"Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD."

molliebatmit
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 22:24:14 +0000

RacinReaver:

I will agree about how they feel about writing up a thesis. Basically, everything in my thesis has already been published as a paper. Only now I have to go back and rewrite all of it because that’s what’s required.

That sucks. My program allows papers to be integrated as chapters, as long as you format the whole thing properly, so you only have to write an introduction and discussion if all your chapters have been published.

As for the original post, I can’t say writing my dissertation was so soul-sapping for me (even though I did have to write two data chapters, since those papers are in the process of being finalized and submitted). But I saw the dissertation as a required, but useful, exercise, and not as the major focus of my work – I didn’t spend “several months where all you do is sit at your computer thinking and writing about an extremely narrow specialist area”. I wrote my dissertation in about six weeks of doing experiments in the morning and writing in the afternoon.

As for the rest, I’m pretty much in agreement with juillet. A PhD is a tough row to hoe, and prospective students shouldn’t come in without knowing that it’s not all chasing butterflies through verdant fields. It’s certainly very different from undergrad, and it can be tough to adjust to a life where how hard you work is largely up to you.

All in all, while my PhD wasn’t easy, and I absolutely worked myself into the ground for about the last two years of it, I don’t think it’s made me a less-functional human being. This in particular

And with all those advantages, my PhD was a soul-killing ordeal; I think only now, 7 years after graduating, I’m starting to get back to functioning as well as I did when I was a brilliant student ready to start a PhD.

just seems like overdramatic pity-partying to me.