[holyra]

> This sounds unreal. How did your supervisor managed his subordinates so they wound not spend their time in leisure activities?

Self-pressure? I cannot spend my work time in leisure time, otherwise I ashame. It is pretty even the opposite that I experienced: I felt ashame in my leisure time to not work to get more progress on my phd.

We were only two phd students supervised by the same pair of supervisors. In fact we saw our supervisors a lot. However this was more in a friend way. Every time we switch to work-related discussions they found excuses to leave or just say that they will take some time later to ask our questions / reveiw our drafts (and this never happen).

In the case of the other student, he was more lucky and find an unofficial supervisor that help him a lot. I find some support from another researcher at the end of my phd. And thanks to him I had some review of my manuscript. This gave me some confidence to finish the writing.

[JanisErdmanis]

Yeah, I have seen many of my colleagues to feel ashamed to take all vacation time (around 28 workdays in a year) to go home or on vacation. It sometimes felt like unarticulated competition who takes less. Perhaps, it can explained by insecurity that your name is going to be taken off the paper you are coauthoring with others.

I guess in your situation the supervisors were present in taking care of your self motivation and checking your commitment to your PhD when having informal conversations. Also, it sounds you were in control of your PhD project and could set up goals and strategy achieving them yourself.

I am curios, in what field did you do your PhD?