Why Grad School is Fucking Awesome

[Cheshire_Cat]

11 hours ago, spectastic said:

and yea, most of the things on the lists are not unique to grad school at all.

If I could work in the areas I want to work in without a PhD, and not hit a ceiling in 10 years, I would not be doing a PhD. It's an investment, and it's not glamorous, at ALL..

out of all the trivial things listed, like being able to travel, meeting like minded people, the NOT 9-5 (which isn't that bad btw..), I would trade all of these for an industry salary with benefits and 2-4 weeks of paid vacation plus sick days and holidays in a heartbeat.

 

you get near full autonomy in what you want to investigate, and access to resources that enables you to grow as a researcher faster than anywhere else. that's about it in my opinion.

For a few years I worked a 9-5 with benefits, a nice salary, and 2-4 weeks of vacation plus sick and holidays and a very clear career path.  I would say it's not all it's cracked up to be, but it's a good life, just not the one I wanted.  I'm fucking insane for quitting that and spending 5 years of my life getting a Ph.D, lol. And I've never been happier. 

[ejpril88]

@Cheshire_Cat what made you quit and decide to go back to school?

[ExponentialDecay]

3 hours ago, 3dender said:

I don't know. Why look for something new and exciting when the cliche description is the most accurate?  Cliches are cliches for a reason.

And that reason is, because you're incapable of coming up with something new.

[Cheshire_Cat]

1 hour ago, ejpril88 said:

@Cheshire_Cat what made you quit and decide to go back to school?

I didn't like the 9-5 .  I can't understand how people go to work all day and don't go crazy. I like my freedom to come and go as I please. It doesn't matter if I am working more as long as I am working on my own terms.

And we need professors in my field because the aforementioned salaried, stable jobs cuts down on people wanting to get a Ph.D, while simultaneously increasing the demand for them.

[3dender]

1 hour ago, ExponentialDecay said:

And that reason is, because you're incapable of coming up with something new.

No that reason is because on some level they accurately describe reality.  If you disagree with the above depiction, YOU offer an alternative, and I'LL decide whether I agree with it or not (spoiler: I probably won't).

[ExponentialDecay]

12 minutes ago, 3dender said:

No that reason is because on some level they accurately describe reality.  If you disagree with the above depiction, YOU offer an alternative, and I'LL decide whether I agree with it or not (spoiler: I probably won't).

A broken clock is right twice a day!

Where is my cliches-are-cliches-for-a-reason prize???

[spectastic]

6 hours ago, Cheshire_Cat said:

I didn't like the 9-5 .  I can't understand how people go to work all day and don't go crazy. I like my freedom to come and go as I please. It doesn't matter if I am working more as long as I am working on my own terms.

And we need professors in my field because the aforementioned salaried, stable jobs cuts down on people wanting to get a Ph.D, while simultaneously increasing the demand for them.

if avoiding the 9-5 is one of the main reasons for you to pursue academia, then I think there are better long term solutions. look at the people in your field with PhDs. what kind of schedule do they work? I think unless you're in Australia or Europe or something, owns a company, or can work from home, 9-5 is pretty hard to avoid. The people who I've met who work from home and have that kind of freedom are always software developers or website builders. anything that requires you to show up is probably going to be a 9-5.

[TakeruK]

I think it depends on what you mean by 9-5. If you mean 9-5 as in literally working the hours of 9-5 (or some other set hours) then yeah, academia isn't going to be an escape from that. As a postdoc, researcher, or faculty member, you'll generally be expected to be around during the day and even if you don't have work hours written down on paper, your other commitments (committees, teaching, meetings, etc.) will be scheduled during the 9-5 workday. But academia is still kind of flexible, like you could probably take an hour off from 1pm-2pm to go for a swim even if you are a faculty member. Or, you could likely work some other mostly-daytime routine, like 8-11, 1-4 and 7-9, if you wanted. 

But when I hear people say they want to "avoid the 9-5", I don't think they mean it literally. Instead, I think they mean they want to avoid a job where they do the same repetitive thing for 8 hours a day, every day. And I think academia is a great way to avoid feeling like that (but it's not the only way to avoid "the 9-5"). I keep a regular work schedule as a grad student (8am to 5pm) but I still really enjoy it because every term, week, and even day is a little different. Some days are meeting days where I spend a lot of time talking to other people. Some days are teaching days where I plan my recitations or grade homework. Others are for working on presentations. Others are for writing, or for reading. And unless there is a deadline coming up, I can choose what I want to do each day. Maybe it's a nice day and I want it to be an outside-reading day. I can do that if I want. Compared to other career paths, academics do get a lot of freedom in what their day-to-day is like. Of course, many will still complain that they have some obligations like teaching or meetings, but compared to the non-academic world, it's a lot more freedom.

[Cheshire_Cat]

5 hours ago, TakeruK said:

I think it depends on what you mean by 9-5. If you mean 9-5 as in literally working the hours of 9-5 (or some other set hours) then yeah, academia isn't going to be an escape from that. As a postdoc, researcher, or faculty member, you'll generally be expected to be around during the day and even if you don't have work hours written down on paper, your other commitments (committees, teaching, meetings, etc.) will be scheduled during the 9-5 workday. But academia is still kind of flexible, like you could probably take an hour off from 1pm-2pm to go for a swim even if you are a faculty member. Or, you could likely work some other mostly-daytime routine, like 8-11, 1-4 and 7-9, if you wanted. 

But when I hear people say they want to "avoid the 9-5", I don't think they mean it literally. Instead, I think they mean they want to avoid a job where they do the same repetitive thing for 8 hours a day, every day. And I think academia is a great way to avoid feeling like that (but it's not the only way to avoid "the 9-5"). I keep a regular work schedule as a grad student (8am to 5pm) but I still really enjoy it because every term, week, and even day is a little different. Some days are meeting days where I spend a lot of time talking to other people. Some days are teaching days where I plan my recitations or grade homework. Others are for working on presentations. Others are for writing, or for reading. And unless there is a deadline coming up, I can choose what I want to do each day. Maybe it's a nice day and I want it to be an outside-reading day. I can do that if I want. Compared to other career paths, academics do get a lot of freedom in what their day-to-day is like. Of course, many will still complain that they have some obligations like teaching or meetings, but compared to the non-academic world, it's a lot more freedom.

Exactly!!!   it is choosing what you want to work on and having different things to do every day.  At my old job, I felt like a trained monkey could do my job, even though I was in a hard field, because it was so repetitive.  And I couldn't take off and go work on a different project for a few days to clear my head, because it was the only project I was on, and I didn't have the freedom to choose differently. 

Obviously, these aren't the only reasons I decided to go into Academia. My dad is a professor in the same field, so I know what I am getting into. I enjoy research, and teaching is very engaging. But I really needed my freedom, and to be able to do something mentally challenging.

[ejpril88]

17 minutes ago, Cheshire_Cat said:

But I really needed my freedom, and to be able to do something mentally challenging.

This!

[spectastic]

I interpret 9-5 as a steady work schedule (it could also be 9/80, or 4/10, or some kind of 40 hours/week give or take) where you show up for a period of time, work, and go home to enjoy your free time (which i likey much), while in grad school that number is definitely north of 40h/wk (with much higher standard deviation, which I guess is what is referred to as "freedom"), and that salary is waaayyy south. that said, having autonomy in the workplace (which I agree is a huge perk of grad school) and having a 9-5 aren't mutually exclusive. some of the most successful companies with some of the happiest employees have 9-5 schedules, and part of their strategy is to allow some kind of freedom for their employees to do whatever they want work related during some of their work schedule. 3M is a great example in that they allocated 10-20% of their employees' schedule to think about ideas that are completely unrelated to their current projects. This was how the post it note was developed.

Here's the thing.. at least in my field, you need to be there in person to communicate with your team, and anything worth accomplishing is most effectively accomplished through teams or groups, not through individuals. so unless the job can be done completely individually, most jobs will require you to show up when others do.

Also, not everything that's interesting to work on is necessarily worth working on. the people paying you money expect to see a return on their investment. that goes for academia too. in that regard, you will never have true autonomy to work on what you want, and expect to be compensated for it. 

[juilletmercredi]

But when I hear people say they want to "avoid the 9-5", I don't think they mean it literally. Instead, I think they mean they want to avoid a job where they do the same repetitive thing for 8 hours a day, every day.

I still don't understand this interpretation. Not that I think you're wrong, but I think rather that the folks who say this either are unfamiliar with non-academic career options for PhDs (or non-academic work in general) or got kind of unlucky with the positions they had in the past.

Not that there aren't many jobs where people do the same thing, but a person who has a PhD and works a white-collar professional non-academic job probably won't be in any of those jobs. At my current job every day is different and no two days I've worked have been the same. Some days I'm running participants; some days I'm meeting with the development team; some days I'm giving a presentation to company or industry leaders; and some days I'm surfing the 'net in my office. To be quite clear, I actually feel like my work is LESS repetitive and formulaic than when I was in graduate school or my postdoc. I think this has a lot to do with what you enjoy. For example, I love writing, but I hate writing academic papers in the silly formulaic jargon that we used. I especially hated responding to nitpicky feedback and comments from reviewers 8 to 12 months after I had actually written the original paper. In my current job, I still write a lot, but I use clear plain English, I get feedback within 48 hours and it's always geared towards improving clarity and impact. I loved teaching but grading was tedious (except papers...I like grading papers.)

I get to choose what I do each day and I have enormous freedom in what my day-to-day is like. Most weeks my manager has to check in with me to know what I am doing! And if I wanted to work outside on my company's gorgeous campus rather than inside my office, I could.

Or maybe I'm just lucky, I don't know, but I don't think that's the case. I have growing list of friends and professionals who departed academia and really enjoy their flexible, dynamic non-academic jobs.

[Concordia]

Sturgeon's Law applies as much to the workplace as anything else.  The trick is to find a job where you can tolerate the "crud", or -- if you're really lucky -- you like it.

[Cheshire_Cat]

Yeah, I think it all depends on the field and what you want from life.  The only reason you get a Ph.D in my field is to research and teach in academia, so that is what I'll be doing.  (We are also a rare field with our demand for Ph.Ds outweighing our supply by quite a bit, so I'm not worried about being unemployed)  But if I didn't think that you could have a good life working in industry in my field, then I wouldn't want to teach it.  Life was very comfortable, and I am really glad I had that experience, but I'm also happy to not be there anymore.

[blc073]

On 5/2/2017 at 10:42 PM, spectastic said:

you don't need grad school to have meaningful conversations.. There are way more interesting people in the real world who have much more diverse experiences than grad students.

most grad students I know are boring AF.

This is an incredibly intense comment. I think I need a minute... 

[shadowclaw]

This whole "9 to 5" conversation is completely unwarranted imo. In fact, it seems like the people taking a dump on this thread have completely missed the point. This isn't about why we chose to go to grad school, it's about what we like about it now that we're here (or if graduated, what we liked while we were still there). If I wanted a job that involved travel, living in a cool place, meeting interesting people, etc., there are many routes I could have taken, including getting a PhD.

If you want to get into the why's, at least a masters degree was really a necessity for me if I wanted a decent job in my field. While there are exceptions, most people I know in my field who only have a B.S. are either working seasonal contract jobs (albeit in some pretty awesome locations around the world) that pay less than my GTA salary or are working full-time jobs that pay the same or only marginally better than my part-time GTA salary. I'm sure over time, their experience will lead them to a well-paying job, but for now, I'm getting the better deal, and when I graduate, I'm going to be qualified for much better jobs than them. There are a few people I graduated with who are making some pretty good money, but they actually aren't even working at jobs they went to school for, which is an unfortunate reality that many people face after graduation.

My own personal take on the 9 to 5... I am not generally opposed to working a block of 8 hours, but I hate having the same hours everyday and I hate mornings. Right now, I start at 8 am on Mondays, 10 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, whatever I feel like on Wednesdays, and 11 am on Fridays. I love that it's different from day to day and that I don't have to drag myself out of bed early everyday. It also varies from week to week. Some Wednesdays I do nothing related to school, and others I spend a good 12 hours working. The activities also differ from day to day... I worked for years doing the same thing over and over again, and it's crap. If I stay in academia, I won't have to worry about that, because classes and schedules change from term to term, and even new professors often have some degree of freedom in scheduling so that they don't have to work the same exact hours every day. If I don't stay in academia, a lot of people in my field have varying schedules. So yeah... the career path I'm on will probably keep me clear of boring repetitive work locked into the same time slot every single day.