Whether you are a faculty member, a new student, or a prospective student, you may be curious what a typical day is like in the life of a full-time PhD student in the Instructional Systems and Learning Technologies (ISLT) program at Florida State University (FSU).
Ray offered to allow us to follow her around campus one day and capture a typical day in her life on campus. Ray moved here from China and started her doctoral program in the Fall of 2013. She hopes to complete her doctoral studies and dissertation by the Spring of 2019 and hopes she can stay in the US and become a professor at a University or Community College.
Ray just successfully defended her prospectus. The prospectus is the first three chapters of the dissertation which include the introduction, the literature review, and the methods section. Now she needs to collect the data, analyze the data, then write the result, discussion, and conclusion sections, as well as defend her dissertation.
Each day, Ray wakes up and heads into her office area on campus to work on her dissertation. She always starts off the morning with breakfast and tea.
You will usually find Ray reading articles found online for her dissertation or hardback cover books for classes she is currently taking.
After some time, Ray usually has the urge to get out and take a walk. She stresses the importance of taking time away from her studies to stop and smell the roses
She gathered some great ideas to continue working on her dissertation while thinking on her walk, so she headed back to the Stone Building, where the College of Education and the Instructional Systems Technology program is located, to continue typing away for a few hours.
For lunch she went to the Seminole Cafe right around the corner from her building.
She then decided to keep reading her book for a class she had the next day. She walked around outdoors until she found a nice bench in the sun to sit down and continue her book.
After lunch and catching some rays, she went back to her desk again to continue working on her dissertation.
She came to a road block and needed to step outside and listen to some music. Her favorite song is "Losing My Mind" by Charlie Puth, hence what she was listening to at the time of this picture.
As she got on the elevator to head back to her desk, she noticed a flyer in the elevator advertisting for an event the next weekend. She explains that there are always events going on around campus and lots of things to keep you active if you would like.
After several more hours of working at her desk, it was time to get out again. She decided to sit outside in the sun for a few minutes to make a phone call then she headed to the gym for a swim where she ended her day on campus.
