by ryan | Aug. 31, 2025
When people hear that I decided to do a PhD in France, I often get asked a series of questions: Why France? Why Avignon? How did you find out about the PhD? How are the French? How’s French going? What’s it like living in France?
I’m writing this post in answer to these questions and also as a two year reflection on my time in France (as this month marks two years since moving to France).
I learned about this opportunity through a post on LinkedIn towards the end of my Masters. I was debating whether or not it was worth it to dedicate another 4 - 6 years of my life to being a student. I figured if it was going to be a good chunk of my life, I might as well do it somewhere interesting, so I reached out to the professors. We had a video chat where I asked questions about what it’s like doing a PhD in France. Immediately off the bat there were two things that interested me. First, no application fees, so, no harm in applying right? Second, in France, they want you to be done with the PhD in 3 years, so slightly smaller time commitment.
Now that I've explained a bit the why, I would like to go more into what life is like here in France, and more particularly Avignon.
I don’t have serious course work, so my average work day involves research. In computer science this means a bunch of reading scientific papers, coding, launching experiments, writing, and repeating. In France, you are treated more much like an employee than a student when at the PhD level. For example, I’m not on a student visa. I’m on a salary. I have a time sheet (that I don’t know how to use very well). I have vacation days, and a lot of them because they take vacation seriously here.
While I’m officially treated more like an employee, for PhD students, like other academic positions, I have a lot a flexibility. Generally, I work when I want and for as long as I want, and, as long as I’m making progress on my dissertation, attending meetings, and showing up to classes I’m assigned to teach, nobody complains. From what I’ve seen from other PhD students I’ve meet, they too have a similar flexibility.
This is both a blessing and a curse, because while it is nice to be able to work whenever, you might find yourself working until 7:30 PM (when the CS lab at Avignon closes), then going home and working even more. You might even find yourself waking up at 3:00 AM to check experiments or emails. Though I’m speaking from personal experience, I’m trying to keep better habits that are more healthy and sustainable.
So while my daily life can vary a lot, here’s an outline of a daily schedule:
This of course can change a lot depending on if I have to teach, have meetings, am at a conference, or if a deadline approaches, but I try to get in a solid few focus hours of work (which trust me is worth so much more than 8 hours of non-focus hours of work) and some language study 5 days out of the week.
The short answer is yes! So far I’ve had a great time, but I think I won’t be able to truly be able to answer that question until 5-10 years down the line.
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Thinking about traveling or doing studies abroad in France?? Well I’m not sure you have come to the right place, but since you have made it this far, I’ll finish this reflection off with some of my tips for living abroad.