Do linguistics grad students have time to breathe?

• Lifestyle of a Linguistics Graduate Student? I am starting a Ph.D. Program next fall, and I want to have an idea of how much time I will be spending on campus, working, studying, etc. Will I have time to sleep? Will I be burnt out and hating myself after one semester? What about money? So, I am probably going to be at certain university on Long Island or a certain university in New Jersey for my linguistics Ph.D(Both second tier, similarly ranked). My undergraduate major was not linguistics, but two languages. I did a post-bac year in Brain and Cognitive Science and Linguistics. I am aware of a funding difference between the two schools, it appears that New Jersey School's base stipends are a good $4000 dollars better than Long Island School, and have similar costs of living. Long Island school has faculty that are connected with my recommenders and I would have the opportunity to work with Favorite Undergraduate Professor/Fairy GodMother in a academic setting(which excites me very much) so I want to go to Long Island School over New Jersey school but I also want to eat and not die on the street. I'm hoping that maybe the actual $$$ difference won't be so bad, but I don't have any information about my funding package yet(or really, official acceptances yet.). If anyone knows anything about these two places and the stipends and if I am going to starve(hopefully I've given enough identifying information without totally outing myself), it would be appreciated. But my main question is, how much time am I going to be spending at school, especially after my coursework is finished. My only experience with graduate level work load is through my boyfriend and his roommate, who are Chemistry Ph.D students. He's basically always at lab, although he goes through cycles of being burnt out and not going to lab, sometimes for two days at a time. His roommate is a first year, and she is basically out of the apartment from dawn till midnight. They have group meetings, and making-molecule meetings, and meeting with professors, and research and papers and problemsets and all sorts of things. It seems really jam packed. But he only had one year of classes, where it looks like I will be having three, if I take a full load every semester. (And the thing is, I don't mind if it's insane, I just want to know beforehand). But Linguistics is not Chemistry. What are you expected to do? What is your everyday life like since you don't have a lab to go everyday? I know that sounds like something I should know going into it, but I don't really know who to ask. If it helps, I am going to specialize in the phonology/morphosyntax/semantics end, not so much the pragmatics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics end. Am I going to be able to sleep and maybe have a hobby I occasionally pursue, or will I be like my boyfriend's roommate, basically running on empty constantly(I do not know how she does it)?

• Answer:

  Why hello, linguistics grad student here! Congrats on getting accepted to grad school! I came into my Ph.D. program pretty well prepared in that I already knew a lot of the first-year material. If you only had a BA in languages under your belt I'd be a little worried for you, but with that post-bac year in there I bet you'll have a similar experience. So here's what I predict about your lifestyle next year: You will have a lot of time on your hands. A full courseload will present you with enough work to keep you busy for pretty much the rest of your life, but in reality you'll be able to scrape by just fine by doing a tiny fraction of it. And you will come in all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in September, and then you will have day after day and week after week where you don't need to be on campus for any particular reason because you only have class maybe three days a week, or only for an hour in the afternoon sometimes. And you will become less bright-eyed and less bushy-tailed, and getting out of your pajamas will start to seem entirely unnecessary most days. No one will notice if you don't show up around the department, your work will all be reading and problem sets that you could do from pretty much anywhere in the world including your bed, and it will get colder and people will get less social and quite honestly, it will kind of start to suck. I got very lonely and very bored during my first year of grad school, and I felt frustrated because I thought it was supposed to be a challenging and engaging experience and instead I was napping more than ever before in my life. The lack of structure is something that you will struggle with throughout your entire Ph.D. in linguistics. Everyone I know has a hard time with it. As you seem to suspect, it's not at all like those science students who are kept running around from dawn till midnight. I used to crave that kind of demanding schedule. This year being a TA is providing some of that structure (undergrads are good at being demanding!) and it's making a big difference. I'm still in my coursework though, and believe me, I dread the day I no longer even have classes to bring me to campus and force me to interact with other linguists. But for what it's worth the first year is the worst by all accounts and right now I'm very happy with my lifestyle and feel good about having decided to come to grad school! One thing the lack of structure means is that if you're allowed to work by the terms of your funding (some fellowships prohibit it), you might want to consider taking on a few hours of work a week to ease your money worries and introduce some structure into your life. Another thing it means is that if you want to pursue a hobby, you not only will be able to but really should. It will do wonders for your mental health when some days you have no other reason to leave your apartment. I'm also going to MeMail you. I have a comment about one of the programs :)