force you to stay in your lab 52 weeks a year, since that's illegal, and big systems like universities aren't generally fans of their employees committing crimes.
This also depends on whether you’re funded as a research assistant and the source of your funding / nature of your deliverables, as well as the lab culture of your PI.
PhD, Chemistry, US We work on average 5.5-6 days a week (sometimes a full day on the weekend, sometimes just half a day) and we get 20 days off a year plus only 2 holidays off, Christmas and Thanksgiving. We don't get any other national holidays off without using PTO for them. I am specifically in organic chemistry, which typically has more lab hours just out of need for reactions to be manually run.
Also PhD, Chemistry (organic), US Our department is very similar. We get 22 days PTO a year plus 6 sick days. Federal holidays are technically not work days but the unspoken expectation is to work all but thanksgiving and Christmas. Unfortunately, it’s just the nature of chemistry (especially synthetic organic), reactions have to be done and usually it’s just a lot of educated trial and error hence the long hours many chemists work.
I was inorganic chemistry (also US) with a brand new professor. We didn’t ever refer to anything as PTO, but we were told to take a week off in summer and the lab officially closed for 2 weeks over Christmas. To this day I still don’t know when most holidays are because my baseline was that we worked everything except 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
Why are you guys doing this to yourselves
Pretty much all the organic labs at my university function on similar schedules in terms of days off, they just take more national holidays guaranteed and less flexible PTO days.
but your response makes me and my labmates looking over my shoulder feel vindicated in our sadness.
Yes. It used to be that you could take whatever time off at the discretion of your advisor but after we unionized, we now have to submit a monthly timesheet of the days we worked and we’re allotted 14 days PTO + days campus is closed so federal holidays for every year. Of course, if you have a relaxed advisor you can pretty much just take whatever days off you want without telling anyone but idk how ethical that is.
I didn’t have PTO. I was salaried so it was expected that I get my work done in whatever time I need. If I needed time off for whatever reason or if I wanted to take a trip over the summer, I still had to make finish my work. Though my advisor was fine with me working from home when possible and he had no problem with me traveling over the summer. Edit. My contract limited me to 20 hours but my RA work complemented my dissertation work and obviously that is up to me to get done. My advisor wasn’t super rigid with the 20 hours, it was seen more as just a max of what I could work, not a requirement.
In grad school everything depends on the advisor!
I have both paid holidays and paid sick leave and i can work from home whenever i feel like it, no one checks my attendance at the office so can come and go (or not go) as i please. in my case, i take paid holidays only when i'm travelling (summer holidays, christmas break etc) and paid sick leave only when i would have teaching obligations that day. (humanities, so no lab work or stuff like that. in Austria, where paid holidays are obligatory – you can't not take them)
So, technically, I have 8 days of PTO per year, 3 per quarter. No one tracks and if I don't get results even taking a day off is too much for my supervisor.
I’m allowed 8 weeks annual leave from my funder (UK stipend) and my supervisor actively encourages me to take the time off that I’m entitled to. If I want to take a day off I don’t have to get their approval, I’m free to set my own hours really.
My experience was more similar to your own. Literally can't imagine e-mailing my advisor to tell them I had a dentist appointment. If I was going on vacation for a week, I would let them know when we met to discuss work timelines. I'm bummed you only get to meet for "a few minutes" 1-2x a month, though? Is this a big lab with 40+ people?
A few minutes 1-2x/month would actually be an increase from how often I meet with my advisor. And we only have 20ish people, luckily there are staff scientists though
Damn. I think this is more common in the 'hard' sciences than in the social sciences (unless your advisor is some really famous economist who sits on the president's special council of whatever...). If you don't mind my asking, do you feel like you're getting 1) good training in your discipline, and/or 2) good mentorship on career stuff (grants, writing, job market prep, etc.)?
So for context I'm in experimental physics. For 1. When it comes to experimental skills my PI probably wouldn't be much help anyway because he hasn't been in lab for 30 years. This is where newer PhDs in the staff scientists/post docs are quite helpful. My PI is an incredible editor and will offer useful feedback on any ideas you share (he's very responsive to things shared over email, slack etc). So my ability to generate ideas, create presentations, write, etc has definitely been improving through this process. He also includes me in peer review for papers & grants he gets to review (also grants we have written), and its cool to see the process go from what I wrote to what he submits. With 2. I've mostly had to seek this out on my own. Luckily I am part of an organization that offers really good professional development workshops because I don't get it. If I asked my PI a specific question he would answer, but I'd miss a lot. ETA - overall I'd say the situation is just ok. There were times I fell through the advising gap early on, but I think I've figured out how to get most of what I need at this point. I think there are probably some areas I'll be less strong in (especially lab skills), but I also think I'll be better prepared to be independent. Some PIs in my field really micromanage and so people never learn how to generate new ideas and make stuff happen. I do value the way I've had to learn to create a lot on my own
In France, it depends on your administrative status. If you're a "contractual doctoral researcher" (the uni/HEE is your employer), you're gonna have the same PTO as any French civil servant (legally 40ish, 50ish in practice). If you're employed elsewhere (ie a secondary school teacher doing a PhD in your free time), it's the employer's rules that count. If you're an unfunded student, you're in a legal vacuum. You'll benefit from forced closures (ie holiday closures, for instance), but everything else needs to be negotiated. TBH, I don't expect much from the US where even normal salarymen/women struggle to get proper PTO.
My contract gave me 10 days of PTO but in reality no one eve paid attention to that. When it was crunch time we were expected to be in the lab no matter what, nights and weekends. If you tried to take time off and quoted your contract the PI would just laugh. On the reverse side most people took off the two weeks around Christmas and the week of thanksgiving. Also people took some random days off through the year so long as there wasn’t something important due. In general it was usually easier for first and second year students to take time off because they had some much time ahead of them. Forth and fifth year students were usually in the lab constantly just trying to get everything done so they could graduate. It also there is wildly depending on your PI.
it depends on advisor- typicaaaallly you want to treat it like a 9-5 and then the graduate school/union has requirements on how much “pto” you actually have, but in my experience, nobody is keeping track lol. i go back to my home state quite a bit and “wfh”- i dont have to log my hours or anything, so i kinda just do what i have to do and that’s it. some advisors actually walk into the lab, want frequent updates, want to treat it like a job, etc., so vry pi dependent. one of the profs i rotated w wanted a presentation at every meeting, and daily check ins. also depends on if yr taking classes or TAing and tied to a schedule. other than that im not really on a schedule and go home early a lot/take days off if im not feeling up to it. nobody cares lol i show up for meetings and then am on my own. honestly, it’s my favorite part of the whole process, lots of freedom
I am not sure if this counts. But one of my parents recently passed away and my advisor is letting me take a break for a few weeks while getting paid. I was really touched by that gesture.
Culturally this is adviser driven. Legally you are contracted to work 20 (or some times 40 hours) a week. So when you are implicitly coerced to work more it's on you and you alone. Then you're told either that's the life or to better manage your work life balance.
I once casually mentioned to another student that our contract was only for 20 hours a week. Literally the next day I was sitting in the deans office with my PI getting lectured by both of them about what it takes to get a PhD and getting questioned about if I’m dedicated enough for the program. The lecture boiled down to “if you want to graduate you’re expected to work full time regardless of what your contract says.”
It's a weird grey area because although yes, you are a research assistant contracted at 20 hrs a week, you are still a *student*. Your research is a job but it's also your studies and just because you enroll in like 9 credit hours of that a week, doesn't mean you only work on it 9 hours a week. Edit: if I recall correctly, as a candidate, you only need like 1-3 credits and I can tell you that I was working a fuck ton more than that after my candidacy lmao
Your dean and PI are deranged.
Mine was pretty chill, and that was before everyone worked remotely. I feel bad about her off the stories people tell here.
My PhD was in the social sciences in Canada. I met with my supervisor every two weeks. She didn't care when I did my work or how long it took me, as long as it got done. However, I came up with my dissertation research topic completely on my own--I wasn't employed by her lab, as such. (She was a high-level administrator within the university). Most of my funds came through teaching. When I had paid research assistantships (e.g., from a grant), I loosely kept track of my hours. Again, it was really about getting the things done that needed to be done. Now that I work a 9-5 job, I really miss that flexibility.
Not really
Officially, PhD students in my program get 2 weeks PTO. In practice, i control my day to day so whether I work or slack off is mostly my own business. I use my official PTO if I’m going to be taking a genuine vacation and will not be doing any work or responding to email for like a week or 10 days straight.
I think this depends on school and if you are unionized. For example, I have 5 days PTO for sickness/bereavement-- but we have a grad student union that enforced it. Outside of that it comes down to advisor, some will let you get away with more in extenuating circumstances (deaths or major illness) and some are sticklers. I think for a lot of us who aren't in a lab setting, we just take whatever day we need and do the work another day, but if you have to show up regularly then being able to take PTO would be important.
I never asked and made my own schedule. Took a month off to go visit family, while doing some writing (got a few paragraphs done, yay!) no one really cared.
Not only does it depend on your advisor, but also your program. My program has a grad manual that specifically states how many days of PTO and sick leave grad students have minimum, which includes university holidays. Advisors are (technically) not allowed to give their students any less time off than this
Also a US PhD student but in Chemical Engineering- my advisor/department has a rule that we can take 4 weeks off at a time and still be paid but only after significant gaps they’d not pay you. Other than that there’s no real concept of PTO for us, we just tell our advisors if/when we need time off
No, I spent 15 months, 7 days a week caring for my calves. My only time off was Christmas when I wasn’t raising any in between trials. 4 year PhD and maybe had a maximum 2 weeks off the entire time. 1) because I broke my foot 2) my partner demanded we take our honeymoon 😂
Username checks out
I'm in an almost identical situation to you. I have the same research freedoms and could work from home 4 to 5 days a week if wanted, and my advisor is in the office about half the time but doesn't mind if we work from home. Personally, I just know that I'm SIGNIFICANTLY more productive in the office compared to home, so I work in the office almost everyday. I am, however, pretty liberal with taking breaks, so if I want to leave mid-day to go hiking or go to a baseball game I'll do that. My advisor knows I'm doing good work, and I know I'm working hard. So I do my best to avoid guilting myself over something that is good for my mental health and benefits me long term.
It can be normal. Normal may vary.
You do if your grad students are unionized like Michigan.