A day in the life of a PGR
Joseph Andrew Smith
COMMUNICATIONS, CULTURE AND MEDIA STUDIES PHD RESEARCHER
Hello and welcome to my latest blog. I'm sharing my typical day as a Postgraduate Researcher (PGR) from the moment I set off on a morning, to spending time teaching, reading and meeting with my supervisor.
8.00am
Ready for another day as a postgraduate researcher at the University of Huddersfield, I catch the bus from my student accommodation. (Huddersfield has many options when it comes to accommodation, but the university has a partnership with a company called DIGS, whose Storthes Hall complex has expanded to provide mature and postgraduate flats.)
8.25am
After a twenty-minute bus ride, I arrive on campus and grab a coffee from one of the various amenities. Sometimes, if I fancy a treat, I’ll also source a vegetarian breakfast muffin (long days need plenty of calories)!
9.15am
A few times during the week, I start the day by teaching a class. There are plenty of teaching opportunities across the university in all departments, though it is not essential that you teach. I, like many postgraduate researchers, harbour ambitions to one day work as a university lecturer, so to be able to run a few classes is excellent for both my CV and development as a tutor.
11.30am
Time for a coffee and a snack after a morning of teaching – it’s hard work running seminars!
11.40am
Time to get on with some PhD work. Obviously, the type of work that you do depends on what stage of your research you are at. At the time of writing I am in the transition between the end of my coding and analysis and writing-up, which means that I am either trawling through my data analysis software (I use a software package called NVivo) or writing up sections of my thesis.
12.30pm
Supervision meeting. Throughout your research you will work closely with your supervisory team – usually made up of one primary supervisor (who tends to be a more senior staff member) and a secondary supervisor (often slightly more junior). Again, the content of these meetings and even their frequency depends on which stage of your research you find yourself. For example, during your first year you will have regular meetings to discuss things like research aims and questions, as well as methodological ideas; during your actual data collection phase these meetings will likely be fewer in number (especially if you are ‘in the field’ for any length of time), before analysis and writing-up sees more regular meet-ups once again.
2.00pm
After my supervision meeting I pop into town, just across the road from campus, for a spot of lunch before embarking on some more PhD work – this time settling in for a session doing the thing you will probably do more of than anything else during postgraduate life: reading. This is something you will find yourself doing whenever you have some spare time (but with any luck you’ll have chosen to study something for which you have great passion, so it’s not all bad!).
4.15pm
After a good reading session, it’s time to teach another class to end the working day. Teaching is an optional extra for me, acting as a job on the side of my PhD research. Of course, instead of teaching, many postgraduate students work a ‘proper’ job alongside their studies. When I was doing my Master’s degree, for instance, I used to work my own ‘proper’ job, driving over to MediaCityUK in Salford at the same time as completing my first postgraduate degree.
5.35pm
After taking the last class it’s time to relax. As mentioned above, town is just over the road, so I will often meet up with peers and head out for some tea, grab a drink or shoot some pool!
If you'd like to read more of my blogs why not try my last one, Why I chose to do postgraduate study at Huddersfield.
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