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

juillet
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:36:51 +0000

It’s funny - I’ve seen this narrative about 30 million times (the brilliant student whom everyone pushes to get a PhD, and who walks wide-eyed and naive into the abyss desiring praise and the life of the mind) but it does not reflect my personal experience at all. I got good grades - not stunning, but good - and I got encouragement from professors, but not heaped-upon praise. It was my own personal decision to pursue a PhD, and I went into it with both eyes open (and full funding). I knew about the dismal market (because a cursory Google search will turn up hundreds of articles about it) and I didn’t originally plan to become a professor, so I got the kinds of experiences that would be valuable to non-academic careers as well as an academic one. I entered academe because I wanted to do research and I really loved it, despite the cons of a research career, not because I wanted to live “the life of the mind.” Actually, the life of the mind sounds kind of boring.

And I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that the PhD is designed to break you, “will come terrifyingly close to killing your soul and might well succeed. It will do horrible things to your mental and physical health…” That’s all true, IMO. And my program is actually a touchy-feely, collegial, friendly place to be. My advisor is amazing and truly interested in my work and career; I’m fully funded with an NSF; I’m married and have close friends and enjoy my life. And yet…it’s still true! The process is 5-7 years (or more) of pure grueling intensity. And it doesn’t get less intense; you just learn to deal with it better. But before you learn to deal with it better, there’s a breaking point (or several), a point(s) at which you think you simply cannot take anymore. Everyone in my cohort has been in psychological therapy at some point. (I’m in the US, by the way, so it’s not limited to UK academics. Yes, the model is more educational here, but it also takes longer, and you are STILL expected to make a contribution to the field in the form of your dissertation).

That said, some of it doesn’t ring true. I’m in the social sciences, myself. My program does have meaningful intermediate goals (finish coursework = MA, finish comprehensives and dissertation proposal = MPhil, finish dissertation = PhD, there are a clear outline of goals for each semester and each year). There aren’t any hard and fast deadlines, but that’s YOUR responsibility, because one of the features of an academic career is that no one gives you any deadlines. Thus, part of a PhD program is to teach you to make and meet your own deadlines. I can’t say I’ve spent months pursuing a dead end; it is possible, however.

In the social sciences, the goal of your thesis is to publish 3-5 journal articles out of it. So while yes, theoretically your dissertation is going to be in some specialist area, it’s not true that no one else should care about it. At least in my program, part of the dissertation topic selection process is picking an area at which exploration needs to be done. My own dissertation is planned around 4 papers that I hope to publish out of it, and it’s in a cutting-edge area of my field. I’m not saying that I’m not going to hate it, I hear everyone hates it when they’re done, but that doesn’t mean it has to be obscure.

Also, whether research is isolating depends a lot on your field. My field relies on collaboration - almost no one sole-authors papers here. And it can be rewarding, but it depends on what your reward structure is. You have to learn to really like and become motivated by intrinsic rewards, because there are few external ones. But yes, parts of the process can be very depressing and isolating and exhausting. You have to be really good at self-affirmation.

Also the joke is that you can work any 80 hours you want in academia. Including at 4 am. I’ve gotten emails from my professors at 4 am.

My supervisor does NOT have unlimited power over my entire life. He has some power over my dissertation topic, and sort of the flow of my research in some aspects. But he doesn’t have unlimited power even over my academic life, much less my personal life. Part of this may be because I have external funding, but a lot of it has to do that I decided early on that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my personal life for an academic one, so I struggle to make time for myself and my husband and my friends.

I know a LOT of academics that are passionate about equality and diversity and health and safety. Then again, I am a public health scientist who does research on health disparities.