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Context: I'm Brazilian, recently I moved to a small town in France for my PhD. Both my undergrad and Master's were done in the same university in Brazil, a really enormous city called Sao Paulo. I moved from a University with 98k students in total to a small city with a population of 120k in its urban area. I'm enjoying the change. Really. Learning a new language, meeting new people, adapting to a different culture and way of living etc. Nothing to complain except maybe one thing, which is this topic's subject.

How formal is a PhD in Europe, particularly in France, when it comes to attending the office? I mean, I know how important it is to go to the office, to exchange with people, with your colleagues, other PhDs, professors etc but I don't like the routine, that is, everyday going to the office and spending 7 hours in there sitting at my desk. In my university in Sao Paulo, Brazil, I could go to the cafeteria and have a coffee, or work in plein air in there, talk to my friends, or go to the library (I never went to the university's library here in my campus in France) when I wanted to work from there. Maybe I can also do this here but all my colleagues are in their office everyday all day and I don't want to be the "brazilian guy who only shows up when he feels like to". Ok, in Brazil I did a Master which is less formal than a PhD, but sometimes I want to change the routine and the environment. I not even talking about home-office, but "outside-office", "garden-office", "library-office", "coffee-office", "pub-office"......

There is nothing in my PhD contract that says that I HAVE to be 35h/week in the office but the spirit between my colleagues is that this is the case. I don't know if it is a French thing. I work with theoretical Physics and I use a lot of my computer to do simulations, and sometimes I work with just pen and paper. These moments, those "pen and paper moments" I feel like "oh, I could go to the city center, sit in my favorite café after lunch and work 3-4 hours in there, reading the papers and trying to work in these calculations, it is a beautifull day today you know...." but what I really do is just be in my office.

The system around me might not immediately validate that ("I have work to do and I'd think better in a café today").

I am doing this PhD for 3 months. We are a small institute in a small town and I think we are in a total of 10 PhD students in our building plus some more in another one forming the whole Physics group - but I never met everyone. I am organizing a regular journal clubs and group meetings to try to be closer to my colleagues' work (they exchange just a little and we don't have journal clubs =//, I mean the professors do with their students but the students itself don't organize anything in their own).

So my question is: I want to understand your experience in a PhD in Europe, particularly in France, and how was the formality about office attendance, hours per week etc, not just that but what is your ideas of a PhD life? I want to romanticize the student life kk I mean, should PhD students be more... daring? you know, this Tolkenian-Oxfordian thing of crossing the street and entering a Pub to drink some IPA while discussing theories and reciting poetry........ I want to go to a pub with other phds and spilling beer on my notes while formulating intriguing questions about physical theories...

Of course we can do group meetings in bars or cafés outside working hours but I want to be bale to break the routine of everyone sitting back-to-back in the office minding only their own business. Am I fantasizing?

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    This is an interesting question, but I recommend that you edit to cut the length in half. Commented yesterday
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    Also bear in mind that there really isn't such a thing as "Europe" in this context. European countries exhibit a very wide range of different cultures and that includes academic cultures. Even in France, I suspect you will find differences between say Paris and Marseille, but certainly trying to generalize to Europe won't work. The PhD experience of someone in Sweden will be significantly different to that of someone in Greece, for example. Not better or worse, just different. Commented yesterday
  • Is it the case that all your colleagues are in their office all the time, or are those just the ones you happen across when you go into the office? I don't disbelieve you, this just seems like another plausible explanation. Commented yesterday
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    ‘I want to romanticize the student life kk …’ That pretty much says it all. Commented 5 hours ago
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    " I want to romanticize the student life kk I mean, should PhD students be more... daring? you know, this Tolkenian-Oxfordian thing of crossing the street and entering a Pub to drink some IPA while discussing theories and reciting poetry........ I want to go to a pub with other phds and spilling beer on my notes while formulating intriguing questions about physical theories..." I suspect that "bohemian" is the word you are looking for, rather than "daring". Commented 4 hours ago

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This will heavily depend on your lab - there are no real blanket rules. I knew people who were in home office for weeks (maybe showed up for lab meetings in person, but rather on zoom) but also labs where the PI wanted everyone to be on site by 9am. Speak to your PI about it.

To my experience, this bottom-up organization, while sounds good rarely works (but then works for everyone's benefit). Also, not everyone is up for pubs and beer, which is especially can look bad when you are only a few students.

The other thing: carve your own way for sure - but do not force other people to change. Invite them and accept what they say.

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    Strongly agree that it depends on your PI/supervisor. This is something that varies wildly between PIs even within departments at one university. Commented yesterday
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It definitely depends on how your professor manages your group, but also the lack thereof. When I did my PhD the professor didn't bother at all, but at the group leader level we had some regular meetings/outings, academic and socially respectively. Ask your professor whether there is anything of the sort, though proper onboarding should have told you about this. If there's nothing and the professor isn't against it, try asking your fellow PhD students / postdocs / whatever about it, but be prepared that they may want to separate work and private life.

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One datapoint, for my lab (~100 people total, physical chemistry, central Paris):

PhDs and postdocs are expected to work from the office most of the time. Occasional home office is allowed if requested in advance. Most people follow this rule although there are one or two who ignore it and their supervisors don't notice or don't care.

Most PIs have a meeting with their group regularly, frequencies range from once a week to once a month.

There are ~2 seminars per week, attended by 10-50% of the lab. This is normally a talk followed by questions rather than a discussion.

Most people eat their lunch with others from the lab every day. The talk is ~20% science.

There are ~2 "pots" per month (a social occasion to celebrate someone passing their thesis defense, or to mark somebody's final day in the lab), during working hours, which include snacks and sometimes alcohol. Attended by ~50% of the lab. The talk is ~20% science.

There are 2-4 social events per month, normally drinks in a bar outside of working hours. Attended by 20-50% of the PhDs/postdocs, permenant staff normally do not attend. The talk is ~10% science.

Some people share a casual "gouter" (tea/coffee/snack) in the afternoon (~20% of the lab on any one day perhaps) but this is not really organised, it happens spontaneously. The talk is ~50% science.

In general, I get the feeling that most people are happy with the amount of socialising, although some people would like there to be more organised times to talk about science. Finding people to prepare a presentation (to catalyse discussion) seems to be the bottleneck.

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