Losing passion and some hope

[The Pseudo grad student]

I'm about 6 months till graduation from my masters program and I think one of the scariest things to do is to get a job. All I hear constantly is that once you go out in industry, you'll most likely never want to go back to school. I've pretty much exhausted all my grad school options and see no other choice other than to start working in industry that I might be PhD worthy but I'm afraid that once I go into the work force, I won't have this passion (to get my PhD, do research) any longer. Can you guys tell me your experience on this, whether or not what I stated before is true and some advice would be nice too. Thanks!

[ktel]

While I think life as a professional student certainly would be nice, I know that it would probably serve my future well to take some time to work in industry after my Master's. School will always be there, and I think having some "real world" experience could be quite helpful for any future research I may want to do if I do a PhD. Especially in engineering, where research is often tied quite closely to industry. If you start working and decide you don't want to do a PhD, perhaps you weren't really that passionate in the first place. And perhaps a job could give you the same satisfaction that a PhD would.

[NinjaMermaid]

I graduated HS in 1997, took some basics classes and fiddled around at a community college for a year after then stopped all together. In 2001 I started school again (community college basics). Basically from 1997 - 2004 I worked in various careers and even owned my own business. Then in 2005 I got into an amazing undergrad program at a very prestigious university. I graduated in 2008 with great credentials but could not find a high paying job in my field (not even a mediocre paying one). So instead I managed a boutique for a decent wage until I settled on a graduate program.

Bottom line - it is not how your life flows but how you ride your life. Only you can decide if YOU will go back to school once you leave.