PhD life

Are you doing a PhD (thesis)? Do you know someone who is doing it? Most of them work for a little salary, in a precarious situation for many years but they seem happy to do it (most of the time). They work at strange hours, some days they rest at work ‘till 23 pm and other days they can ‘work’ at home. They travel quite a lot to go to courses, meetings and to do stays abroad in other universities … In 3, 4 or more (even 7 or 8!) years they have to do an original research work in one field of expertise, something very concrete, like ‘The sexual conduct of vinegar fly (Drosophila melanogaster)with full moon’ and defend it in front of a tribunal.
At the end, you are supposed to become a doctor, so a specialist person on your topic. The thing is that the way to the end is sometimes difficult because of problems of funding, supervisors, experiments do not work …
Moreover than these little negative things, to do a PhD is a very exciting challenge! You can contribute with a little grain of sand to the common knowledge, or at least you try to do it! As you would have guess, I’m doing a PhD and I have found a web page that is just for laugh about it all (PhD Comics).
I post you one of the most popular comic strips of this web page about the graduate student work output during a week. I would say that it is quite realistic!