Image credit: Ionut Stefan
Every year, many talented students across the world ponder the question of whether they should attempt to go for the ultimate academic accolade: the PhD. Should they or should they not? Of course, what can help with the decision-making is gathering information from people who’ve perhaps gone through this already. It’s quite possibly the reason why you’re on this page right now. Unfortunately, I cannot give you a definite answer to that question. All I can tell you is that both the decision to embark upon this journey, as well as the PhD experience itself are unique to each individual. Even if you were to join a lab where everybody seems to be having the time of their lives, nobody can guarantee you that you will have the same experience. What I can tell you are some key aspects you should consider when making this decision and what the experience was like for me. Below is the unedited text I wrote a couple of days after my defense, followed by some later reflections.
Should you do a PhD? – thoughts shortly after defending
While I was doing my PhD, I got asked this question a lot. I never held back and always made it very clear that I don’t think most people should do a PhD. Not because I was gate-keeping, not because I had the worst time of my life, but because doing a PhD is incredibly taxing. It literally eats away not just the years that you put into it, but years from your future. You can feel it shortening your lifespan. In fact, right now I’m not sure I should’ve done a PhD.
The same people are now asking me the same question again, and I can see in their eyes the hope that I’ve changed my mind. As if the fact that I made it to the other side would somehow make it all go away. But it doesn’t. Anyway, I cannot tell you whether you should or shouldn’t do a PhD. I wouldn’t have listened to anyone who told me not to when I was deciding for myself. I can, however, tell you a bit about what the experience is like.
A PhD is a huge time commitment. You will probably start out with lofty ambitions – not to work on the weekends, not to work overtime, not to let your PhD take over your life and consume you. And depending on your personality and your circumstances, it might work. For a while. Until you see that most people around you do that. Until you start to feel that you’re falling behind. Until you’re dealing with failed experiment after failed experiment and you tell yourself that you’ll just run one more analysis before you begin preparing your talk for tomorrow and suddenly 11 AM turns into 9 PM and you haven’t made your title slide, so you’re looking at an all-nighter. Or until it’s 5 PM and you’re giving your email one last looksie, only to see your supervisor wants you to make “a couple of changes” to the report you sent them five weeks ago, which is due at midnight.
A PhD involves a lot of failure. A lot. Experiments don’t work, analyses don’t work, you read papers you don’t understand. You sit in meetings you don’t understand. You give talks and receive questions you can’t even begin to answer. It sounds terrible. It sounds like you’re incompetent. You feel terrible and incompetent. A lot. It’s just part of the process though. But in my experience, it gets to you. Even if you’re crazy confident, even if you don’t naturally tie your entire self-worth to your work, it gets to you.
A PhD doesn’t usually pay well. Depending on where you live, you might get only peanuts. And it does set you back compared to your peers. Maybe this goes away over time. I’m not there yet and I’m done reading about it, because it’s pretty depressing.
A PhD is lonely. You’re the expert on your topic. On your work. Nobody else knows the nitty-gritty details. Nobody else cares. Sometimes it will make you feel cool. There are all of these complicated things that only you understand. Such a smart cookie! But then you sit there while someone with seniority tells you all the ways in which you are wrong. Except you aren’t, cause they don’t get it and are talking about something else. Or you’re stuck. And you keep looking for help, but no one can help you. Even if they had the skills to, they would have to spend too much time catching up with everything you did to be able to offer any meaningful input. It doesn’t happen that often, of course. But when you’re already down because of the sleep deprivation and the failure and the poverty, loneliness hits you that much harder.
A PhD is hard to get out of. You tell yourself that you’ll try and if it doesn’t work, you’ll quit, just like a job. But it’s not that easy. Once you’ve been in there for a year or two, once you’ve tied yourself to it, it’s really difficult to shake off the idea that you’re a failure if you quit. And all the other bad thoughts. So even though you can’t anymore, chances are you’ll still go on. Until either you get your degree or you don’t. It doesn’t even matter which it is, because you’ll end up burnt out either way.
You need a lot of resilience. You need a very strong “why”. You need to like finding out answers. Maybe even a dash of arrogance. And even then, should you do a PhD? I don’t know. I don’t know what your reasons are. You’ll read this and probably think “oh, that’ll never happen to me! I’m much better than that!” Then go for it. But save this post and come back to it when you’re in the middle of it. Not for the “I told you so”, but for the reminder that what you’re going through is a pretty common experience, not a personal shortcoming. And as difficult as it seems right now, it will end one way or the other and the sun will still rise, no matter what.
Some time later
It’s been a few months since I wrote the above. I’ve had plenty of time to rest and the adrenaline has finally worn off. I stand by what I wrote at the time, although today I would probably phrase it a lot milder and would highlight the positives as well. I’ve learned a lot during my PhD. More important than the factual knowledge (which might or might not be useful, depending on what career you pursue afterwards), I’ve learned how to think and how to approach problems systematically. I’ve also learned not to give up when things seem difficult because every problem must have some solution. Could I have gathered this skillset somewhere else and with less dead neurons? I couldn’t tell you. Do I regret it? Not anymore. At the end of the day, it was insanely difficult, but it was also fun. And I’ve finally recovered enough to be proud of myself. To reiterate, I can’t tell you what to do (as a rule of thumb, don’t blindly do what strangers on the internet tell you). This is just my personal experience and chances are yours will be nothing like it. But because of all the potential challenges, it’s worth considering how a PhD might fit into your future career plans and in your life. After careful consideration, feel free to do whatever you wanted to in the first place.
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