>>11603697Experiences vary wildly. In general, you make your own hours and nobody gives a shit if you do nothing. As such, there isn't really a massive workload by necessity. However, things usually get hectic sooner or later due to balancing research, writing, conferences, teaching and whatever else you need to be doing. Similarly, bureaucracy doesn't really hit you very hard yet, that's for your supervisor to worry about, and PhD students can actually just get on with their research to more or less their hearts' content.
The problem is that, as anon said, you need to do something that is interesting and original, write it up and get it published and do this a few times until you have a thesis. Probably nobody knows exactly what you are doing or what you should be doing. You never really know if what you're doing is really sensible or correct. You need to motivate yourself and figure out stuff all the time, and there usually are no clear answers to anything. There is quite a bit of time pressure, but nobody is really forcing you to do anything or making sure you're in line. Similarly, there are any number of things you could be doing, only a small subsection of which you will actually be able to do, and a smaller subsection of which is sensible to do, and again no clear indication of what these subsections are.
The vagueness and self-directedness are what I think does most people in. People say they like to be independent, but being an independent researcher is definitely not for everyone.
