For those who don’t know, I’ve been working on a PhD at the intersection of geology and geophysics. I will be leaving with a Master’s degree at the end of this year.
I was originally attracted to geosciences because from 30,000 feet the subject matter has a definite aesthetic appeal. When I think about the scale and size and antiquity of the Earth, I feel humble and in awe that I even exist at all. I’m not a religious person, but that feeling of awe toward nature is what originally attracted me to science as vocation.
But over the past few years I’ve learned that those feelings of awe have relatively little to do with the day-to-day life of a person in academia. I’ve been telling myself for a while now that I have a decision to make about whether to stay in science. About whether this PhD is really the on-ramp to a career that I want.
But the truth is I have already decided; the crossroads is weeks (months?) in the rearview mirror. Even though I’ve been afraid to tell colleagues about my decision, for those paying attention my choices over the last several months paint a clear picture of my priorities. I decided when I started researching opportunities outside the scientific realm. I decided when I started ignoring my homework to go to local tech meetups and work on programming. I decided when I spent my weekend applying to Hacker School instead of a small grant opportunity.
I do feel guilty about leaving the program after taking up other peoples’ time and resources. I have nothing but warm feelings for my advisor, who I am sad to let them down. But guilty feelings are not good reasons to stay, not when the opportunity cost of staying is so absurdly high.
I don’t love it
The department chair said yesterday in a graduate student meeting that if you don’t love what you’re doing then science isn’t worth it. The message resonated deeply with me.
Because the truth is that I don’t love it. I don’t love trying to build a personal brand in the prestige economy that science turns on. Even if my work was groundbreaking (it isn’t), I know that I don’t have the social temperament of a successful scientist. The only way that your work adds value to your career in science is if you spend a lot of energy pimping and promoting and talking up your work at every opportunity. I don’t love that. In fact, I don’t like that at all.
I don’t love feeling like I need to be the best in the world at my particular thing just to have a chance at success, and even then it’s only a chance because so much luck is involved. I take pride in my work and aim to be the best, but best in the world is an insanely high bar. This is the expectation at high-level science programs, and it seems like an unhealthy way to approach work.
I don’t love working in isolation on things that nobody cares about, that few people will read, and that affect nobody’s life. I am terrified by the truth in this John Ziman quote:
A scientist is a person who knows more and more about less and less, until he knows everything about nothing.
If that’s what it means to be a successful scientific professional, I want no part of it. I want to keep learning about lots of different types of things throughout my career, not going ever deeper into the minutiae of one specific subfield.
I don’t love getting by on a meager stipend while my friends who got real jobs after college are buying cars, saving for retirement, and starting businesses. If there were some great opportunities waiting for me at the end of a PhD it might be worth it. But there aren’t. Economically, there’s no way to justify working for such a pittance for your entire youth unless you are so passionate about the work that you can’t see yourself doing anything else.
Even if the money were not an issue, I don’t love contemplating a future where the well-known “two-body problem” means there’s a good chance I’ll have to choose between optimizing for career and optimizing for family. As far as I know, no other professional field routinely expects participants to enter something as perverse as a permanent long-distance marriage (and probable divorce) in service of their career.
And finally, I don’t love being part of a culture where everyone is afraid all the time. Some might disagree with this, but I would claim there is a general feeling of fear pervading academic life. Everyone is afraid their project won’t work, afraid their paper won’t get published, afraid they aren’t working enough, afraid somebody will make them look dumb, afraid somebody will copy their idea, afraid they won’t get a job, afraid the grant that they depend on won’t get renewed, and so on. I see this from top to bottom in staff, junior faculty, and students.
I don’t love it. And I’ve had enough.
Coming this realization has been a scary process. Overcoming the special brand of Stockholm syndrome that makes graduate students speak about “leaving Science” in hushed tones has been a long road. Anyone who has dropped out of a top tier graduate program can tell you, it takes a lot of courage to break out of the bubble and realize how much opportunity there is out there in the wider world.
Now that I’ve come to a decision it feel good. It feels right. For the first time in a long time, I feel optimistic about what the future holds. I’m excited to get started.