This style of editorial is becoming more common, and IMO is almost useless. Saying that "Advisors should take care of their students' well-being." doesn't account for the fact that incentives are for advisors to overpromise to funding agencies and drive their students hard to make up the difference. They control funding/compensation, graduation, and paper piblication/author order, and are set to personally benefit from faster results at higher difficulties.
In my advisor's lab, this was done by encouraging competition between students. If a student didn't make experimental progress in a month, a second student was told to work on the same problem. If that didn't work, he would collaborate with postdocs in other labs, sharing ideas and results to get high impact publications quickly. Students needed to publish results as first authors to graduate, so becoming a mere coauthor on someone else's publication after a year of work was a huge setback. One (independemtly wealthy) student was desperate to graduate and published as a first author through another lab with our advisor as a coauthor, and was told that the paper would not be counted. I don't know a single student who graduated without having a breakdown on the way, but the professor in question has become quite famous and received many awards and fellowships in professional organizations for their high-impact work, the department is becoming famous in that field, and the funding agencies have extended funding to pay for five more years with 50% more students.
These hand-wringing editorials suggest nothing that will change incentives or hold ruthless PIs accountable.
This would be considered absolutely batshit at all three of the R1 research universities I've been around, which spans a significant range of prestige.
I think it goes to show how much variance there are in PhD programs. I frequently advise undergrads to find the right lab (i.e., a lab that doesn't have such a competitive environment) instead of picking a school based on some other criteria like prestige, but this is far easier in hindsight. I got super lucky -- a small lab with a good advisor.
Maybe (in addition to a strong union) we need a "Yelp for labs" where advisors can be penalized (or recognized) for their behavior. If it were publicly available and student testimonial could be somehow verified and anonymous (potentially impossible), I bet administrators would put at least some pressure on problematic PIs...
This rings true. And it’s not just the students but postdocs, engineers who have to make up the gap. Students bear the brunt as being most disposable. When one student worked in a kebab truck to support themselves, my advisor said “well better to have the PhD than not, yes?”
There is no accountability for PIs, for funding agencies, but at least at my university there are independent committees that assess well being from time to time, but to little effect: the university itself has little incentive to limit this behavior as it will limit impact factor, end of discussion.
Here are a couple of relevant quotes from Freeman Dyson (who does not have a PhD):
“Well, I think it actually is very destructive. I'm now retired, but when I was a professor here [Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton], my real job was to be a psychiatric nurse. There were all these young people who came to the institute, and my job was to be there so they could cry on my shoulder and tell me what a hard time they were having. And it was a very tough situation for these young people. They come here. They have one or two years and they're supposed to do something brilliant. They're under terrible pressure — not from us, but from them.
So, actually, I've had three of them who I would say were just casualties who I'm responsible for. One of them killed himself, and two of them ended up in mental institutions. And I should've been able to take care of them, but I didn't. I blame the Ph.D. system for these tragedies. And it really does destroy people. If they weren't under that kind of pressure, they could all have been happy people doing useful stuff. Anyhow, so that's my diatribe. But I really have seen that happen."
I wouldn't go after a PhD unless being born into a rich family (with a potential fall back). Otherwise its a ticket to an early grave and or lost earning potential. I've encountered a few colleagues who are beyond gifted in what makes them survive the trial. I had a roommate finishing his masters and going for the PhD afterwards. Guy was making bank by prostituting himself to women every few nights. Slept till noon before going to work on his research. I cannot imagine how hard it must be if someone is pursuing the degree without any wealth helping him/her out. I doubt scholarships would be much if any relief. I definitely can see persons ending up in psych wards or taking their life if it becomes too much.
This doesn't surprise me. PhD students remain in a vulnerable position. They are not only intelligent and sensible, but also often exploited by the hierarchy and underpaid. The cynic in me sees the whole procedure of academic ordination as a kind of humiliating ponzi scheme, based on effort justification and the sunk cost fallacy.
I think this should be extended to post doctoral fellows as well. People generally focus on PhD students but post-docs are even more vulnerable. Many academic places have some level of protection and oversight for PhD's. These proections are certainly not enough. But post-docs are treated as contract workers, where your supervisor can terminate you whenever they feel like for whatever reason they want. In this situation you really have no recourse and your institution owns your data so you are essentially left with nothing.
Compounding the power differential is what seems to be a "thin tweed line" in some universities or departments, akin to the "thin blue line" of protecting a cop who'd made a mistake or was corrupt. It's not just solidarity with one's status group, nor the not-unusual general bit of arrogance, but a (partly understandable) prejudiced suspicion of any student who alleges wrongdoing. There's also a willingness to dismiss gross, even illegal, abuses as merely "academic politics", and imply that the wronged person didn't merit not being wronged.
Having been around many universities, I've seen a number of grad students who believed in academic universal ideals (e.g., the professor as a brilliant and benevolent citizen of the university microcosm) get blindsided by imperfect reality -- when they have the misfortune to be on the receiving end of someone else's mistake/wrongdoing, were powerless, and were not able to find anyone who would help them.
But I don't mean to discourage people from pursuing a PhD. This is just one reason for advice you've already heard, about the importance of finding a good advisor, who'll guide you through the process, and have your back if/when anything goes wrong. (Actually, in all the cases people have told me, it seems the student's career would've been saved if their advisor had had their back, and/or had enough influence to get the department/university to fix the problem. One other student came close to getting scrod, but didn't, because their parent was a noted academic at a top university, who could not only give good advice, but could also have their back, and simply make a phone call, like a good advisor.)
You're not wrong. One problem in Ph.D. programs and workplaces alike is that supervisors control both funding and advancement, which grants them inordinate power. If you can get funding (like a multi-year fellowship) that is independent from your supervisor, you will have a lot more freedom.
Changing to any new job is hard, but changing Ph.D. advisors/labs/schools/etc. can require you to restart your dissertation research again essentially from scratch.
Ph.D. programs are basically lengthy gauntlets of flaming hoops to jump through to get a meal ticket which is unlikely to get you an actual meal, because of the pyramid scheme. Though like many ordeals, if you manage to survive then you will probably be able to overcome other challenges in the future. You will also teach yourself a lot of things and probably meet some interesting people.
I know people working in a research lab where the PI refers to some of the members as "slaves" in front of everyone. The power differentials are utterly out of whack. It's not remotely surprising what the results are.
As a real-boy faculty member it's not just the power differential but the utter unwillingness of other faculty to police the actions of their peers.
Literally, they will observe that behaviors are wrong. They will tut-tut that so and so shouldn't do that. But given the chance to actually take action, they suddenly are unable to find their voice.
It's embarrassing. Everyone claims collegiality is important...but this isn't collegiality. It is the co-option of collegiality to protect bad faith actors. These are not accidental things or one offs or misunderstandings...these are malicous assholes who thing they are gods gift to research. The reality is the people who behave like this rarely make good researchers.
When you hear a story about a faculty member behaving poorly, I guarantee you that other faculty knew and did nothing. Remember that. The only reason they are letting their colleague fall under the bus now is because their behavior has reached the point where there are going to be consequences. They don't want to get caught up in that so they run like rats from a person who's bad behavior they have long turned a blind eye too.
One of my favorite things to do to disrupt these discussions is to consciously reframe discussions of 'students v. faculty' type nonsense into 'people v. people.' If you don't let them implicitly otherize a group but rather make them do it explicitly they won't. These types are totally okay talking in demeaning ways about students but when you refer to students as people they balk.
Students swiped doorknobs in our chemistry building and analyzed the swabs by mass spec. Antidepressants were found on every one of the doorknobs...and no one was even surprised by that outcome. My boss' estimate about how many grad students are on some sort of psychiatric medication is "all of them."
Well, it seems that everyone describes the PhD as a tragic experience... for me it wasn't.
I don't know exactly why that was, probably a mixture of how it is organized/work culture (Italy is clearly not the US), the extremely caring and human supervisor, and a not particularly competitive field. I would argue that also my fellow PhD candidates were not as stressed as I read here (antidepressants on every doorknob? No way.)
Now that I'm done and I moved to another university in the northern part of the EU, I'm still not convinced, by looking at candidates here, that the PhD is such a tragic experience,but maybe I just know lucky people.
“Being a graduate student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you’re Dopey and Bashful. In the middle, you are usually sick (Sneezy), tired (Sleepy), and irritable (Grumpy). But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you’re Happy.”
Maybe I'm suffering from effort justification. However, I believe I learned a great deal about the art and practice of study.
After reading this, the cynical part of me would say that the start-up world is in competition with the academic world to recruit the best talents. So, it keeps publishing biased articles about the drawbacks of doing a PhD. For similar reasons, it also publishes articles about bad experiences in the corporate world.
However, I do remember that, during my PhD, about a third of my lab mates had some kind of mental breakdown. Some suddenly cut the bridge and stopped going to the lab. They would not answer to emails or phone calls.
I would say that in the CS fields, successful PhD are most often a very positive experience, and bring a lot of professional opportunities. The program itself is very intellectually satisfying. And now, many of lab mates have very exciting jobs: startup founders, top AI scientists/engineers, professors.
However,some students that were used to study very well and have top grades, once they started their PhD program, felt completely lost and hopeless in this totally different way of working and thinking. They had to work (mainly) alone for years. So, if no output came out, they felt very depressed. On top of that, the failure to publish usually extends the length of the PhD program...
>> the start-up world is in competition with the academic world to recruit the best talents. So, it keeps publishing biased articles about the drawbacks of doing a PhD.
You think Nature has sided with startups over academia?
This study does not seem very robust. How do we know that folks that enroll into PhD programs are not just more likely to have mental health issues? There is a positive correlation between IQ and mental health issues at least at the higher end of the scale and this could be a manifestation of that.
> There is a positive correlation between IQ and mental health issues at least at the higher end of the scale
I have only read scientific studys which confirm that the lower end of the IQ scale correlates with psychiatric disorders. Can you point me to any papers which support your claim? I'm not saying you're wrong, the claim sounds plausible, it's just that I really haven't read much academic that confirm these claims.
I know this is anecdotal, but a lot of PhD students I know who have depression struggled with it in undergrad as well, the stresses of pursuing a PhD just made it worse/caused a relapse.
To be fair though, the article does acknowledge that the studies done are not enough, saying that "the evidence is too limited to permit robust conclusions about the mental health status and needs of researchers. Nevertheless, the potential mental impact of pursuing a PhD should not be disregarded."
We have excellent reason to believe this is a PhD programme thing because this does not happen in the closest equivalent, professional doctorates like JDs or MDs, not does it occur in MBAs. And the prevalence of mental problems in PhD students is far too high for any other explanation to be credible.
I mean, I spent 10 years working essentially around the clock. I burned out, my mental health crumbled, I isolated from friends, my marriage fell apart. I'd never ever go through that for an employer. It's funny. With complete freedom to choose when and how I worked, I worked myself to the bone. I'm much happier with a job where I'm defensive about my time and wellbeing
I can relate to this. I sometimes wonder if creative, intelligent, conscientious people actually need some kind of mild oppression in their lives in order to be happy?
Burned out, hit my limit, and needed to take a break in grad school twice. Once due to contract work (had to pay my bills, so spent a week writing testing code instead of core product), and once due to emotional exhaustion after writing an unaccepted paper (spent a week watching all 7 seasons of ST: Voyager while my ex was at work).
Since then (11-12 years now), the work ethic that pushed me through a PhD in 5.5 years left me burnt out after 60-80 hour work weeks at my first gig. Since stopping working for other folks after coming home (except as necessary for pager duty in some cases), I put my spare hours into relationships, family, and personal recreation. With the wife and kids, basically now just family and personal recreation.
Unfortunately, my personal recreation tends to look a lot like work (email support, open source projects, ...). Combine that with "working for myself" for the last 21 months, and I've experienced more pain and stress in the process of building a business than I did getting the PhD (solve all the problems, all the time, no academic advisors, no end in sight). I think at this point I've needed to take explicit "I am burned out on this" breaks at least 5 times in the last 21 months.
I've been trying to explicitly "not work" in the evenings to cut my own work-driven exhaustion. Trying to do something fun (work on non-work fun software, handle correspondence, play video games, etc.), but at least half my evenings end with starting an overnight "run forever, log failures" set of unittests, or at least updating my daily worklog.
A lot depends on advisor-student compatibility. Different students need different mentorship styles, and some students require a lot more hands on help than others. Research is incredibly hard, especially when just starting.
Much of my stress during my PhD was self imposed. I felt like I needed to keep up with the peers I respected, and I knew the metrics required to get the jobs I wanted were hard to reach. It's very easy to get stuck in your own mental bubble. That said, as a professor, I became much more sympathetic to my own advisor. It's easy to criticize when you haven't actually done the job.
Now that I'm a PI, I feel a massive responsibility to my lab members. Being a professor is far harder than any job I had in industry. I spent most of my time helping students do research and fund raising to pay them a pittance (6% success rates for my NSF programs). I also had innumerable other tasks. Seeing my PhD students do well and become leaders in the field has been immensely rewarding, though. Keeping the lab going requires that we all do good work (publishing great papers in top places) or my students won't get good jobs and I won't be able to get money to pay them or educate the next group.
A bit of a tangent, but does anyone know if a "paper PhD" is still and option ? The first and only time I ever heard of it was during a lecture by Nobel laureate Dr. Shuji Nakamura[1].
IIRC, the University of Florida offered PhD's if you published 5 papers which he did in one year.
It’s called a “sandwich thesis” and it’s quite common in some countries, mostly in Europe. Put together a few papers published in peer reviewed journals, write a introduction, and submit it for defense.
It's fairly common at my university. You publish 3 papers surrounding a singular theme or topic and you use that for your PhD. You still need to write an intro and have some boilerplate stuff, but it's not uncommon at all.
Although the number is shrinking, it's still a thing in Japan (so-called "ronpaku"). It is generally said that the thesis by a paper PhD must be better than those regular PhDs who completed courseworks, but it's much more efficient. If your thesis is already complete, you can get a degree in less than a year.
some programs are happy to just have you tack a bunch of papers together into a dissertation. they usually still require you to write the actual document, though, re-explaining the work in each paper.
This may differ from one student to another or from lab to lab, but the general thesis is definitely true. I decided to quit academia in favor of IT industry exactly due to this high stress problem, even having a number of relative good papers published. I just could not bear it more.
PhD student/postdoc life is extremely unstable: 1) you are very limited in finances; 2) you have to perform a number of different research trials and most of them will have no success; 3) you are always limited in time; 4) there is a continuous flow of grant applications, reports, papers preparation, sometimes teacher assistance works. And in the middle of this you have to find your own unique path in science, your niche.
In summary, you have to be ready to live in a continuous disaster during relatively long period of life. If it fits you, then you can achieve success after ~10 years of hard work. Anyway, it was interesting experience for me :)
I wonder if those PhDs are ready to suffer so much, why don't they work at SV companies where they can get free sushi + 6 figure salary and lots of interesting problems to solve.
Why these people are so hung up on getting PhD title.
Or any not become a YouTuber?
We can easily see that ElectroBoom on YouTube is more respected in the world than any other person holding PhD in Electrical Engineering.
It's not particularly hard to understand. Some people love to work on deep, challenging problems that can take years to solve. This kind of problem solving doesn't really exist in the tech industry. The vast majority of industry work is grunt work - the cutting edge would be implementing papers that poor graduate students publish. The rare places it does exist (e.g. Google/Microsoft research) generally require a PhD in the first place, and are very competitive roles.
The "title" is by far the least important part. I really only use it for junk mail and annoying airlines.
I went to grad school because I loved science and mystery stories as a little kid, and my mind was absolutely blown when I discovered that you could get paid (a little) to solve scientific mysteries. I like the idea of figuring out the world and making it a better place much more than I like nicer clothes or a fancy car.
I'm not a YouTuber because I use a multimillion dollar MRI machine, which my credit card wouldn't authorize, my landlord won't let me fill a room with monkeys, and I do my best work when I have colleagues to bounce ideas off of, not just comment boxes.
I do grumble about academia a lot, but it mostly comes from wanting to see it live up to its ideals and possibilities. The current structure is bad in so many ways. You, the taxpayer, are paying for many of these students' training. Wouldn't you rather that they thrive? Even if you don't care about them as people, wouldn't you rather see a return on your investment, in the form of discoveries that make your life longer, healthier, and happier, than have them burn out and quit?
It's both a money and commitment problem. Even without the money problem like in europe, ut makes a very unbalanced life to make so much sacrifice during a so long time..
[+] [-] hyeonwho4|7 years ago|reply
In my advisor's lab, this was done by encouraging competition between students. If a student didn't make experimental progress in a month, a second student was told to work on the same problem. If that didn't work, he would collaborate with postdocs in other labs, sharing ideas and results to get high impact publications quickly. Students needed to publish results as first authors to graduate, so becoming a mere coauthor on someone else's publication after a year of work was a huge setback. One (independemtly wealthy) student was desperate to graduate and published as a first author through another lab with our advisor as a coauthor, and was told that the paper would not be counted. I don't know a single student who graduated without having a breakdown on the way, but the professor in question has become quite famous and received many awards and fellowships in professional organizations for their high-impact work, the department is becoming famous in that field, and the funding agencies have extended funding to pay for five more years with 50% more students.
These hand-wringing editorials suggest nothing that will change incentives or hold ruthless PIs accountable.
[+] [-] RMarcus|7 years ago|reply
I think it goes to show how much variance there are in PhD programs. I frequently advise undergrads to find the right lab (i.e., a lab that doesn't have such a competitive environment) instead of picking a school based on some other criteria like prestige, but this is far easier in hindsight. I got super lucky -- a small lab with a good advisor.
Maybe (in addition to a strong union) we need a "Yelp for labs" where advisors can be penalized (or recognized) for their behavior. If it were publicly available and student testimonial could be somehow verified and anonymous (potentially impossible), I bet administrators would put at least some pressure on problematic PIs...
[+] [-] marmaduke|7 years ago|reply
There is no accountability for PIs, for funding agencies, but at least at my university there are independent committees that assess well being from time to time, but to little effect: the university itself has little incentive to limit this behavior as it will limit impact factor, end of discussion.
[+] [-] noobermin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewl|7 years ago|reply
“Well, I think it actually is very destructive. I'm now retired, but when I was a professor here [Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton], my real job was to be a psychiatric nurse. There were all these young people who came to the institute, and my job was to be there so they could cry on my shoulder and tell me what a hard time they were having. And it was a very tough situation for these young people. They come here. They have one or two years and they're supposed to do something brilliant. They're under terrible pressure — not from us, but from them.
So, actually, I've had three of them who I would say were just casualties who I'm responsible for. One of them killed himself, and two of them ended up in mental institutions. And I should've been able to take care of them, but I didn't. I blame the Ph.D. system for these tragedies. And it really does destroy people. If they weren't under that kind of pressure, they could all have been happy people doing useful stuff. Anyhow, so that's my diatribe. But I really have seen that happen."
[+] [-] bellerose|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blastbeat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gww|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilv|7 years ago|reply
Having been around many universities, I've seen a number of grad students who believed in academic universal ideals (e.g., the professor as a brilliant and benevolent citizen of the university microcosm) get blindsided by imperfect reality -- when they have the misfortune to be on the receiving end of someone else's mistake/wrongdoing, were powerless, and were not able to find anyone who would help them.
But I don't mean to discourage people from pursuing a PhD. This is just one reason for advice you've already heard, about the importance of finding a good advisor, who'll guide you through the process, and have your back if/when anything goes wrong. (Actually, in all the cases people have told me, it seems the student's career would've been saved if their advisor had had their back, and/or had enough influence to get the department/university to fix the problem. One other student came close to getting scrod, but didn't, because their parent was a noted academic at a top university, who could not only give good advice, but could also have their back, and simply make a phone call, like a good advisor.)
[+] [-] musicale|7 years ago|reply
Changing to any new job is hard, but changing Ph.D. advisors/labs/schools/etc. can require you to restart your dissertation research again essentially from scratch.
Ph.D. programs are basically lengthy gauntlets of flaming hoops to jump through to get a meal ticket which is unlikely to get you an actual meal, because of the pyramid scheme. Though like many ordeals, if you manage to survive then you will probably be able to overcome other challenges in the future. You will also teach yourself a lot of things and probably meet some interesting people.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|7 years ago|reply
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/university-of-hawaii-res...
(Warning: gross bodily injury.)
[+] [-] SomethingOrNot|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jopsloj|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Glyptodon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avs733|7 years ago|reply
Literally, they will observe that behaviors are wrong. They will tut-tut that so and so shouldn't do that. But given the chance to actually take action, they suddenly are unable to find their voice.
It's embarrassing. Everyone claims collegiality is important...but this isn't collegiality. It is the co-option of collegiality to protect bad faith actors. These are not accidental things or one offs or misunderstandings...these are malicous assholes who thing they are gods gift to research. The reality is the people who behave like this rarely make good researchers.
When you hear a story about a faculty member behaving poorly, I guarantee you that other faculty knew and did nothing. Remember that. The only reason they are letting their colleague fall under the bus now is because their behavior has reached the point where there are going to be consequences. They don't want to get caught up in that so they run like rats from a person who's bad behavior they have long turned a blind eye too.
One of my favorite things to do to disrupt these discussions is to consciously reframe discussions of 'students v. faculty' type nonsense into 'people v. people.' If you don't let them implicitly otherize a group but rather make them do it explicitly they won't. These types are totally okay talking in demeaning ways about students but when you refer to students as people they balk.
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SketchySeaBeast|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaymath|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilv|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gattilorenz|7 years ago|reply
I don't know exactly why that was, probably a mixture of how it is organized/work culture (Italy is clearly not the US), the extremely caring and human supervisor, and a not particularly competitive field. I would argue that also my fellow PhD candidates were not as stressed as I read here (antidepressants on every doorknob? No way.)
Now that I'm done and I moved to another university in the northern part of the EU, I'm still not convinced, by looking at candidates here, that the PhD is such a tragic experience,but maybe I just know lucky people.
Did anyone here have a positive PhD?
[+] [-] sandwall|7 years ago|reply
Maybe I'm suffering from effort justification. However, I believe I learned a great deal about the art and practice of study.
[+] [-] duchenne|7 years ago|reply
However, I do remember that, during my PhD, about a third of my lab mates had some kind of mental breakdown. Some suddenly cut the bridge and stopped going to the lab. They would not answer to emails or phone calls.
I would say that in the CS fields, successful PhD are most often a very positive experience, and bring a lot of professional opportunities. The program itself is very intellectually satisfying. And now, many of lab mates have very exciting jobs: startup founders, top AI scientists/engineers, professors.
However,some students that were used to study very well and have top grades, once they started their PhD program, felt completely lost and hopeless in this totally different way of working and thinking. They had to work (mainly) alone for years. So, if no output came out, they felt very depressed. On top of that, the failure to publish usually extends the length of the PhD program...
[+] [-] haihaibye|7 years ago|reply
You think Nature has sided with startups over academia?
[+] [-] alexgmcm|7 years ago|reply
If your PhD is in Chemistry/Biology/Physics, not so much.
Some fields of Physics do alright (primarily HEP due to the advanced mathematical/statistical analyses they learn).
[+] [-] j_b_s|7 years ago|reply
I think that startups have a lot more interesting and important things to do than support or promote hit pieces on PhDs and academia life.
[+] [-] lquist|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lainon|7 years ago|reply
I have only read scientific studys which confirm that the lower end of the IQ scale correlates with psychiatric disorders. Can you point me to any papers which support your claim? I'm not saying you're wrong, the claim sounds plausible, it's just that I really haven't read much academic that confirm these claims.
[+] [-] el_cujo|7 years ago|reply
To be fair though, the article does acknowledge that the studies done are not enough, saying that "the evidence is too limited to permit robust conclusions about the mental health status and needs of researchers. Nevertheless, the potential mental impact of pursuing a PhD should not be disregarded."
[+] [-] ddavis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barry-cotter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klyrs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fergie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrJosiah|7 years ago|reply
Since then (11-12 years now), the work ethic that pushed me through a PhD in 5.5 years left me burnt out after 60-80 hour work weeks at my first gig. Since stopping working for other folks after coming home (except as necessary for pager duty in some cases), I put my spare hours into relationships, family, and personal recreation. With the wife and kids, basically now just family and personal recreation.
Unfortunately, my personal recreation tends to look a lot like work (email support, open source projects, ...). Combine that with "working for myself" for the last 21 months, and I've experienced more pain and stress in the process of building a business than I did getting the PhD (solve all the problems, all the time, no academic advisors, no end in sight). I think at this point I've needed to take explicit "I am burned out on this" breaks at least 5 times in the last 21 months.
I've been trying to explicitly "not work" in the evenings to cut my own work-driven exhaustion. Trying to do something fun (work on non-work fun software, handle correspondence, play video games, etc.), but at least half my evenings end with starting an overnight "run forever, log failures" set of unittests, or at least updating my daily worklog.
[+] [-] chriskanan|7 years ago|reply
Much of my stress during my PhD was self imposed. I felt like I needed to keep up with the peers I respected, and I knew the metrics required to get the jobs I wanted were hard to reach. It's very easy to get stuck in your own mental bubble. That said, as a professor, I became much more sympathetic to my own advisor. It's easy to criticize when you haven't actually done the job.
Now that I'm a PI, I feel a massive responsibility to my lab members. Being a professor is far harder than any job I had in industry. I spent most of my time helping students do research and fund raising to pay them a pittance (6% success rates for my NSF programs). I also had innumerable other tasks. Seeing my PhD students do well and become leaders in the field has been immensely rewarding, though. Keeping the lab going requires that we all do good work (publishing great papers in top places) or my students won't get good jobs and I won't be able to get money to pay them or educate the next group.
[+] [-] louprado|7 years ago|reply
IIRC, the University of Florida offered PhD's if you published 5 papers which he did in one year.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUlR9DP6Me4&t=2074s
[+] [-] wenc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skwb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fomite|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] euske|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] currymj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ololobus|7 years ago|reply
PhD student/postdoc life is extremely unstable: 1) you are very limited in finances; 2) you have to perform a number of different research trials and most of them will have no success; 3) you are always limited in time; 4) there is a continuous flow of grant applications, reports, papers preparation, sometimes teacher assistance works. And in the middle of this you have to find your own unique path in science, your niche.
In summary, you have to be ready to live in a continuous disaster during relatively long period of life. If it fits you, then you can achieve success after ~10 years of hard work. Anyway, it was interesting experience for me :)
[+] [-] sideproject|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yargaoo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjg007|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sygv|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] savgeborn|7 years ago|reply
Why these people are so hung up on getting PhD title.
Or any not become a YouTuber?
We can easily see that ElectroBoom on YouTube is more respected in the world than any other person holding PhD in Electrical Engineering.
[+] [-] nvarsj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattkrause|7 years ago|reply
I went to grad school because I loved science and mystery stories as a little kid, and my mind was absolutely blown when I discovered that you could get paid (a little) to solve scientific mysteries. I like the idea of figuring out the world and making it a better place much more than I like nicer clothes or a fancy car.
I'm not a YouTuber because I use a multimillion dollar MRI machine, which my credit card wouldn't authorize, my landlord won't let me fill a room with monkeys, and I do my best work when I have colleagues to bounce ideas off of, not just comment boxes.
I do grumble about academia a lot, but it mostly comes from wanting to see it live up to its ideals and possibilities. The current structure is bad in so many ways. You, the taxpayer, are paying for many of these students' training. Wouldn't you rather that they thrive? Even if you don't care about them as people, wouldn't you rather see a return on your investment, in the form of discoveries that make your life longer, healthier, and happier, than have them burn out and quit?
[+] [-] malms|7 years ago|reply