The academic job market is really tough right now, so lots of people are in Instructor positions, not tenure-track. They generally pay enough to live on. (Adjuncting doesn't - an instructor teaches full-time. An adjunct is paid on a per-class basis, generally poorly.)

A full-time PhD student in the sciences is generally paid, although not much. As a PhD student in engineering in 2002-2007, mr. flea made $20K a year. The pay is "earned" by lab work, project work, and sometimes teaching or TAing, etc. for the professor supervising the PhD. They take classes the first couple of years.

Thanks, ma'am. I'll see what works best for the story.

Here's some base info on faculty salaries at various levels, using UGA as an example. UGA is a public PhD granting school, so its salaries will be higher than a smaller/non-PhD granting college, but not as high as an Ivy or schmancy private college. [link]

Amy,

the person could be a post-doc (which is typical for someone in Chemistry). If the person started right out of college (the phd program), then they would have a phd in hand by around age 28. Some people don't start right out, but some do. Especially in the sciences.

34 years old they might be on the tail end of the first postdoc position and starting a 2nd (which is not uncommon). A lot of postdocs work in tenured faculty members' labs full-time. Occasionally they may teach, but a lot of science postdocs do not teach.

There are some who do work in a lab while working on a phd, but more typically you would have a postdoc who has finished and doing working in the lab fulltime.

Oh, that's helpful! Thanks to everybody.

The ridiculous part is, the amount of time the character will actually be at work is minimal, if at all, but I really couldn't write another writer or photographer or chef.

Better not make him tenure-track faculty, then. The amount of time they spend at work is astonishing! Seriously, 70-80 hour weeks.

Oh, good to know.

Can he be working full-time while studying for his PhD? Like, in a lab or something?

This is what most PhD students and recent PhD's (a.k.a. post-docs) in science do.

Is it unrealistic to have him already PhD'd at 33 or 34 and working as an instructor?

Average time-to-degree in science fields is around 7 years, so finishing up at around 30 is right on target.

The instructor part is actually a bit less likely. The typical science career path goes Work in a lab as a grad student > Work in a lab for several more years after finishing degree > Get a tenure-track job where you get to run your own lab OR leave academia to work in industry.

The economics and career requirements in science are very heavily weighted towards research and publishing. People who teach as a main focus have often either failed to get a job with a lab attached, or have opted out for one reason or another.

And if he is doing that, how come he can't be tenure track?

Instructor is just a job title that means "not tenure track". In the humanities, it also sometimes means "on food stamps" but we always heard that science pays at least a little better ;)

Bob started a tenure track job at 32, with a PhD. It's not natural sciences, though.

Burrell, I hope you sister responds well from now on.

My brother is almost 34, technically 2 postdocs in and on a contractual basis (boss is trying to make it perm; in their field, a third postdoc is considered suspect*) running a lab and training grad students/post-docs/researchers on their protocols (cancer research.) Some of his peers teach, but he's pretty much pure lab/research. He only teaches seminars.

* administration is being a bunch of assholes. His boss is starting to make noises about Josh threatening to walk if they don't come through- at which point he would walk too. And the university does not want that. Too much outside money. But it is complicated, what with spouses and kids and relocating a lab.

Dear fucking health spending account website-

Do not tell me to "Select File A Claim from the left menu" WHEN THERE IS NO SUCH OPTION.

I really hope I just managed to pay the ER bill from it. Otherwise, I'm going to have to track down $400 lost dollars and deal with a company that can't even write instructions.