A quantative evaluation of my Ph.D.

Throughout my Ph.D. I kept track of some numbers as I progressed. This was mainly inadvertantly, but at one point it became a fun project.

I started my Ph.D. on September 1st 2017 and today, February 27th 2023, marks the end-date. I defended my thesis in a 2 hour oral examination as is the standard at McGill Physics. This post is contains some quantative information from my 2005 day Ph.D.

5 years, 5 months and 26 days later, what does that look like?

Hours worked roughly: ~12,000

Typically I was able to take weekends and like to think that I was able to stick to roughly 8 hour work days, however I’m quite certain I had some 10-12 hour workdays and other days that looked more like 4 hours.

Vacation taken: 47 days officially

Assuming that I should have taken 15 days of vacation a year, 47/75 days was not a good rate.

HOWEVER, during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe I made up for these missing vacation days. I’m not saying that necessary mental health days count as vacation, especially in a time where it felt like the world was about to end. During this time I was doing the import task of keeping tabs on family, friends, myself and my animal crossing island inhabitants.

Super computer CPU hours used:

I have still to sift through this data.

Thesis words per day: 335.8

Total: 36263

108 active days writing

335.8 words per day with a peak of 668 words written in one day.

Plot of thesis progress that updated with every ‘git commit’.