When will you be done? What will you do?

When people learn I'm in a doctoral program the responses are pretty standard, and have become so that I know by the response what kind of person I'm dealing with. Or vice versa. They are:

•  Looks of bewilderment, as though seeing a strange and perhaps perplexing rather large insect.
•  The verbalization of above, into something like, "o god, what are you doing to do with that"
•  Detailed tales of how the person (if they have post Bachelor qualifications) had thought of or are planning on doing a doctorate.
• Those that are pleased and think it's great.

Almost the moment I began doctoral studies people would ask me, "when will you be done." I would like to say, "I just began, leave me alone" or "who cares" "what difference will it make to you" and now, "jeez, let's not talk about this shall we." I'm more polite than inside my head (mostly) so I explain that in our department the average completion time seems to be about eight years. They often express surprise, to which I respond, "it's a doctorate, it's a lot of work."

They sometimes still seem confused and probably have inner monologues something like, "that girls is nuts" "why would you want to be in school so long" "what exactly is this doctorate." Sometimes I go even further and explain, that each department is different, and different disciplines have different expectations thereby having different completion rates.  I never talk about the problems in our department that has so many people behind schedule (I don't understand them myself). I rarely, explain that in Canada and the US we have coursework expectations (actual classes, yes, that take at least one year as well as a series of examinations known as the "comps" that take at least another year) whereas in the UK they skip this stage, going straight into developing proposals, conducting research and writing out a dissertation. As well, in anthropology, unlike other disciplines,  we are expected to spend at least one full year in the fieldwork site gathering data and information.  Taking more time. And the length of the dissertation varies, from discipline to schools -- my anthropology dissertation should be between 400-500 pages whereas a colleague of mine completed their PhD in biology with a paper of 120 pages and that included diagrams and references (my MA without references or appendences came to 140, which is normal).

The other question I usually get, or as a follow up to the first question or from other doctoral students (and I'm not sure if it's because they are interested, or making small talk, or confused) is:

• What will you do when you're done?
• What kind of job will you get?

My inner monologue says, "who cares" "what business is it of yours" "I'm not going to tell you 'cause then you may evil eye me or somehow be competition for my plan" "I haven't got a job offer as yet so I can't really tell you." My polite outer speech says, "O, there are lots of options for a person with a doctorate degree. It really depends on what you're studying. For example..." and I go on to give some random examples of PhDs working outside of academia.Most of the time I really don't have answers for people; I'm not a fortune teller. Or, sometimes I don't want to talk about things that are as yet unformed, jelly-like.