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Comment by macmcleod | Hacker News Reader

I moved 600 miles and started a Ph.D. in January of 2020. On paper it was a great decision as: I had worked with my boss (a great boss) for several years prior, I was comfortable with and excited about the subject matter, and I knew I would keep a remote internship through my graduate degree. What an ambitious 22 year-old me didn't see was that: long distance relationships are hard, not every university works the same way, and undergraduate research is not the same as graduate level research. I'm halfway through and all I can say is that I have not thrived here - and it's not for lack of trying. Every day is a 14-hour burnout and the older I get, the less often I can push that further. I wake up every day wondering who I will disappoint and for too long have put myself and my health last. Of course it's not practical to quit, nor is it practical to fire such a low-wage worker.

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Graduate school is tough. Burnout is very possible. People come in thinking that it's basically continuation of undergrad (being asked "are you still in school? How's that going?").

It's a battle of endurance, not wits anymore. Things are hard, shit sucks. Find a support network with other graduate students, find new and creative ways to continue to be engaging (at one point in my PhD I was literally sitting on a camping chair with my laptop in the middle of the woods trying to write my thesis).

I am literally in my last year (hopefully) of my PhD and the final stretch is pretty much that. I was thriving earlier in my degree and right now I just want out. I wouldn't have survived so far if I didn't have my cohort of students and friends to support me (and for lack of a better reason, helping me complain a bit).

Don't work on the project more than you have to. Focus on what's important for your degree, the critical path. People will always want more from you the more you give. Take care of yourself first.

I always imagined a Ph.D. was about having a good idea and demonstrating your ability to develop it, defend it, and publish. What does a 14 hour day accomplish over 8? You're not pumping out widgets, right?

> the older I get, the less often I can push that further. I wake up every day wondering who I will disappoint and for too long have put myself and my health last. Of course it's not practical to quit, nor is it practical to fire such a low-wage worker.

You're...24, looking back at 22?

> What does a 14 hour day accomplish over 8? You're not pumping out widgets, right?

6 hours of teaching the courses your advisor doesn't teach, + conditioning to work for free for a predatory academic publisher.

> I always imagined a Ph.D. was about having a good idea and demonstrating your ability to develop it

My story back in grad school was most of the time I didn't know if I had a good idea. Sometime I kept doing the same stuff again and again hoping to get some new insight, sometime I tried pursuing different approaches only to throw it away a month later.

There's also the nagging feeling that you're not working hard enough when your peers are publishing left and right, which push you to work late into the night, at home, for trivial reasons.

In the end, I decided that grad school was not for me and got out with a Master Degree.

> I always imagined a Ph.D. was about having a good idea and demonstrating your ability to develop it, defend it, and publish. What does a 14 hour day accomplish over 8? You're not pumping out widgets, right?

My wife is currently doing a Ph.D., and yeah, maybe you go in thinking "I'm interested in this area, let me spend 5 years really exploring and developing it". Then reality hits. You are beholden to your advisor and switching advisors is very hard if not impossible depending on your situation. If your advisor has the funding for you to spend 5 years working on your interests and has the time to help you with it, great. But in reality, your job is to do whatever your advisor wants and this may or may not align with your own interests. On top of this, in addition to research, you've got classes, teaching duties and all sorts of other stuff that may or may not interest you, but has nothing to do with your primary research, yet still takes up much of your time.

Imagine you were to apply to a job in industry where you will have one boss for the next 5 years, get paid scraps, can't switch teams and if you quit the job two or three years in, you give up all of your progress. This is what a Ph.D. is. If you have a great advisor, it can be amazing. But a bad advisor can make it hell. And even in the best of circumstances, you have to deal with a lot of BS.

Sorry to hear that. That sounds very tough. One thing that I did not anticipate is that people bring all sorts of misconceptions of grad schools onto me as a grad student. I take three classes in a semester and people think that is easy (because undergrads take five, of course). I have a flexible schedule, and somehow that makes people think I am less busy (flexible != have time). I look at people working 996 jobs and sometimes I envy them (not having to cook, at least having 1 or 2 hours truly free after 9pm etc.), even though I really should not for many reasons. Partially it is my fault (who does not love a bit of self-destructive tendencies...), but also I just wish people can relate to me just a bit more.

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