I tried graduate school twice but dropped out after one year both times. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle the academics (I had completed all the required coursework in my first degree and was halfway through the requirements of the second), I couldn’t handle the competitiveness of academia.
For years, I had tied my self-worth to my academic success. I studied hard, got good grades, skipped a grade, made dean’s lists and honor rolls, and graduated early. By all accounts, I was successful. Except, graduate school is not about coursework or grades, it’s about research.
I was always so eager to learn that I soaked up any information I was given or could find for nearly all the topics covered in high school and during my bachelor’s. I thought graduate school would be more of the same. What I didn’t realize was that graduate school prepares you to be an expert on one topic: the topic you research. In graduate school, you spend years planning experiments, writing procedures, testing hypotheses, reviewing literature, and presenting your findings for the niche topic you chose when you started. That works for a lot of people, but it does not work for me.
I am a very self-motivated person. I work well independently and can focus on tasks for significant periods of time. I put my all into every project I do. This seems like it would be the perfect profile for a graduate school candidate, but actually, it is the perfect recipe for burnout.
In graduate school, there are no set working hours. You decide your schedule. You still answer to your supervisor and have deadlines to meet, except those deadlines are often months to years in the future. You have to budget your time well enough to meet those deadlines. Simple in theory, difficult in practice.
When you are in graduate school, there is a shiny star called “the future” to guide you through the massive amount of work you must complete. You are enticed by the promise of a high paycheck and notoriety if you make a significant contribution to your field. You work diligently, day and night, to perform the necessary experiments, gain credible data, and write informative prose, only to find out that a mere five people will ever read your dissertation. There are also academic journals that all researchers, students and professionals alike, are encouraged to publish in. “Publish or perish” is a common mantra I heard in graduate school. Publications get you professorships, and isn’t that the goal for academics?
Then there is the issue of egos. Everyone in academia — professors, post-docs, and students — all think they are smart. They would not be in their position if they weren’t. The trap students fall into is in trying to prove their intelligence. No longer is it enough to think you are smart; everyone else must think you are smart too. When you are in a place where everyone around you is intelligent, there is no easy measure for assigning smarts, but students find their own ways to determine it. “I come in earlier than everyone else.” “I stay later than everyone else.” “I’m farther along in my research than everyone else.” “I’m attending these conferences.” “I have X amount of publications.” If any one of these criteria are not met, students feel like they are failing. Thus starts the cycle of putting in more hours and more effort to achieve the high standard students are only putting on themselves.
To cap it all off, each stage in the academic ladder is expensive, thankless, and rarely pays well. To be in academia, you must love it. You have to love the mundane task of carrying out experiments that, by design, are unsuccessful more times than they succeed. You have to love having every word of everything you say or write be scrutinized. You have to love being in competition with your peers — imaginary or not. Academia is brutal and graduate school is just the tip of the iceberg.
Most of the professors I have met, don’t seem to care about this cycle. The impression I got was, “I got through it, so must you.” They are only too happy to see the experimental results come in and the journal papers be written. It secures them publications for their H-index and a cozy position at the university.
University professors do wear many hats and are often incredibly busy. With teaching classes, advising undergraduate students, supervising graduate students, serving on committees, peer-reviewing journals, applying for grants, and conducting their own research, professors are stretched extremely thin. It is all too easy to blame them for failing to help their graduate students emotionally, but they are also running their own hamster wheel.
There are wonderful professors out there who put in the effort to nurture their students to be successful in academia, but they are few and far between. It also isn’t entirely the supervisor’s fault when a student leaves. I had a wonderful supervisor during my first attempt at graduate school that put in great effort towards helping my lab mate and I succeed in our research. I blame my immaturity for my withdrawal. I was swept up by the imagined competition, the need to prove myself, and the daunting prospect of spending four more years on only one topic I wasn’t sure I liked.
My second attempt was the real eye-opener. After taking a year off from academia, I switched schools, departments, supervisors, and countries for my next attempt. I will say that many things took place in my personal life that led to my ultimate withdrawal from this university, but there is also a lot to be said about the program and research environment I was in that made me decide to leave.
This university was much more prestigious than the first university I attended and their research was much more visible. I was excited to learn from the best of the best and hopefully become one myself. In the beginning, I took in as much advice and information as I could. I paid attention to the senior students and tried to mimic what appeared to be working for them. When I transitioned into the phase of finally conducting my own experiments and presenting my own work, things started to fall apart.
My supervisor became more distant and was extremely harsh when he did give feedback, often in the form of public shaming. I had difficulties with trying to repair broken laboratory equipment and navigating the process of ordering materials (in a foreign language) for my research. I felt like I was falling behind, so I put in more hours at the institute, arriving extremely early in the morning to get work done while the building was quiet and empty. I agonized over the presentations and reports I prepared, only to have them ripped apart or entirely rewritten by my supervisor. No matter how much effort I put in to improve, I was just left feeling stupid, incapable, and like “a waste of time.” Compound that with the issues I was facing in my personal life, and I spiraled into a very dark place mentally. When I realized just how bad things had become and nothing was working to pull me out of the state I was in, I knew I had to leave. I felt tremendous shame for walking out in the middle of another graduate degree, but it had to be done.
Now, months later, I am the happiest I have felt in a long time. After having initially sworn off anything related to science, I have found great enjoyment in producing my podcast, Fall Asleep to Science, and applying my prior coding and analysis experience to become a data scientist.
I am thankful for my graduate school experiences because they helped me to understand my true passions and what I want out of my professional career. I am now aware of my natural tendencies and insecurities and am working to correct those that hinder me. I learned so many valuable skills that I will carry with me into future roles: time management, effective research strategies and experimental design, work-life balance, and networking. I am a more capable person that will continue to improve with each new experience. I fell on my face twice by quitting two graduate programs, but I am a much more self-aware person because of it.
If you are considering graduate school, I strongly encourage you to think about your mental patterns and what motivates you. If your habits and motivations are similar to what mine were, I urge you to set up a series of checks for yourself to prevent burning out. A desire for prestige is not enough to carry a person through the highs and lows of academia. Be sure to choose a supervisor you trust and a topic you could spend years dissecting. Prepare yourself before you start by brushing up on the topics you will be expected to know for your chosen discipline.
Academia is a great space, but it is undeniably challenging. Choose wisely and prepare accordingly.
What were your biggest failures that led to your most fruitful growths? Did you go to graduate school? What are your mental habits?
Feel free to share your answers in the comment section, or like this post if you enjoyed it.
Thank you for reading.
-TJ
LambCHNOPS 