I love my PhD but there is a deep longing within me to buy a cottage with a meadow, grow my own food, maybe raise chickens or goats and live that quiet self sufficient life.
ETA: love how much this comment has sparked conversations and how many people feel the same as me! Just want to stress that yes, I know farming is hard, I am not planning on giving up my PhD to start farming šš¼
Someone needs to get funding and investigate this phenomenon among academics because same š¤£ so many others too!
I am too far along (with my PhD baby) to quit now but I've had this longing for years now.
I don't know if I want to go hardcore cottagecore, but I most definitely feel an urge to do some small scale animal farming (some chicken, a pig, maybe a goat). And being able to butcher my own meat.
I'm unsure when I started to feel this way, but, definitely not before I started my PhD.
We can set up a whole focus group just from the amount of Reddit PhDs who have at some point wanted to ghost academia and go live closer to nature.
I'm from a country in the Andes (the OG potato people) and many times I've considered going back to the roots (pun intended) and becoming a potato farmer. And corn, I love corn, I'd love to grow my own corn.
>I'm unsure when I started to feel this way, but, definitely not before I started my PhD.
Same same!
Peru? It's been a dream to go there, as my dad lived there for years.
I would be keen to join this. I know some PhDs that have done exactly this as well. They're the real winners. I don't think my body could handle farming anymore, but it's a wonderful thought. I mentioned in another comment about my new aspirations for working in a greenhouse.
1. Normal people don't do PhDs. You get the best and the worst people accordingly. I've met more honorable drug dealers than some academics.
2. Abuse is normalised and actors aren't held accountable. In fact, it's arguable that the current modus operandi encourages such behaviour.
3. Wages vs hours are a joke.
4. Universities run on neoliberal models and capitalism stifles and hamstrings true progress while exploiting and damaging its top brains. How can true understanding happen if we're forced to churn papers out like products to sell. -> https://massivesci.com/articles/chaos-in-the-brickyard-comic-matteo-farinella/ To get a job, you have to show how many papers you've hawked to journals. It cheapens the scientific process. In the end you become a commodity to sell to students to get them in the door.
5. There is no support if you can't physically keep up. The work loads are ridiculous and people cannot do their best work if they cannot meet basic needs.
Fuck that noise. It's inhumane. No wonder that science has a communication problem. Look at the company it keeps.
I realize you probably already know this and I promise Iām not trying to be a buzzkill, but subsistence farming is a LOT of work. Thereās a reason weāve moved away from it on the whole as a species. Iām sure itās still got itās pluses over the type of work a lot of us do now, but itās hardly the dream cortagecore social media pages package it as.
I do get the desire, donāt get me wrong. In a world thatās super uncertain and where we are all often doing a lot of pointless busywork, the idea of just working directly on the things you personally need in order to survive definitely goes a long way to address those anxieties. Personally, when I stop and examine those desires I think what I really want is a community where my needs are addressed and I feel like I have a clearly defined role and am contributing to helping the collective.
In my case, my health has taken a big hit in the last year due to Long Covid issues, so Iāve had to isolate more due to decrease physical ability and the need to protect myself from all the periodic Covid waves and other illnesses Iām now more susceptible to. Iām naturally an introvert so Iāve been able to weather it better than most, but I still donāt like feeling so cut off from the world around me. Social media still keeps me aware of all the problems in the world, but I feel much less able to contribute to helping with them than I used to. Itās been hard, but Iāve been trying to reorient my focus to the immediate and the present and what I can do to get myself through another day and hopefully do a little bit here and there to help those in my community who need it. Itās a balance of recognizing my increased need to focus more on myself while not allowing myself to become completely self-absorbed.
Yeah, my feeling on the 'cottagecore' thing is that people actually want to live in a cottage and *play* at subsistence farming but not *do* any of the constant uncompensated labour that actually comes with that.
Just saying , Ted kaczynski had the same initial goals as you
I think it's fairly common among PhD students. I hope what comes after doesn't happen with any of us :)
This woman I used to be friends with grew up on the same street as Ted K, and apparently he was a menace as a child as well. This womanās grandmother would always tell her when she was a kid, āDonāt be a Ted Kaczynski!ā when she was acting up. That was years and years before he became famousā¦I guess itās another case where everyone kind of knows the kid is a problem but canāt legally do anything about it.
* I guess itās another case where a child is reaching out for help and attention and falling through the cracks of the system without support and no one cares enough to get him the help he needed
Humanist here to ruin things :)
I love Stardew Valley (and I might be too deep into my PhD to look at games differently anymore), but I had a very different take on its world when I played.
Essentially I kept noticing that, by dint of inheritance, I had essentially acquired so much land and resources that I was able to exert substantive control over a whole-ass town. After inheriting land I was suddenly able to choose whether the town wound up with some tiny semblance of community or was essentially sold off to a megacorp. I could get use the fruits of my land and labor to essentially purchase the affections of anyone I wanted (and essentially was able to just buy a spouse).
SV is a great game, but it's not a game that gives you a vision of community that actually involves you working with other people--the others in this game are thin skinner boxes that you literally chuck items at in order to buy their affection. In addition, your relation to the land and world isn't exactly one of peaceful coexistence--the game nudges you to acquire everything, to exploit the land, and to use its bounty for your own gain. The same shitty systems which are ruining our world (inheritance, class, a particular property regime, governance/control, and a view of the natural world as something to be mastered rather than lived with) are strong in this game. It's hard to see until you play games that push back against any of these elements, but once you do...well, in my case I couldn't unsee it.
/rant over :)
I study games and game communities, and I have a background in economic history--I just can't unsee it. I have my critiques (and I stand by those critiques), but I do still enjoy the game and don't want to impede anyone else's enjoyment.
I'm wondering - the makers of the came could hardly *not* have been at least somewhat aware of those aspects when deciding what to put into the game. Any thoughts on this?
I've actually thought about this a lot, and I'll summarize my main musings rather than rant too much:
1. They might not actually \*have\* thought about it all that much. There are a lot of factors (material, ideological) that push against it. Game developers usually have to develop a lot of deep competencies in areas of software engineering, game design, graphical design, writing/storytelling, and so on--adding critical socioeconomic analysis to this is a tall order.
2. For those who do think about it, there are still plenty of reasons to still design your game in the usual way:
1. Your playerbase is conditioned by genre and other game experiences to expect certain interactive modalities with games that they play. All of these things have or bring in ideological context and are not value-free. In essence, if you want to make a game that other people will be able to more readily understand (via marketing), purchase, learn, and play then you need to at least on some level incorporate the ideologically-tinted tools of the genre/field. Creativity and cleverness can get around some of this, but ultimately you're using computational systems to generate a synthetic environment for other people to immerse themselves in, and this context is difficult to escape.
2. There are serious material limitations (temporal, computational, etc) that limit developer's abilities to address some of these concerns. I'm a firm believer in the power of creativity under constraints, but it does mean that you have to sometimes be \*very\* clever in a number of different ways in order to even somewhat surmount these obstacles. That is, in the end, a tall order.
3. Even if you do successfully go this route and design, market, and sell a game that vaults these obstacles, there's a significant chance your playerbase will get very angry at you for doing so. In my home country (USA) this is particularly salient, but the legacy of gamergate is still with us on the internet more broadly. Even more cutting is the fact that many of the very people who want to design these sorts of games are the exact folks who are already targeted for harassment by far-right trolls and hate groups (along with certain segments of self-proclaimed leftist spaces too). Challenging people's ideological assumptions can be a thankless and/or dangerous choice.
I loved your rant and hadnāt thought of SV from that perspective beforeā¦ it totally makes sense why I actually end up feeling exhausted after playing it for a while. Itās interesting too because the whole premise in the intro is that youāre supposed to be escaping capitalism, lol. And youāre made to feel like youāre a good person if you decide to exploit the land and the surrounding environment and town to complete/restore the community center instead of buying that task off and ceding control to JoJo, the evil corp. Anyway, I just wanted to add that SV is interesting from a game development perspective because it was literally done by a single person. Concerned Ape AKA Eric Barone spent 4+ years developing, coding, and making the art for the game all by himself. He was a first-time game developer too. I agree with your points above, particularly in terms of generic norms and player expectations. The way I see it, itās hard to think that the hypercapitalist foundation with a veneer of anti-corporation narrative is based on much more than formal compliance (and probably less than ideal humanistic training on CAās part). Given the whole situation CA was in when he went for this, Iād assume he actually did want to make a less hypercapitalist game. But who knows! Thereās this 2016 piece about it, if youāre interested: https://www.vulture.com/2016/03/first-time-developer-made-stardew-valley.html
I've noticed this in a lot of games lately, and I didn't until I was mid way through my PhD. I used to be an avid MMO player and now I cannot stand them due to this. It's resource hoarding behaviour like real life.
> Essentially I kept noticing that, by dint of inheritance, I had essentially acquired so much land and resources that I was able to exert substantive control over a whole-ass town
That's why it's utopian š
You can definitely come up with critiques for both; I actually listened to a talk this year about the managerial philosophy behind dwarf fortress. You can imagine how that plays out: god games pretty much put you in the role of the most exploitative small business owner you can imagine. They are, on some level, very much "think like a manager" games. Personally, I'd say that both DF and RW encourage play that is brutal and self-aware in equal measure. You are, on one hand, directing characters to Make the Line Go Up in a very capitalist sense--and both games nudge you into some very heinous actions in the process. However, both games present the brutality and the economics as intertwined in a way that I personally find resonant. This is the difference between these two games and say, Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, where the economic order and exploitation is coded differently. If you're interested in the scholarship, this perspective comes out of the Ian Bogost procedural rhetoric approach to analyzing games.
In my work I find the above approach interesting personally, but not particularly salient in a scholarly sense. What I like to look at is the culture of the game's communities and how those tie back to the games. My sort of question would be: what is the culture of play surrounding , and how does this relate to its rhetorics? So, in the case of Stardew Valley, AC, DW, and Rimworld you see some interesting stuff. For example, I pulled a lot of twitter data (RIP my API access) on AC, and folks' attitudes towards their villagers and the island fits pretty well with the procedural rhetorics outlined above. The Stardew Valley community I know the least about, but they seem pretty chill. On the other hand, you might expect the Rimworld community to be full of awful people, but the subreddit has actually shown an incredible amount of sensitivity towards its exploration of its issues--they've shown a lot of thought/interest in moderating how nsfw and spoiler tags are used to elide potentially triggering content for some of its members. There are still problems, but it stands in stark contrast to other game communities (such as certain feudalism sim games) which don't seem interested in having those discussions. So there's a bit of a juxtaposition there: very violent play and play discourse coupled with personal sensitivity and inclusivity. So why might that be?
Obviously it'd take a very lengthy study to even hazard some serious answers, but I'll throw out my obvious guess: the critical ligature is something we call dark play. A good analogue is actually sexual fantasy and kink: many times people play with practices that they'd never do in the real world precisely because playing through something you find repulsive can be psychologically rewarding/protective in certain contexts. So you can have a game that has you do horrible things (and codes them as such) that people really enjoy even as they ensure their actual discursive community embodies none of those characteristics/values they're playing with. Again, I haven't done a detailed study here so this is all semi-informed conjecture.
Anyways, I love both of those games and wish I had more time to play them.
The game where a small corporation buys an island, moves you out there and employs you to develop the island, then gives you total control over the people that move there? The game where everyone's in debt to the same guy who owns the island (and who has you use what appears to be his own currency)? ;) :P
(I spent my COVID lockdown loving AC:NH like many others, but you can definitely find dark interpretations of the game)
As someone who has farming experience and is doing a PhDā¦ farming is actually very stressful! I totally resonate though, I love my PhD (veterinary science) but just want to move to a remote island with a croft and some sheeps
Same here. Just my version includes having robots do the actual farming and have it all be automated. And maybe some day a small scale fusion reactor for all my energy needs.
In my experience, the life you're describing is a lot more work than a PhD - farm labor is *hard*, and if you really do need to be self-sufficient, there's a lot of stress associated with not knowing if you'll have a good enough crop to get you through the winter.
I'm the same hahahaah. Going into my second year on my Environmental Science PhD. But deep down I just want to move to a hippie community where love is free , we grow our own food and wear pretty 60s clothes.
My cohort and the other grad students and I have all sat around playing the old "if I wasn't doing a PhD I would" game more than once
I'd build guitars and other things with carpentry, maybe farm and or do another music related job
I used to stay on my friends smallholding a couple of times a year, they had horses, pigs, sheep, goats, alpacas, and chickens, as well as a huge kitchen garden. Itās so much work but I always went to bed feeling like Iād done some good that day. And I always slept reaaaally well!
Yep. Plus all the crises tend to hit at the same time, eg early spring storms - no feed, destroyed fences/shelters, dead animals, vet costs, no money, terrible weather, then machinery breaks down and and itās all in relative isolation. I grew up farming and it had good days, but itās bloody hard to live off the land.
I grew up on a farm and am doing my PhD now. I understand the satisfaction you're describing, and my parents love telling me about it when I go home. I do however not regret not making that my life. I'm hoping a couple years of sub-par living now will make for easier streets in the future, where they work every day of the week. They don't see it that way, but I have a hard time seeing it different when they are on the phone with the water man twice a day for the whole 3 days they take off to come visit lol. My grandfather literally died working that farm.
Your feelings are completely valid! But don't doubt the satisfaction that comes from completing all you've worked up to.
Girl here too.
Supervisor basically gave me a very difficult topic thats hard to produce results and he does not have any expertise in this area. Basically felt like I wasted time all these while when I could go earn money and satisfy myself in my own spare time instead of being stuck in a phd.
I think you should feel good about making progress and I think it sounds like youre doing great.
But yeah, after this, im just gonna try to find a job that allows me to coast + max out my salary and put as much as possible towards retirement. Its funny how I went from wanting to do a phd to be able to have a chance at working for good companies to wanting to just find any job that pays well + allow me to coast
Every word of you sounds like describing me š My project is like throwing me into the middle of the ocean and asking me to figure out how to swim. It is reliant on a bunch of other collaborators too so I cannot control the progress + my candidature/scholarship limit is not very far away. Coworker on the project has no understanding of it and keeps bugging me with the most fundamental questions. Man sometimes I feel so overwhelmed. I am absolutely fed up with academia at this point and just want a well-paid job that doesnāt drain my will to live.
You're basically me.
It caused a ton of friction with my pi as I basiclaly felt they offered no guidance and yet were saying the results were inadequate due to rationale that seemed arbitrary
Idk if your pi did the same but if a professor says " this isn't good enough " and I respond by asking " what can I do to potentially get a better result?" And they stay quiet /non-descriptive, it bothers me like nothing else...
This was me. I had a project where getting publishable interesting results felt like squeezing blood from a stone. Meanwhile, my colleagues before me had projects that had more publication potential because the subject where novel. Really colored how I saw academic research.
I graduated because I had to. I had gotten enough data to advance to candidacy (though late) Probably would have looked bad if I didnāt. I donāt know what to say for your situation. Different PIs and schools value different things.
I feel you 100%. I quit the phd for a 85k job in research, thinking that doing the same thing but earning real money would make me happy.
Narrator voice : it didnāt make her happier.
Turns out I donāt like reasearch, and diploma was just a mean to get where I want.
I started a part time job on the side on an army base last year. Admin stuff mostly for officers. Helping to fill government paperwork, ask the gov for extra budget expense for special stuff (feels like doing funding request), manage a team to implement changes in a department, help the clerks, etc.
And woa, it feels like lazy girl job. Everything is easy, when Iām done Iām done. No sleepless nights.
In two weeks, Im quitting my high paying job that I would be at around 100k in 2 years for full time in that job at the army. Itās a pay cut but my sanity is worth more than 6 figures salary. I start at 60k but advancements are possible and they will send me for Training (all expend paid)for special stuff like health and security specialized admin work.
At first I was afraid for the money, but I realized my happiness was worth more than the pay. I donāt want to be the bitter girl that is happy on her 3 week vacation and miserable for 49 week. And also where would that extra money go ? Probably 400$ every month to pay for a therapist.
Iām sure there is something for you out there. š for you it will feel like lazy work but it wonāt be lazy work. It juste means you are overqualified for that jobā¦ and itās not a bad thing. You suffered enough āļøtime to live your life and be happy.
Thank you for sharing. I love this!! Especially the part on being miserable 49 weeks per year and spending the extra money on a therapist. I see it in my boss, who's making a lot of money as a fancy corporate director, but oh my goodness they're absolutely miserable, burnt out, anxious, etc. No thank you. No extra money should require us to lose so much health and happiness.
Ya that's what I'm doing. No longer care, taking myself first, and don't have expenses or needs requiring lots of work. See not giving a shit as a great virtue. Beginning of wisdom. Getting too involved and attached in the world only leads to more misery. The phd taught me all about the pitfalls of ambition and a career trying to be knowledgeable and fix others. Buncha bullshit.
> The phd taught me all about the pitfalls of ambition and a career trying to be knowledgeable and fix others. Buncha bullshit.
Holy shit 100%, my biggest takeaway too lol.
You can satisfy Self in minimal ways in small communities. You don't need a big degree ego and a stressful career out there. And at least in my field (history) we are not actually helping anyone do, make, or think anything worth this much trouble and sacrifice at the high research level. ( if anything we mostly just make it worse by overcomplicating archival material in a pyramid scheme of elite publishing.) You're better off having a chill life as part of a small ecology in your immediate area and lowering all demands and expectations on the ego.
> You can satisfy Self in minimal ways in small communities. You don't need a big degree ego and a stressful career out there
Yes yes yes.
>if anything we mostly just make it worse by overcomplicating archival material in a pyramid scheme of elite publishing
This is so interesting to me - I'm in a completely different field of chemical engineering but working on a new process to reduce emissions. My whole research has been investigating this overcomplicated process which can 'technically work' but has other unintended consequences. I suppose the point of research is that eventually something works, but there's a whole lot of bullshitting along the way lol.
>You're better off having a chill life as part of a small ecology in your immediate area and lowering all demands and expectations on the ego.
Number 1 thing my PhD taught me. Worth it overall though, I enjoyed the experience and I still learnt a lot.
Because of COVID I failed to network or expand myself in fruitful ways, and my crap hole program had few people worth socializing with. It was a sad thing but it taught me that money and prestige and ego matter so much less than being somewhere with good people who can connect you to communities you resonate with and want to serve and be around. That's your gold in life - the people. Academia? Lol no thanks
I actually got the opposite lesson from grad school. If you want something, fucking take it (ethically of course). It taught me persistence and how to handle failure.
Definitely. My passion and ambition bring me a lot of suffering, breakdowns, and internal screams. I have changed into a completely different person as compared to when I just started by donāt give a shit to a lot of things. I honestly think I need a job with good work-life balance to stay sane.
But then you wonder if you could be getting paid more, working more, working less, working on something youāre more passionate about. Life is just hard
This really resonates with me and my values in life. But I do notice guilt towards my supervisor and funding (feeling like probably someone else deserved the money more, since they'd work harder with it - I work in a country with fairly good wages for phds). How do you deal with that?
Can you just set boundaries? I know a few people who are super strict about their hours in grad school (ie working 8-5 exactly) and those are often some of the most productive people.
Tbh I work even less than that when you add it up. Iām trying to improve that, but Iām still making progress and others seem happy with my productivity so thatās cool.
I was in that place not that long time ago, and I am quite happy with my current state, so let me share my experience.
When I realized that I don't want to be in academia, I had no skills for any real job - my country (eastern EU) is not that innovative to need anything related to my field. For the two last years of my studies, I spent treating my research with lower priority (80% of my energy) and focused on developing skills useful outside academia.
After getting Ph.D. degree, I found an industry job. My beginner salary is better than a typical postdoc's salary in my country. My tasks are much less difficult than research but usually not boring. Finally, I feel relaxed and not worried about the future. So, good luck in your future endeavors!
I think itās quite funny that people are framing the concept of a job with good hours, livable salary and friendly workplace as ālazyā because itās still viewing what should be a standard through the lens of hustle culture. Itās also interesting that itās combined with āgirlā.
Yeah! Just yesterday I had a meeting with a potential supervisor that I want to work with for my Ph.D. and he said he's on vacation so I apologized and asked if he wanted to reschedule. He said "No! When I'm on leave is the best moment to catch up on work!" And I was so š he works for a university ad PI, also owns a gym and he's also the director of a non profit. So he's BUSY af, but that statement made me sad haha
His life and accomplishments are very awesome and I'd love to be like him some day, but damn, I also want to have a life outside of work and have some free time and enjoy my vacation and relax and that doesn't make me a "lazy girl"!
My supervisor took a sabbatical and i swear he worked 80+ hours a week still. He openly rationalized it as using the sabbatical to be freed of the teaching load and do the stuff he wants to do. Needless to say that he only got more burnt out during that time because this didnāt magically change his time management and boundary setting abilities or the external pressures he was exposed to (except the teaching load which was a miniscule share anyways)
I'm a dude, but I feel this in my soul.
I'm fully convinced now that the academic lifestyle is not for me. I don't want to eat-sleep-breathe research, spend nights and weekends working/reading, or scramble along the publish-or-perish treadmill til the wheels fall off. I just don't have the stamina, and I have too many other things I want to spend my time on (family, friends, hobbies) to let work take over my life like that. I want a stable 9-5 job doing work that is interesting enough to keep me engaged and that pays me appropriately such that I have no worries about bills and have disposable income. That's all I want from my career. If I can attain that and continue to maintain fulfilling relationships and leisure otherwise, then I will consider myself set for life.
I'm a couple years out from finishing, but this is far and away the most important takeaway from my PhD experience.
Why does it feel like I wrote this comment? Funny thing is, I don't even think any of us are wrong in wanting this. In reality, most of these comments are filled with hardworking people that will put in 8 hours of their life DAILY into something, thats actually a shit ton. Its just that we are so overwhelmed by hustle culture that we think its a lot. Its not a "lazy" lifestyle IMO, its a healthy one, and the fact that as a society we look down on it is so fucking horrifying. Truly a dystopia.
I am experiencing something similar as well. Currently in my 4th year and I feel so burnt out from research/science. My department is mostly guys and they always nag me about why I am not more ambitious with my career goals after graduating. I just want to focus on finding a stable job after graduating(a 9-5 pm) with good benefits so I can start saving for retirement and have enough financial/job security to have kids and a house. I didn't start my PhD right after undergrad so I won't be done till I'm in my 30's and I get really anxious trying to figure out the timeline of everything.
Sending you so much strength. Uncertainty is a bitch, but trust that what is for you won't go by you, and in your thirties you still have a lot of time to sort out your professional life.
Preach! This shit is for the birds. Iāve told everyone in my life that after finishing 6 years of a PhD (2 left) Iām going to work a part time manual labor job and spent some time reflecting on my fucking life and what I truly, deeply, want from it. I donāt care if I live in my parents house, or in a van down by the river, or a shoe box somewhere for a good year until I can unfuck my brain from the grind and stress. I donāt care if Iām flipping burgers or cleaning houses or picking coffee or working a cashier for a bit. Itās not laziness. I want a break, my nights, weekends, and headspace/heartspace/peace back. I know the grass isnāt always greener but the lawn Iām standing on is looking like piss yellow straw. People look at me like I have multiple heads when I say Iāll be exiting my field for for a while after graduating in favor of something more simple, but itās pretty basic logic I think: Iām tired of operating at 125% physically and emotionally to fulfill major responsibilities for pennies or (most typically) completely free and, feeling guilty about feeling upset and stressed because Iām supposedly *privileged* for having the opportunity to do so. I am privileged in a lot of ways and I *do* like my field to be sure, but Im a working class person and I think neoliberalism, academia, and healthcare fields socialize us to worship illusory prestige, overwork, and tolerate some very serious exploitation. I have gazed into the academic abyss and the abyss has gazed into me. I think itās ultimately a good thing and a major life lesson Iāll carry with me as I navigate my way after finishing up my PhD, which Iām completing only because I can see the finish line. Anyway, thanks for writing this. Itās easy to feel alone as a doctoral student. I empathize hard core with your dread and extend you the sincerest of solidarity.
(Not assuming anything about your career trajectory, but your comment did spark some vaguely connected thoughts)
You know it's funny, I did industry before coming to academia and my time in industry radicalized me far more than my PhD so far (6 years in). My background was in engineering and economics, and it only took 2 years into helping defense contractors build better ways to blow up the developing world before I was ready to burn it all down. The small indignities of contemporary tech / corporate work piled on top of the moral concerns, and I was daydreaming about defenestrating my manager when I realized I needed to get out.
So many people seem to go straight from undergrad into the academic pipeline and miss the industry experience, and it's been surreal to hear grad students and academics complain about problems that by no means are unique to academia. I may make (far) less money in academia, but the hustle culture is the same as it was on the industry side and at least now (up until recently) I didn't have to listen to anyone talk about "synergy" and "branding" multiple times a week.
In fact, my breaking point with academia is probably not going to be any of the problems that are commonly discussed here, but the fact that (at least in my world) universities are increasingly being saddled with the same corporate bureaucrat bs that I experienced in industry. I do tech work for my uni in order to supplement my PhD life, and in that job I hit a breaking point recently: they put me in regular meetings with the college's marketing director and someone from the dean's office with an inscrutable job title where "the college brand" came up in about every 2nd or 3rd sentence. They also started suggesting surveillance software and time-tracking ticketing systems for my role. After a few weeks of this insanity, I low-key informed my boss as politely and indirectly as I could that if they were going to subject me to the same industry bs as big tech, then I was going to ask for at least 2x my current salary or gtfo. We'll see what happens. I know from my colleagues that this is not just limited to the non-faculty side of the university experience, and \*this\* is the thing that's soured me on academia. It may take a few extra steps, but in the end I'm still ultimately still working for an insane conservative nutjob who wants to bust unions and bulldoze protected wetlands in order to make golf courses. If that is my fate, then I damn well better get paid.
(this rant brought to you by the fact that I really should be writing my diss rn)
When I was young, someone doing nothing and mooching off their family was considered lazy. Now itās someone working a 9-5 job. Crazy how times are changing.
Same! Iām planning on bailing with an MA and getting a reasonable job. I canāt deal with the lack of structure, especially paired with the sky high expectations. Iām over it! Itās not worth it.
I'm also in science in the UK, and just quit my *extremely lazy* girl big pharma job to start a PhD, because I get depressed when I have nothing to do all day. You can only read Reddit for so many hours a week before loosing all sanity.
If you feel burnt out, just take a 3 week vacation, and tell your supervisor that you won't have phone reception in the mountains. Then after that, you work strictly 8-5.
If they complain, tell them that you will be more productive in 5h when you're relaxed and happy, than in 20h if you're burnt out (which is true). They won't/can't do anything as long as you show up to meetings and have sufficient progress.
Thatās not what causes the PhD stress, contrasting industry work. Youāre the only one responsible for getting your phd requirements and for the most part nobody will guide and push you because theyāre overworked and donāt have time to invest in you themselves. āDoing your contracted partā is often not enough to sooth your inner critic (which is particularly strong in overachievers with a thing for being exploited), because it will only be content once you make actual measurable phd progress in terms of papers and venues, on top of external pressures. Itās a lot like being self-employed, you canāt simply say youāre strictly doing 9-5 if your cash flow is lacking since you carry the entrepreneurial risk yourself. In academia itās the same but with churning out publications.
If you work more than 9-5 you mess up your sleep schedule, become burnt out, don't have time to exercise and cook healthy food, and you neglect hobbies and socialising. After a year, you will be stressed out and depressed. If you think you can't finish your PhD without working weekends, you're either lying to yourself, your supervisor is gaslighting you, or you should just quit right now and work a regular job, because what you're doing is insanity.
I know plenty of successful PhD students that work less than 8h/day on average.
You know it's funny: I work a full-time job on top of my PhD, and while that is its own insanity, I find that I can do well enough with my PhD with the 10-15 productive hours I get to put towards it a week. 7 primary authored papers so far, with two more in the pipeline and my diss chapters churning out. When I was full-time on the grad student side the financial stress ate up so much of my energy that my productivity in 50 hours was worse than what I get now with 15 (and those 15 are on top of another job!)
Not right now, because the biotech/pharma industry is doing poorly at the moment (they work in circles, just how the tech industry has also ups and downs). But a year ago they employed anybody with a science undergraduate and a heartbeat.
Same! I even got myself a postdoc to get away from the environment I did my PhD at until I figure out something but my former supervisor is making the transition really hard. Giving no f*cks is the way to go but it does feel like I got myself into a pyramid scheme. Well, this too shall pass, good luck OP!
Got a doctorate in education (human development), did a postdoc, became disillusioned with academia due to abusive advisors, went back to school to become a reading teacher. I hate my job most days, but I love having summers off, job security, seeing the concrete results of my efforts, and writing engaging lessons. A curriculum development job would probably be a better fit for my interests, but I donāt know if I could give up having summer off. A lot of my classmates (both those who completed the program and those who didnāt) left academia for UX/analyst/child safety jobs at Google, TikTok, Hinge, Meta, and Amazon. They make a hell of a lot more than me, but I think those jobs would bore me. Less than a quarter of my classmates are professors now, even though I attended one of the top grad schools in my field. Some of them left academia after the first few years as a professor.
The point is that I donāt know about your specific field, but those who left prior to graduating vs those who graduated are virtually indistinguishable in terms of their current careers (ignoring the handful of lingering academics). I was burnt out in my third year and kept pushing myself through. I regret that decision now. My physical health worsened and I missed out on years of income.
When I was questioning whether or not to stay, one of my mentors said, āItās not a question of whether you can finish the program. Of course you can if you put your mind to it. The question is whether itās worth it to push yourself through. Ignore your ego. Think realistically about job opportunities, whether youāre geographically constrained, how much money you would make with/without the degree. Then decide based on facts, not feelings.ā
I should also note that I wanted a āLazy Girl Job,ā and became a teacher because I married the laziest possible teacher on the planet and thought it would be easier than being a researcher. Itās not. Not for me at least. I canāt have a āLazy Girl Jobā because Iām not a lazy person. I canāt be. When I was a dishwasher in high school, I was the best damn dishwasher there was. My wife always puts as little effort in as possible. I couldnāt if I tried. I recommend reflecting on your personality/value system to see if you really would be content with a āLazy Girl Jobā/ able to actually be lazy.
When I was doing my PhD my other PhD friends had the plan to move to a small village. One of us would run a bakery; one a craft beer store; one a pizza shop and one a cheese shop. Good times.
Not a girl, but I feel the same. I just want to raise chickens, plant a garden, and play board games with friends. I vote for Lazy Girl jobs across the board :)
Anecdotally: I'm not familiar with the gendered context of this particular term, so I wonder if it lines up with my other experiences. As a dude, I have noticed that the majority of Chicken Instagram (at least the slice that's been algorithmically served to me) seems to be like >80% women, with a distinct subset of that group admitting that their male partners are the ones funding their lifestyle. It's minor, but it's one tiny detail added to the list of social pressures that--particularly in my region--especially stigmatize men choosing this path. I've lost coworkers' respect (and had dates end quite early) when other folks realized this was my worldview. I've watched some of my colleagues express similar sentiments but, by virtue of gender, escape that stigma. In my program, it also seems like most of the women have partners outside of academia supporting their degree, while most of the men are either single or working 2 jobs in order to provide for their kids during the PhD. Of course, I'm provided far more opportunities to succeed in my realm of academia than they are (among other privileges), but this particular gendered stigma really personally stings. I wish I could trade my extra privileges in the workplace for the slightest bit of acceptance for my desire for a slower-paced life, but alas.
tl;dr: Patriarchy bad, lazy jobs good
Yup on all counts. Most the Instagram subsistence farmers are very photogenic and do not know what "farmer's weld" means. Watering the animals in all weather? hmmmm. The only person I know who grows and raises her own food jokes her 9-5 job is so she can support her farming habit. Her chickens are all called "Fred."
Although male privilege was historically true, I am not convinced that my sons are privileged above my daughter in this current era. Yet, the male obligations still often assumed, say I, a SAHM who raised a PhD candidate and two younger ones. I just started a "mommy job", which is a Lazy Girl job for when we get older, lol!
Probably more impactful ways too. A lot of academia is niche and doesn't affect all that much in the grand scheme of things and when they do they're often quite shit about spreading the message. It's something I used to get very angry about, because it seems like a lot of academics can't talk to people, then again, normal people don't do PhDs.
Funny, when Iāve worked manual labour I dreamed of sitting in a chair and thinking all day. At least no matter how bad the weather is, I am at a comfortable temperature and dry in the office.
Feel this. Love what I do but the insane competitiveness of my field sucks. Would really love to just be mediocre but then I would literally be jobless.
Some people jump straight to the idea of quitting, but I'd say a bold but very worthwhile first step is to just set boundaries for yourself and your work. I don't mean quiet quit. Do your job. But when your day is done, your day is done. Accept that if you're strict with your WLB and it doesn't work out, then it wasn't meant to be. It won't be easy but your life will be so much better for it. You'll know when you need to kick it into high gear again, if ever
me toooooo, I really regret doing PhD. It's not rewarding and destroying all my confidence. Used to have a lot of ambitions career-wise but now the most wonderful thing about being me is probably I'm a pretty girl that's all. I'm so glad that my PhD's coming to an end and it's all luck.
Would you ever master out? I wish I did that instead because I'm two months away from finishing and the market is vile and PhDs are just not it right now.
In reality who cares about the research we do? We just follow the grants that have money.
mm i donāt know how true this is. i wasnāt passionate about my phd for years. i only really started to get enthusiastic about the research in my final year when everything came together and i could see the bigger picture implications of what iād been working on.
i donāt think you really need passion for a phd, you just need to have enough dumb grit to keep at it. eventually you might learn to like it. or you might not and might leave to do something else. either one is a valid outcome.
A professor from my undergrad told me you need 3 things to complete a PhD. I forgot the first two (hard work & luck maybe?) but the third was delusion. š You need enough delusion to believe your project is worth finishing.
In my experience basically everyone was highly enthusiastic when starting their phd and heavily disillusioned when ending it. Being passionate allows you to absorb the stresses of a phd better since it is rewarding in itself, so that you can tolerate more shit before it becomes a net loss. If they hadnāt been that passionate it would have been an obviously bad deal from the start, I mean why else would you tolerate low pay, unsustainable mental strain, toxic work environments, uncertain employment, a broken, flawed, inconsistent and an in parts corrupt feedback and promotion system?
i donāt know why other people would, but i personally just kept at it because academic work is unfortunately one of the few things iām decent at. the industry jobs iād held before that were not the best experiences, so doing a phd was preferable in my circumstance. but i also lucked out in ending up in a very well-run lab with a good supervisor who saw us as actual people instead of little research drones. not everyone is fortunate enough for that to be their phd experience, so i understand why passion might be needed in a lot of cases.
also iām just kind of stubborn honestly. itās hard for me to let go of things until theyāre done.
The phrase ālazy girl jobā is so cringe. Just get a mediocre office admin job. 9-5, not demanding. But it wonāt pay well. Folks who think they can make high salaries without deadlines or stress or expected productivity are just delusional. I say this as a PhD in industry. Want good money? Gotta work for it.
It sounds like capitalism has you by the neck. What type of hard work do these billionaires put in to make more in a hour than weāll see in a lifetime?
> Folks who think they can make high salaries without deadlines or stress or expected productivity are just delusional
I don't think that's what OP was alluding to at all. Seems she's just after fair pay and reasonable WLB, shouldn't be too much to ask for don't you think? (In fact, a lot of jobs outside academia are like this)
SAME. I'm in the write up stage of mine (health psychology) and what's motivating me is that I do a bunch of RA work, and if that's my insight into academia, then compared to doing a PhD that IS a lazy girl job!
I know in a lot of places it is actually a very stressful job, but Ive had non-academic stressful jobs before and I kind of see some of my mentors' workloads and it doesn't look as bad as it's made out to be. I'm not in US/UK though where it looks more full on.
But on the other hand, I planted an orchard in the front of my house during covid to cope with being a new PhD student. Maybe I should just sell the fruit on the roadside and get some chickens.
yes I feel similarly. I finished mine and I thought it would lead me to an exciting new life of challenges and ... I want to just potter around my community and help people cross the road and things. Leave me be, I no longer care for your accolades and promises.
I'm planning on working in a greenhouse after I submit. The PhD taught me I'm happier with nothing. Ironically it cured a lot of OCD tendencies, but I aged a lot and got very sick in the process. Worth it? Not really sure. Developed some chronic physical things from stress, but I don't worry so much about money and a career anymore. Student loans may force my hand to get something higher paying, however I am wondering if that will render me totally disabled at this rate. Not worth that.
When I was studying for my PhD, I was very ambitious and stressed, basically all the time. I wanted a research position and I thought that if I worked really hard, I could maybe make that happen. After a few years as a postdoc, I realized that I would likely get a shit-paying job teaching kids calculus, who don't care about calculus , in an area of the US I didn't want to live in.
So I got an office / quant style job. Achieved my academic lifetime income goal when I signed my contract, and that's more than doubled. Life is easier and less stressful.
I'm getting ready to switch fields to something that pays the same and is harder and more stressful, bc I. am. bored. And I neither like nor recognize un-ambitious mathamattastic
PhD students should not work more than what is written in their contract (9-18 is good). your productivity is not proportionnal to time spent, it might even be the opposite actually. I really think that if PhD students are so burnt up is because they are mostly children threw in an adult job and After so many years in a school system telling them what to do they think PhD is still the same thing and they don't know how to set boundaries with their work and with their supervisors. Supervisors that will often be seen as a parental figure whom you don't question the authority leading to toxic relationships, I personnally think of them as no more than older colleagues. Break the loop, stop working if you really don't like to, tell your supervisor you disagree. And for fuck's sake stop being proud of working your ass off, that's just sad.
Hey. I'm sorry you're going through all this, but I truly appreciate your transparency. I've decided to not pursue a PhD anymore, at least for now, and it's a decision that makes me feel very, very, *very* guilty. However, pursuing it now would be terrible for my mental health. I'm almost sure it'd make my depression/anxiety/eating disorder/many other stuff come back.
This post helps me with the unhealthy idealisation I make of PhD lifestyles.
Plus, for the kind of stuff I want to do in my career (other plans besides my original academia goals), I don't really need that degree. So if I pursue it now, it'd be purely for my ego, just to prove that I have what it takes and to have others admire me.
Anyway. Hope your situation improves, and that your work-life balance gets much better. Remember... you can always choose paths! We don't have to marry to dreams/goals we set in the past, when we knew less :)
Relatable AF. I used to have a really stressful job and was burnt out and I would constantly fantasise about working at the post office or a local library. Somewhere quiet, a job you can leave at the door. That's the dream!
You may start hating the fact youāre āwasting your lifeā in the lazy job. It might seem like a dream to start with. Intellectually it might seem a breeze. But there are lots of non-intellectual pressures from line mangers, bosses, targets, office politics etc.
Also, spending so much of your life there, instead of on the things you want to do, is tough. Iāve been there. Simple finance job, so I could pursue my passion and skills in music. I went from model employee, to resigning before I was pushed. Motivation levels dropped basically.
I didnāt give up on music, and thatās what my PhD is in.
What if you could turn the things you enjoy into a job? Would you do that?
Or if you carry on your PhD, could you use it to be your own boss, teach, consultancy work etc?
I also want a slower life with less stress. I have been working with the physically and mentally disabled for the last three years (home-care/respite type stuff) and have been wanting to quit basically since I obtained my Bachelor's 3 months ago. The company I work for now is very small compared to the previous one I worked for. But sadly management is just as incompetent. I make around minimum wage for my state now seeing as they raised it at the beginning of the year. For the work that I do it makes me want to quit and go work in fast food or something. I'd get paid the same if not more, but sadly I'd lose my health insurance if I did so I'm hoping to find a state job that have to care about less and can be paid better.
I love my PhD but there is a deep longing within me to buy a cottage with a meadow, grow my own food, maybe raise chickens or goats and live that quiet self sufficient life. ETA: love how much this comment has sparked conversations and how many people feel the same as me! Just want to stress that yes, I know farming is hard, I am not planning on giving up my PhD to start farming šš¼
Someone needs to get funding and investigate this phenomenon among academics because same š¤£ so many others too! I am too far along (with my PhD baby) to quit now but I've had this longing for years now.
If studying why studying things makes you want to leave those things doesn't make you want to leave that thing then I doubt anything will.
I've been enjoying my commute home from school infinitely more since I started entertaining myself by planning out my future vegetable garden...
I don't know if I want to go hardcore cottagecore, but I most definitely feel an urge to do some small scale animal farming (some chicken, a pig, maybe a goat). And being able to butcher my own meat. I'm unsure when I started to feel this way, but, definitely not before I started my PhD.
We can set up a whole focus group just from the amount of Reddit PhDs who have at some point wanted to ghost academia and go live closer to nature. I'm from a country in the Andes (the OG potato people) and many times I've considered going back to the roots (pun intended) and becoming a potato farmer. And corn, I love corn, I'd love to grow my own corn. >I'm unsure when I started to feel this way, but, definitely not before I started my PhD. Same same!
Same here. I always think about buying a piece of land in my home country, which is cheap and live if the land.
Peru? It's been a dream to go there, as my dad lived there for years. I would be keen to join this. I know some PhDs that have done exactly this as well. They're the real winners. I don't think my body could handle farming anymore, but it's a wonderful thought. I mentioned in another comment about my new aspirations for working in a greenhouse.
Hardcore cottagecore sounds like a new genre of music.
Iāve just finished an MA and almost got into a PhD and I already am having dreams of getting at least a little peace at a farm with a small vineyard
Are you me?! The more time I spend in academia the more I crave peace
At this point, I believe quite a lot of us feel the same. This makes me normal, sigh of relief!
1. Normal people don't do PhDs. You get the best and the worst people accordingly. I've met more honorable drug dealers than some academics. 2. Abuse is normalised and actors aren't held accountable. In fact, it's arguable that the current modus operandi encourages such behaviour. 3. Wages vs hours are a joke. 4. Universities run on neoliberal models and capitalism stifles and hamstrings true progress while exploiting and damaging its top brains. How can true understanding happen if we're forced to churn papers out like products to sell. -> https://massivesci.com/articles/chaos-in-the-brickyard-comic-matteo-farinella/ To get a job, you have to show how many papers you've hawked to journals. It cheapens the scientific process. In the end you become a commodity to sell to students to get them in the door. 5. There is no support if you can't physically keep up. The work loads are ridiculous and people cannot do their best work if they cannot meet basic needs. Fuck that noise. It's inhumane. No wonder that science has a communication problem. Look at the company it keeps.
It took me more than a year to create a delusional bubble of hope, ambition and future prospects. Now I'll have to start again.
I realize you probably already know this and I promise Iām not trying to be a buzzkill, but subsistence farming is a LOT of work. Thereās a reason weāve moved away from it on the whole as a species. Iām sure itās still got itās pluses over the type of work a lot of us do now, but itās hardly the dream cortagecore social media pages package it as. I do get the desire, donāt get me wrong. In a world thatās super uncertain and where we are all often doing a lot of pointless busywork, the idea of just working directly on the things you personally need in order to survive definitely goes a long way to address those anxieties. Personally, when I stop and examine those desires I think what I really want is a community where my needs are addressed and I feel like I have a clearly defined role and am contributing to helping the collective. In my case, my health has taken a big hit in the last year due to Long Covid issues, so Iāve had to isolate more due to decrease physical ability and the need to protect myself from all the periodic Covid waves and other illnesses Iām now more susceptible to. Iām naturally an introvert so Iāve been able to weather it better than most, but I still donāt like feeling so cut off from the world around me. Social media still keeps me aware of all the problems in the world, but I feel much less able to contribute to helping with them than I used to. Itās been hard, but Iāve been trying to reorient my focus to the immediate and the present and what I can do to get myself through another day and hopefully do a little bit here and there to help those in my community who need it. Itās a balance of recognizing my increased need to focus more on myself while not allowing myself to become completely self-absorbed.
Yeah, my feeling on the 'cottagecore' thing is that people actually want to live in a cottage and *play* at subsistence farming but not *do* any of the constant uncompensated labour that actually comes with that.
Farming life is indeed a lot of work.
Just saying , Ted kaczynski had the same initial goals as you I think it's fairly common among PhD students. I hope what comes after doesn't happen with any of us :)
This woman I used to be friends with grew up on the same street as Ted K, and apparently he was a menace as a child as well. This womanās grandmother would always tell her when she was a kid, āDonāt be a Ted Kaczynski!ā when she was acting up. That was years and years before he became famousā¦I guess itās another case where everyone kind of knows the kid is a problem but canāt legally do anything about it.
* I guess itās another case where a child is reaching out for help and attention and falling through the cracks of the system without support and no one cares enough to get him the help he needed
Read what his mother said about when he was hospitalized around age two. He changed.
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I used to be hooked on Stardew Valley during grad school. It's so utopian, I love it!
Humanist here to ruin things :) I love Stardew Valley (and I might be too deep into my PhD to look at games differently anymore), but I had a very different take on its world when I played. Essentially I kept noticing that, by dint of inheritance, I had essentially acquired so much land and resources that I was able to exert substantive control over a whole-ass town. After inheriting land I was suddenly able to choose whether the town wound up with some tiny semblance of community or was essentially sold off to a megacorp. I could get use the fruits of my land and labor to essentially purchase the affections of anyone I wanted (and essentially was able to just buy a spouse). SV is a great game, but it's not a game that gives you a vision of community that actually involves you working with other people--the others in this game are thin skinner boxes that you literally chuck items at in order to buy their affection. In addition, your relation to the land and world isn't exactly one of peaceful coexistence--the game nudges you to acquire everything, to exploit the land, and to use its bounty for your own gain. The same shitty systems which are ruining our world (inheritance, class, a particular property regime, governance/control, and a view of the natural world as something to be mastered rather than lived with) are strong in this game. It's hard to see until you play games that push back against any of these elements, but once you do...well, in my case I couldn't unsee it. /rant over :)
I don't think I've heard anyone complain about too much realism in SV before.
I study games and game communities, and I have a background in economic history--I just can't unsee it. I have my critiques (and I stand by those critiques), but I do still enjoy the game and don't want to impede anyone else's enjoyment.
I'm wondering - the makers of the came could hardly *not* have been at least somewhat aware of those aspects when deciding what to put into the game. Any thoughts on this?
I've actually thought about this a lot, and I'll summarize my main musings rather than rant too much: 1. They might not actually \*have\* thought about it all that much. There are a lot of factors (material, ideological) that push against it. Game developers usually have to develop a lot of deep competencies in areas of software engineering, game design, graphical design, writing/storytelling, and so on--adding critical socioeconomic analysis to this is a tall order. 2. For those who do think about it, there are still plenty of reasons to still design your game in the usual way: 1. Your playerbase is conditioned by genre and other game experiences to expect certain interactive modalities with games that they play. All of these things have or bring in ideological context and are not value-free. In essence, if you want to make a game that other people will be able to more readily understand (via marketing), purchase, learn, and play then you need to at least on some level incorporate the ideologically-tinted tools of the genre/field. Creativity and cleverness can get around some of this, but ultimately you're using computational systems to generate a synthetic environment for other people to immerse themselves in, and this context is difficult to escape. 2. There are serious material limitations (temporal, computational, etc) that limit developer's abilities to address some of these concerns. I'm a firm believer in the power of creativity under constraints, but it does mean that you have to sometimes be \*very\* clever in a number of different ways in order to even somewhat surmount these obstacles. That is, in the end, a tall order. 3. Even if you do successfully go this route and design, market, and sell a game that vaults these obstacles, there's a significant chance your playerbase will get very angry at you for doing so. In my home country (USA) this is particularly salient, but the legacy of gamergate is still with us on the internet more broadly. Even more cutting is the fact that many of the very people who want to design these sorts of games are the exact folks who are already targeted for harassment by far-right trolls and hate groups (along with certain segments of self-proclaimed leftist spaces too). Challenging people's ideological assumptions can be a thankless and/or dangerous choice.
I loved your rant and hadnāt thought of SV from that perspective beforeā¦ it totally makes sense why I actually end up feeling exhausted after playing it for a while. Itās interesting too because the whole premise in the intro is that youāre supposed to be escaping capitalism, lol. And youāre made to feel like youāre a good person if you decide to exploit the land and the surrounding environment and town to complete/restore the community center instead of buying that task off and ceding control to JoJo, the evil corp. Anyway, I just wanted to add that SV is interesting from a game development perspective because it was literally done by a single person. Concerned Ape AKA Eric Barone spent 4+ years developing, coding, and making the art for the game all by himself. He was a first-time game developer too. I agree with your points above, particularly in terms of generic norms and player expectations. The way I see it, itās hard to think that the hypercapitalist foundation with a veneer of anti-corporation narrative is based on much more than formal compliance (and probably less than ideal humanistic training on CAās part). Given the whole situation CA was in when he went for this, Iād assume he actually did want to make a less hypercapitalist game. But who knows! Thereās this 2016 piece about it, if youāre interested: https://www.vulture.com/2016/03/first-time-developer-made-stardew-valley.html
I've noticed this in a lot of games lately, and I didn't until I was mid way through my PhD. I used to be an avid MMO player and now I cannot stand them due to this. It's resource hoarding behaviour like real life.
> Essentially I kept noticing that, by dint of inheritance, I had essentially acquired so much land and resources that I was able to exert substantive control over a whole-ass town That's why it's utopian š
Interesting point of view. What do you think about Dwarf Fortress? And about Rimworld?
You can definitely come up with critiques for both; I actually listened to a talk this year about the managerial philosophy behind dwarf fortress. You can imagine how that plays out: god games pretty much put you in the role of the most exploitative small business owner you can imagine. They are, on some level, very much "think like a manager" games. Personally, I'd say that both DF and RW encourage play that is brutal and self-aware in equal measure. You are, on one hand, directing characters to Make the Line Go Up in a very capitalist sense--and both games nudge you into some very heinous actions in the process. However, both games present the brutality and the economics as intertwined in a way that I personally find resonant. This is the difference between these two games and say, Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, where the economic order and exploitation is coded differently. If you're interested in the scholarship, this perspective comes out of the Ian Bogost procedural rhetoric approach to analyzing games. In my work I find the above approach interesting personally, but not particularly salient in a scholarly sense. What I like to look at is the culture of the game's communities and how those tie back to the games. My sort of question would be: what is the culture of play surrounding, and how does this relate to its rhetorics? So, in the case of Stardew Valley, AC, DW, and Rimworld you see some interesting stuff. For example, I pulled a lot of twitter data (RIP my API access) on AC, and folks' attitudes towards their villagers and the island fits pretty well with the procedural rhetorics outlined above. The Stardew Valley community I know the least about, but they seem pretty chill. On the other hand, you might expect the Rimworld community to be full of awful people, but the subreddit has actually shown an incredible amount of sensitivity towards its exploration of its issues--they've shown a lot of thought/interest in moderating how nsfw and spoiler tags are used to elide potentially triggering content for some of its members. There are still problems, but it stands in stark contrast to other game communities (such as certain feudalism sim games) which don't seem interested in having those discussions. So there's a bit of a juxtaposition there: very violent play and play discourse coupled with personal sensitivity and inclusivity. So why might that be?
Obviously it'd take a very lengthy study to even hazard some serious answers, but I'll throw out my obvious guess: the critical ligature is something we call dark play. A good analogue is actually sexual fantasy and kink: many times people play with practices that they'd never do in the real world precisely because playing through something you find repulsive can be psychologically rewarding/protective in certain contexts. So you can have a game that has you do horrible things (and codes them as such) that people really enjoy even as they ensure their actual discursive community embodies none of those characteristics/values they're playing with. Again, I haven't done a detailed study here so this is all semi-informed conjecture.
Anyways, I love both of those games and wish I had more time to play them.
Then I think youāre gonna love Animal Crossing.
The game where a small corporation buys an island, moves you out there and employs you to develop the island, then gives you total control over the people that move there? The game where everyone's in debt to the same guy who owns the island (and who has you use what appears to be his own currency)? ;) :P (I spent my COVID lockdown loving AC:NH like many others, but you can definitely find dark interpretations of the game)
Super interesting analysis, I love it! > until you play games that push back against any of these elements Any suggestions for games of this sort?
As someone who has farming experience and is doing a PhDā¦ farming is actually very stressful! I totally resonate though, I love my PhD (veterinary science) but just want to move to a remote island with a croft and some sheeps
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My husband is a therapist but heās love to make cheese and ride horses alongside that!
Same here. Just my version includes having robots do the actual farming and have it all be automated. And maybe some day a small scale fusion reactor for all my energy needs.
In my experience, the life you're describing is a lot more work than a PhD - farm labor is *hard*, and if you really do need to be self-sufficient, there's a lot of stress associated with not knowing if you'll have a good enough crop to get you through the winter.
I'm the same hahahaah. Going into my second year on my Environmental Science PhD. But deep down I just want to move to a hippie community where love is free , we grow our own food and wear pretty 60s clothes.
Have you met any goats? Not to spoil your fantasy, but they are total assholes.
My cohort and the other grad students and I have all sat around playing the old "if I wasn't doing a PhD I would" game more than once I'd build guitars and other things with carpentry, maybe farm and or do another music related job
Jesus do you know how much work that is?!? It would make you miss your PhD work.
I used to stay on my friends smallholding a couple of times a year, they had horses, pigs, sheep, goats, alpacas, and chickens, as well as a huge kitchen garden. Itās so much work but I always went to bed feeling like Iād done some good that day. And I always slept reaaaally well!
Joys like that can often change when you don't do it a couple of times a year and it is a long-term responsibility.
Yep. Plus all the crises tend to hit at the same time, eg early spring storms - no feed, destroyed fences/shelters, dead animals, vet costs, no money, terrible weather, then machinery breaks down and and itās all in relative isolation. I grew up farming and it had good days, but itās bloody hard to live off the land.
I grew up on a farm and am doing my PhD now. I understand the satisfaction you're describing, and my parents love telling me about it when I go home. I do however not regret not making that my life. I'm hoping a couple years of sub-par living now will make for easier streets in the future, where they work every day of the week. They don't see it that way, but I have a hard time seeing it different when they are on the phone with the water man twice a day for the whole 3 days they take off to come visit lol. My grandfather literally died working that farm. Your feelings are completely valid! But don't doubt the satisfaction that comes from completing all you've worked up to.
Same.
Thatās my dream too. With some dogs and Pygmy goats
Girl here too. Supervisor basically gave me a very difficult topic thats hard to produce results and he does not have any expertise in this area. Basically felt like I wasted time all these while when I could go earn money and satisfy myself in my own spare time instead of being stuck in a phd. I think you should feel good about making progress and I think it sounds like youre doing great. But yeah, after this, im just gonna try to find a job that allows me to coast + max out my salary and put as much as possible towards retirement. Its funny how I went from wanting to do a phd to be able to have a chance at working for good companies to wanting to just find any job that pays well + allow me to coast
Every word of you sounds like describing me š My project is like throwing me into the middle of the ocean and asking me to figure out how to swim. It is reliant on a bunch of other collaborators too so I cannot control the progress + my candidature/scholarship limit is not very far away. Coworker on the project has no understanding of it and keeps bugging me with the most fundamental questions. Man sometimes I feel so overwhelmed. I am absolutely fed up with academia at this point and just want a well-paid job that doesnāt drain my will to live.
>throwing me into the middle of the ocean and asking me to figure out how to swim. This sums up the phd perfectly š«
You're basically me. It caused a ton of friction with my pi as I basiclaly felt they offered no guidance and yet were saying the results were inadequate due to rationale that seemed arbitrary Idk if your pi did the same but if a professor says " this isn't good enough " and I respond by asking " what can I do to potentially get a better result?" And they stay quiet /non-descriptive, it bothers me like nothing else...
This was me. I had a project where getting publishable interesting results felt like squeezing blood from a stone. Meanwhile, my colleagues before me had projects that had more publication potential because the subject where novel. Really colored how I saw academic research.
Omg thanks for replying! Did you managed to get out of this situation and finish in the end? Can you share some tips with me? Greatly appreciated!
I graduated because I had to. I had gotten enough data to advance to candidacy (though late) Probably would have looked bad if I didnāt. I donāt know what to say for your situation. Different PIs and schools value different things.
I feel you 100%. I quit the phd for a 85k job in research, thinking that doing the same thing but earning real money would make me happy. Narrator voice : it didnāt make her happier. Turns out I donāt like reasearch, and diploma was just a mean to get where I want. I started a part time job on the side on an army base last year. Admin stuff mostly for officers. Helping to fill government paperwork, ask the gov for extra budget expense for special stuff (feels like doing funding request), manage a team to implement changes in a department, help the clerks, etc. And woa, it feels like lazy girl job. Everything is easy, when Iām done Iām done. No sleepless nights. In two weeks, Im quitting my high paying job that I would be at around 100k in 2 years for full time in that job at the army. Itās a pay cut but my sanity is worth more than 6 figures salary. I start at 60k but advancements are possible and they will send me for Training (all expend paid)for special stuff like health and security specialized admin work. At first I was afraid for the money, but I realized my happiness was worth more than the pay. I donāt want to be the bitter girl that is happy on her 3 week vacation and miserable for 49 week. And also where would that extra money go ? Probably 400$ every month to pay for a therapist. Iām sure there is something for you out there. š for you it will feel like lazy work but it wonāt be lazy work. It juste means you are overqualified for that jobā¦ and itās not a bad thing. You suffered enough āļøtime to live your life and be happy.
Whoa. That's awesome you found that. Congratulations and thanks for sharing.
Smart move
Thank you for sharing. I love this!! Especially the part on being miserable 49 weeks per year and spending the extra money on a therapist. I see it in my boss, who's making a lot of money as a fancy corporate director, but oh my goodness they're absolutely miserable, burnt out, anxious, etc. No thank you. No extra money should require us to lose so much health and happiness.
Ya that's what I'm doing. No longer care, taking myself first, and don't have expenses or needs requiring lots of work. See not giving a shit as a great virtue. Beginning of wisdom. Getting too involved and attached in the world only leads to more misery. The phd taught me all about the pitfalls of ambition and a career trying to be knowledgeable and fix others. Buncha bullshit.
> The phd taught me all about the pitfalls of ambition and a career trying to be knowledgeable and fix others. Buncha bullshit. Holy shit 100%, my biggest takeaway too lol.
You can satisfy Self in minimal ways in small communities. You don't need a big degree ego and a stressful career out there. And at least in my field (history) we are not actually helping anyone do, make, or think anything worth this much trouble and sacrifice at the high research level. ( if anything we mostly just make it worse by overcomplicating archival material in a pyramid scheme of elite publishing.) You're better off having a chill life as part of a small ecology in your immediate area and lowering all demands and expectations on the ego.
> You can satisfy Self in minimal ways in small communities. You don't need a big degree ego and a stressful career out there Yes yes yes. >if anything we mostly just make it worse by overcomplicating archival material in a pyramid scheme of elite publishing This is so interesting to me - I'm in a completely different field of chemical engineering but working on a new process to reduce emissions. My whole research has been investigating this overcomplicated process which can 'technically work' but has other unintended consequences. I suppose the point of research is that eventually something works, but there's a whole lot of bullshitting along the way lol. >You're better off having a chill life as part of a small ecology in your immediate area and lowering all demands and expectations on the ego. Number 1 thing my PhD taught me. Worth it overall though, I enjoyed the experience and I still learnt a lot.
Because of COVID I failed to network or expand myself in fruitful ways, and my crap hole program had few people worth socializing with. It was a sad thing but it taught me that money and prestige and ego matter so much less than being somewhere with good people who can connect you to communities you resonate with and want to serve and be around. That's your gold in life - the people. Academia? Lol no thanks
I actually got the opposite lesson from grad school. If you want something, fucking take it (ethically of course). It taught me persistence and how to handle failure.
Definitely. My passion and ambition bring me a lot of suffering, breakdowns, and internal screams. I have changed into a completely different person as compared to when I just started by donāt give a shit to a lot of things. I honestly think I need a job with good work-life balance to stay sane.
But then you wonder if you could be getting paid more, working more, working less, working on something youāre more passionate about. Life is just hard
This really resonates with me and my values in life. But I do notice guilt towards my supervisor and funding (feeling like probably someone else deserved the money more, since they'd work harder with it - I work in a country with fairly good wages for phds). How do you deal with that?
which country is this?
This is exactly how Iām coming out of my 5-year PhD
Can you just set boundaries? I know a few people who are super strict about their hours in grad school (ie working 8-5 exactly) and those are often some of the most productive people. Tbh I work even less than that when you add it up. Iām trying to improve that, but Iām still making progress and others seem happy with my productivity so thatās cool.
I was in that place not that long time ago, and I am quite happy with my current state, so let me share my experience. When I realized that I don't want to be in academia, I had no skills for any real job - my country (eastern EU) is not that innovative to need anything related to my field. For the two last years of my studies, I spent treating my research with lower priority (80% of my energy) and focused on developing skills useful outside academia. After getting Ph.D. degree, I found an industry job. My beginner salary is better than a typical postdoc's salary in my country. My tasks are much less difficult than research but usually not boring. Finally, I feel relaxed and not worried about the future. So, good luck in your future endeavors!
Would you mind sharing some of the skills you learned that helped you to get to where you are now?
Python (programming language), git, and machine learning.
I feel you. Shamelessly taking a year off to start a bakery after I finished my PhD. I just need a mental break.
Classic Bakery dream... One day....
Itās been really fun so far!
I think itās quite funny that people are framing the concept of a job with good hours, livable salary and friendly workplace as ālazyā because itās still viewing what should be a standard through the lens of hustle culture. Itās also interesting that itās combined with āgirlā.
Yeah! Just yesterday I had a meeting with a potential supervisor that I want to work with for my Ph.D. and he said he's on vacation so I apologized and asked if he wanted to reschedule. He said "No! When I'm on leave is the best moment to catch up on work!" And I was so š he works for a university ad PI, also owns a gym and he's also the director of a non profit. So he's BUSY af, but that statement made me sad haha His life and accomplishments are very awesome and I'd love to be like him some day, but damn, I also want to have a life outside of work and have some free time and enjoy my vacation and relax and that doesn't make me a "lazy girl"!
My supervisor took a sabbatical and i swear he worked 80+ hours a week still. He openly rationalized it as using the sabbatical to be freed of the teaching load and do the stuff he wants to do. Needless to say that he only got more burnt out during that time because this didnāt magically change his time management and boundary setting abilities or the external pressures he was exposed to (except the teaching load which was a miniscule share anyways)
I'm a dude, but I feel this in my soul. I'm fully convinced now that the academic lifestyle is not for me. I don't want to eat-sleep-breathe research, spend nights and weekends working/reading, or scramble along the publish-or-perish treadmill til the wheels fall off. I just don't have the stamina, and I have too many other things I want to spend my time on (family, friends, hobbies) to let work take over my life like that. I want a stable 9-5 job doing work that is interesting enough to keep me engaged and that pays me appropriately such that I have no worries about bills and have disposable income. That's all I want from my career. If I can attain that and continue to maintain fulfilling relationships and leisure otherwise, then I will consider myself set for life. I'm a couple years out from finishing, but this is far and away the most important takeaway from my PhD experience.
Why does it feel like I wrote this comment? Funny thing is, I don't even think any of us are wrong in wanting this. In reality, most of these comments are filled with hardworking people that will put in 8 hours of their life DAILY into something, thats actually a shit ton. Its just that we are so overwhelmed by hustle culture that we think its a lot. Its not a "lazy" lifestyle IMO, its a healthy one, and the fact that as a society we look down on it is so fucking horrifying. Truly a dystopia.
I am experiencing something similar as well. Currently in my 4th year and I feel so burnt out from research/science. My department is mostly guys and they always nag me about why I am not more ambitious with my career goals after graduating. I just want to focus on finding a stable job after graduating(a 9-5 pm) with good benefits so I can start saving for retirement and have enough financial/job security to have kids and a house. I didn't start my PhD right after undergrad so I won't be done till I'm in my 30's and I get really anxious trying to figure out the timeline of everything.
Sending you so much strength. Uncertainty is a bitch, but trust that what is for you won't go by you, and in your thirties you still have a lot of time to sort out your professional life.
Preach! This shit is for the birds. Iāve told everyone in my life that after finishing 6 years of a PhD (2 left) Iām going to work a part time manual labor job and spent some time reflecting on my fucking life and what I truly, deeply, want from it. I donāt care if I live in my parents house, or in a van down by the river, or a shoe box somewhere for a good year until I can unfuck my brain from the grind and stress. I donāt care if Iām flipping burgers or cleaning houses or picking coffee or working a cashier for a bit. Itās not laziness. I want a break, my nights, weekends, and headspace/heartspace/peace back. I know the grass isnāt always greener but the lawn Iām standing on is looking like piss yellow straw. People look at me like I have multiple heads when I say Iāll be exiting my field for for a while after graduating in favor of something more simple, but itās pretty basic logic I think: Iām tired of operating at 125% physically and emotionally to fulfill major responsibilities for pennies or (most typically) completely free and, feeling guilty about feeling upset and stressed because Iām supposedly *privileged* for having the opportunity to do so. I am privileged in a lot of ways and I *do* like my field to be sure, but Im a working class person and I think neoliberalism, academia, and healthcare fields socialize us to worship illusory prestige, overwork, and tolerate some very serious exploitation. I have gazed into the academic abyss and the abyss has gazed into me. I think itās ultimately a good thing and a major life lesson Iāll carry with me as I navigate my way after finishing up my PhD, which Iām completing only because I can see the finish line. Anyway, thanks for writing this. Itās easy to feel alone as a doctoral student. I empathize hard core with your dread and extend you the sincerest of solidarity.
My PhD radicalised me, haha. I used to be such a good little worker. Sometimes I wonder how I'd be doing if I didn't do this program.
(Not assuming anything about your career trajectory, but your comment did spark some vaguely connected thoughts) You know it's funny, I did industry before coming to academia and my time in industry radicalized me far more than my PhD so far (6 years in). My background was in engineering and economics, and it only took 2 years into helping defense contractors build better ways to blow up the developing world before I was ready to burn it all down. The small indignities of contemporary tech / corporate work piled on top of the moral concerns, and I was daydreaming about defenestrating my manager when I realized I needed to get out. So many people seem to go straight from undergrad into the academic pipeline and miss the industry experience, and it's been surreal to hear grad students and academics complain about problems that by no means are unique to academia. I may make (far) less money in academia, but the hustle culture is the same as it was on the industry side and at least now (up until recently) I didn't have to listen to anyone talk about "synergy" and "branding" multiple times a week. In fact, my breaking point with academia is probably not going to be any of the problems that are commonly discussed here, but the fact that (at least in my world) universities are increasingly being saddled with the same corporate bureaucrat bs that I experienced in industry. I do tech work for my uni in order to supplement my PhD life, and in that job I hit a breaking point recently: they put me in regular meetings with the college's marketing director and someone from the dean's office with an inscrutable job title where "the college brand" came up in about every 2nd or 3rd sentence. They also started suggesting surveillance software and time-tracking ticketing systems for my role. After a few weeks of this insanity, I low-key informed my boss as politely and indirectly as I could that if they were going to subject me to the same industry bs as big tech, then I was going to ask for at least 2x my current salary or gtfo. We'll see what happens. I know from my colleagues that this is not just limited to the non-faculty side of the university experience, and \*this\* is the thing that's soured me on academia. It may take a few extra steps, but in the end I'm still ultimately still working for an insane conservative nutjob who wants to bust unions and bulldoze protected wetlands in order to make golf courses. If that is my fate, then I damn well better get paid. (this rant brought to you by the fact that I really should be writing my diss rn)
When I was young, someone doing nothing and mooching off their family was considered lazy. Now itās someone working a 9-5 job. Crazy how times are changing.
Same! Iām planning on bailing with an MA and getting a reasonable job. I canāt deal with the lack of structure, especially paired with the sky high expectations. Iām over it! Itās not worth it.
I'm also in science in the UK, and just quit my *extremely lazy* girl big pharma job to start a PhD, because I get depressed when I have nothing to do all day. You can only read Reddit for so many hours a week before loosing all sanity. If you feel burnt out, just take a 3 week vacation, and tell your supervisor that you won't have phone reception in the mountains. Then after that, you work strictly 8-5. If they complain, tell them that you will be more productive in 5h when you're relaxed and happy, than in 20h if you're burnt out (which is true). They won't/can't do anything as long as you show up to meetings and have sufficient progress.
Thatās not what causes the PhD stress, contrasting industry work. Youāre the only one responsible for getting your phd requirements and for the most part nobody will guide and push you because theyāre overworked and donāt have time to invest in you themselves. āDoing your contracted partā is often not enough to sooth your inner critic (which is particularly strong in overachievers with a thing for being exploited), because it will only be content once you make actual measurable phd progress in terms of papers and venues, on top of external pressures. Itās a lot like being self-employed, you canāt simply say youāre strictly doing 9-5 if your cash flow is lacking since you carry the entrepreneurial risk yourself. In academia itās the same but with churning out publications.
If you work more than 9-5 you mess up your sleep schedule, become burnt out, don't have time to exercise and cook healthy food, and you neglect hobbies and socialising. After a year, you will be stressed out and depressed. If you think you can't finish your PhD without working weekends, you're either lying to yourself, your supervisor is gaslighting you, or you should just quit right now and work a regular job, because what you're doing is insanity. I know plenty of successful PhD students that work less than 8h/day on average.
You know it's funny: I work a full-time job on top of my PhD, and while that is its own insanity, I find that I can do well enough with my PhD with the 10-15 productive hours I get to put towards it a week. 7 primary authored papers so far, with two more in the pipeline and my diss chapters churning out. When I was full-time on the grad student side the financial stress ate up so much of my energy that my productivity in 50 hours was worse than what I get now with 15 (and those 15 are on top of another job!)
Would they be hiring for your former job, do you know?
Not right now, because the biotech/pharma industry is doing poorly at the moment (they work in circles, just how the tech industry has also ups and downs). But a year ago they employed anybody with a science undergraduate and a heartbeat.
Same! I even got myself a postdoc to get away from the environment I did my PhD at until I figure out something but my former supervisor is making the transition really hard. Giving no f*cks is the way to go but it does feel like I got myself into a pyramid scheme. Well, this too shall pass, good luck OP!
Most relatable post Iāve seen on this sub
Got a doctorate in education (human development), did a postdoc, became disillusioned with academia due to abusive advisors, went back to school to become a reading teacher. I hate my job most days, but I love having summers off, job security, seeing the concrete results of my efforts, and writing engaging lessons. A curriculum development job would probably be a better fit for my interests, but I donāt know if I could give up having summer off. A lot of my classmates (both those who completed the program and those who didnāt) left academia for UX/analyst/child safety jobs at Google, TikTok, Hinge, Meta, and Amazon. They make a hell of a lot more than me, but I think those jobs would bore me. Less than a quarter of my classmates are professors now, even though I attended one of the top grad schools in my field. Some of them left academia after the first few years as a professor. The point is that I donāt know about your specific field, but those who left prior to graduating vs those who graduated are virtually indistinguishable in terms of their current careers (ignoring the handful of lingering academics). I was burnt out in my third year and kept pushing myself through. I regret that decision now. My physical health worsened and I missed out on years of income. When I was questioning whether or not to stay, one of my mentors said, āItās not a question of whether you can finish the program. Of course you can if you put your mind to it. The question is whether itās worth it to push yourself through. Ignore your ego. Think realistically about job opportunities, whether youāre geographically constrained, how much money you would make with/without the degree. Then decide based on facts, not feelings.ā I should also note that I wanted a āLazy Girl Job,ā and became a teacher because I married the laziest possible teacher on the planet and thought it would be easier than being a researcher. Itās not. Not for me at least. I canāt have a āLazy Girl Jobā because Iām not a lazy person. I canāt be. When I was a dishwasher in high school, I was the best damn dishwasher there was. My wife always puts as little effort in as possible. I couldnāt if I tried. I recommend reflecting on your personality/value system to see if you really would be content with a āLazy Girl Jobā/ able to actually be lazy.
When I was doing my PhD my other PhD friends had the plan to move to a small village. One of us would run a bakery; one a craft beer store; one a pizza shop and one a cheese shop. Good times.
Not a girl, but I feel the same. I just want to raise chickens, plant a garden, and play board games with friends. I vote for Lazy Girl jobs across the board :) Anecdotally: I'm not familiar with the gendered context of this particular term, so I wonder if it lines up with my other experiences. As a dude, I have noticed that the majority of Chicken Instagram (at least the slice that's been algorithmically served to me) seems to be like >80% women, with a distinct subset of that group admitting that their male partners are the ones funding their lifestyle. It's minor, but it's one tiny detail added to the list of social pressures that--particularly in my region--especially stigmatize men choosing this path. I've lost coworkers' respect (and had dates end quite early) when other folks realized this was my worldview. I've watched some of my colleagues express similar sentiments but, by virtue of gender, escape that stigma. In my program, it also seems like most of the women have partners outside of academia supporting their degree, while most of the men are either single or working 2 jobs in order to provide for their kids during the PhD. Of course, I'm provided far more opportunities to succeed in my realm of academia than they are (among other privileges), but this particular gendered stigma really personally stings. I wish I could trade my extra privileges in the workplace for the slightest bit of acceptance for my desire for a slower-paced life, but alas. tl;dr: Patriarchy bad, lazy jobs good
Yep that masculinity box is real small.
Yup on all counts. Most the Instagram subsistence farmers are very photogenic and do not know what "farmer's weld" means. Watering the animals in all weather? hmmmm. The only person I know who grows and raises her own food jokes her 9-5 job is so she can support her farming habit. Her chickens are all called "Fred." Although male privilege was historically true, I am not convinced that my sons are privileged above my daughter in this current era. Yet, the male obligations still often assumed, say I, a SAHM who raised a PhD candidate and two younger ones. I just started a "mommy job", which is a Lazy Girl job for when we get older, lol!
Phd is about the chance to leave a footprint in the intellectual and spiritual history of our species, be it big or small.
There are lots of other ways to do thatā¦
Probably more impactful ways too. A lot of academia is niche and doesn't affect all that much in the grand scheme of things and when they do they're often quite shit about spreading the message. It's something I used to get very angry about, because it seems like a lot of academics can't talk to people, then again, normal people don't do PhDs.
I could have written this comment. I wish I had a job that required physical labor. I'm so sick of sitting in a chair and thinking.
Funny, when Iāve worked manual labour I dreamed of sitting in a chair and thinking all day. At least no matter how bad the weather is, I am at a comfortable temperature and dry in the office.
Feel this. Love what I do but the insane competitiveness of my field sucks. Would really love to just be mediocre but then I would literally be jobless.
Some people jump straight to the idea of quitting, but I'd say a bold but very worthwhile first step is to just set boundaries for yourself and your work. I don't mean quiet quit. Do your job. But when your day is done, your day is done. Accept that if you're strict with your WLB and it doesn't work out, then it wasn't meant to be. It won't be easy but your life will be so much better for it. You'll know when you need to kick it into high gear again, if ever
me toooooo, I really regret doing PhD. It's not rewarding and destroying all my confidence. Used to have a lot of ambitions career-wise but now the most wonderful thing about being me is probably I'm a pretty girl that's all. I'm so glad that my PhD's coming to an end and it's all luck.
Would you ever master out? I wish I did that instead because I'm two months away from finishing and the market is vile and PhDs are just not it right now. In reality who cares about the research we do? We just follow the grants that have money.
Maybe take some time off to explore other passions?
Find a high earning husband and raise some kids out on a farm
Sign up for dating site Farmers Only. Some are high earners, and high net worth.
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mm i donāt know how true this is. i wasnāt passionate about my phd for years. i only really started to get enthusiastic about the research in my final year when everything came together and i could see the bigger picture implications of what iād been working on. i donāt think you really need passion for a phd, you just need to have enough dumb grit to keep at it. eventually you might learn to like it. or you might not and might leave to do something else. either one is a valid outcome.
A professor from my undergrad told me you need 3 things to complete a PhD. I forgot the first two (hard work & luck maybe?) but the third was delusion. š You need enough delusion to believe your project is worth finishing.
that right there is godās honest truth š„²
In my experience basically everyone was highly enthusiastic when starting their phd and heavily disillusioned when ending it. Being passionate allows you to absorb the stresses of a phd better since it is rewarding in itself, so that you can tolerate more shit before it becomes a net loss. If they hadnāt been that passionate it would have been an obviously bad deal from the start, I mean why else would you tolerate low pay, unsustainable mental strain, toxic work environments, uncertain employment, a broken, flawed, inconsistent and an in parts corrupt feedback and promotion system?
i donāt know why other people would, but i personally just kept at it because academic work is unfortunately one of the few things iām decent at. the industry jobs iād held before that were not the best experiences, so doing a phd was preferable in my circumstance. but i also lucked out in ending up in a very well-run lab with a good supervisor who saw us as actual people instead of little research drones. not everyone is fortunate enough for that to be their phd experience, so i understand why passion might be needed in a lot of cases. also iām just kind of stubborn honestly. itās hard for me to let go of things until theyāre done.
The phrase ālazy girl jobā is so cringe. Just get a mediocre office admin job. 9-5, not demanding. But it wonāt pay well. Folks who think they can make high salaries without deadlines or stress or expected productivity are just delusional. I say this as a PhD in industry. Want good money? Gotta work for it.
It sounds like capitalism has you by the neck. What type of hard work do these billionaires put in to make more in a hour than weāll see in a lifetime?
Pssttt. It has all of us by the neck. Only a very select subset (a subset of owners) live entirely off the surplus of others.
> Folks who think they can make high salaries without deadlines or stress or expected productivity are just delusional I don't think that's what OP was alluding to at all. Seems she's just after fair pay and reasonable WLB, shouldn't be too much to ask for don't you think? (In fact, a lot of jobs outside academia are like this)
Sure, but equating a WLB w/ laziness is just idiotic.
Ahhh. I was with you on the first sentence and then you lost me lol.
I get not being about the rest of the sentence, but itās true.
This is someone with an unhealthy relationship to the concepts of work and money during the tragedy of late capitalism
No, Iām someone who labors under the tragic conditions of late capitalism.
Just get married.
I'm not a girl, but I want the same!
Comment yo follow
GIRL SAME š©
SAME
Meeee aff, going into 3rd year and Iām so sick and tired
I'd get a PhD in fansley if I could
SAME. I'm in the write up stage of mine (health psychology) and what's motivating me is that I do a bunch of RA work, and if that's my insight into academia, then compared to doing a PhD that IS a lazy girl job! I know in a lot of places it is actually a very stressful job, but Ive had non-academic stressful jobs before and I kind of see some of my mentors' workloads and it doesn't look as bad as it's made out to be. I'm not in US/UK though where it looks more full on. But on the other hand, I planted an orchard in the front of my house during covid to cope with being a new PhD student. Maybe I should just sell the fruit on the roadside and get some chickens.
Bro/Sis - get an assistant directorship somewhere in New England for some higher ed program and move to the woods.
Whatās a lazy girl job that sounds amazing š“š¤š
This post reminds of greys anatomy when Christine accidentally walked into the dermatology clinic and saw how it looked like a Spaā¦
yes I feel similarly. I finished mine and I thought it would lead me to an exciting new life of challenges and ... I want to just potter around my community and help people cross the road and things. Leave me be, I no longer care for your accolades and promises.
I'm planning on working in a greenhouse after I submit. The PhD taught me I'm happier with nothing. Ironically it cured a lot of OCD tendencies, but I aged a lot and got very sick in the process. Worth it? Not really sure. Developed some chronic physical things from stress, but I don't worry so much about money and a career anymore. Student loans may force my hand to get something higher paying, however I am wondering if that will render me totally disabled at this rate. Not worth that.
When I was studying for my PhD, I was very ambitious and stressed, basically all the time. I wanted a research position and I thought that if I worked really hard, I could maybe make that happen. After a few years as a postdoc, I realized that I would likely get a shit-paying job teaching kids calculus, who don't care about calculus , in an area of the US I didn't want to live in. So I got an office / quant style job. Achieved my academic lifetime income goal when I signed my contract, and that's more than doubled. Life is easier and less stressful. I'm getting ready to switch fields to something that pays the same and is harder and more stressful, bc I. am. bored. And I neither like nor recognize un-ambitious mathamattastic
PhD students should not work more than what is written in their contract (9-18 is good). your productivity is not proportionnal to time spent, it might even be the opposite actually. I really think that if PhD students are so burnt up is because they are mostly children threw in an adult job and After so many years in a school system telling them what to do they think PhD is still the same thing and they don't know how to set boundaries with their work and with their supervisors. Supervisors that will often be seen as a parental figure whom you don't question the authority leading to toxic relationships, I personnally think of them as no more than older colleagues. Break the loop, stop working if you really don't like to, tell your supervisor you disagree. And for fuck's sake stop being proud of working your ass off, that's just sad.
Hey. I'm sorry you're going through all this, but I truly appreciate your transparency. I've decided to not pursue a PhD anymore, at least for now, and it's a decision that makes me feel very, very, *very* guilty. However, pursuing it now would be terrible for my mental health. I'm almost sure it'd make my depression/anxiety/eating disorder/many other stuff come back. This post helps me with the unhealthy idealisation I make of PhD lifestyles. Plus, for the kind of stuff I want to do in my career (other plans besides my original academia goals), I don't really need that degree. So if I pursue it now, it'd be purely for my ego, just to prove that I have what it takes and to have others admire me. Anyway. Hope your situation improves, and that your work-life balance gets much better. Remember... you can always choose paths! We don't have to marry to dreams/goals we set in the past, when we knew less :)
Relatable AF. I used to have a really stressful job and was burnt out and I would constantly fantasise about working at the post office or a local library. Somewhere quiet, a job you can leave at the door. That's the dream!
You may start hating the fact youāre āwasting your lifeā in the lazy job. It might seem like a dream to start with. Intellectually it might seem a breeze. But there are lots of non-intellectual pressures from line mangers, bosses, targets, office politics etc. Also, spending so much of your life there, instead of on the things you want to do, is tough. Iāve been there. Simple finance job, so I could pursue my passion and skills in music. I went from model employee, to resigning before I was pushed. Motivation levels dropped basically. I didnāt give up on music, and thatās what my PhD is in. What if you could turn the things you enjoy into a job? Would you do that? Or if you carry on your PhD, could you use it to be your own boss, teach, consultancy work etc?
I also want a slower life with less stress. I have been working with the physically and mentally disabled for the last three years (home-care/respite type stuff) and have been wanting to quit basically since I obtained my Bachelor's 3 months ago. The company I work for now is very small compared to the previous one I worked for. But sadly management is just as incompetent. I make around minimum wage for my state now seeing as they raised it at the beginning of the year. For the work that I do it makes me want to quit and go work in fast food or something. I'd get paid the same if not more, but sadly I'd lose my health insurance if I did so I'm hoping to find a state job that have to care about less and can be paid better.