This essay is explaining why he thinks that the freedom and positive impact parts of his compensation are significantly less than he initially thought. When that's the case, the next obvious question is: is this worth it? He's answering no. All occupations have problems, but he may find another occupation where he feels all aspects of his compensation (not just monetary) are worth it.
If that $60k is actually his salary, that's not great. Now, if one of the other commenters is right and he's at UT Arlington, $60k is a perfectly liveable income here, but any professional job with more than a few years experience is going to surpass that. As a software engineer in the same metropolitan area with about 6 years experience, I make $66k/year. I'm not even that good, and I'm probably younger than him.
> I think the author needs to either search his heart more deeply
That's the problem with graduating so early and following your initial studying path. You didn't have time to think about what you were doing, was it the right thing, was it what you wanted, etc...
I always wondered how that kind of case usually ends. The people who've been doing one thing only in life, and ends up in a job right away. I guess your world can crumble in your mid-life.
And going through two professional post-graduate schools (in the US anyway) costs serious coin. Can such debts be forgiven or delayed in any way, or did the author split from both a job and regular meals?
Hopefully, this isn't a "poor little rich kid" story following the path he was told to follow and then realizing that the result's not beer and skittles? If so, I hope the author finds out what he'd like to do... Should be well-trained for the law or politics. Politics with training and a heart would be a nice change!
I don't think the choice of study path is a problem. After all, he was doing this for 20 years and does not have a problem with what he was teaching. He has a problem with the people that benefited or did not benefit from his work. ... "Why don't you do something more meaningful with your life?" ...
The real problem is he thought life would be perfect, that there would be no problems he would have a hard time solving, that everything would be as imagined.
And the early success did give him false visions of grandeur and an amazing world. Early success just was not sustainable. In the end, the reality that overcame was that life sucked and will continue to suck. Only little pockets of joy exist here and there. Especially when you are a bleeding edge researcher.
Ever considered a sideline as a motivational speaker?
This is a great point and one I think clearly happened to the author and to a lesser degree myself.
I was all about going into academia, being a professor, travelling the world on other people's money and studying romantic cultures in far away places. I was warned about the environment then (early and mid 00's) and the lack of pay, but I wanted to experience it so bad. I had blinders on and all I wanted was my doctoral degree and then kickstart myself into a PhD program.
I burned out in epic fashion and took a few years off and regrouped. In the meantime, a half dozen of my friends graduated and landed teaching jobs, and others started in their doctoral programs. Within a year, they were all out. Either pivoting and going back to school for a completely different major, or pivoting into some other field and out of academia completely.
I was lucky and avoided most of it - but without my burn out, I'm afraid I probably would have been in the same place as the author. Without a real examination of where I was going and what I really wanted to do with my life, I almost lost several years finding out academia really wasn't the place I wanted to be. I look back and see I really dodged a bullet.
Please define "value".