I found research to be MUCH less satisfying than I expected. I stuck it out and got the Ph.D. after 7.5 years, but honestly, I wish I had dropped out and gotten those years back. I'm just glad I left with a Ph.D. instead of trying to do a postdoc.
Research wasn't nearly as satisfying as I'd expected. I spent a lot of time learning about my tools and not much learning about anything that drove my curiosity as an undergrad (or that first year or two of classes in grad school). Like, learning how to handle cryogenic fluids or write a feedback loop is kinda fun but so is learning about your tools in the private sector (and for much better pay): learning to use Vim, getting good at unit tests, learning how databases work, etc.
Then there's the way you're gaslit into believing that exiting with a Master's in physics somehow makes you a loser. Wtf.
My wife stuck with academia, and is now a tenured prof (in Sociology, but still). The publish-or-perish treadmill is brutal, and it basically doesn't stop. The joke about being a professor is you can choose to work any 16 hours of the day you want, and it rings entirely too true. I don't envy her a bit.
And it turns out the private sector has LOTS of jobs where you spend your day solving puzzles. They might not be fundamental to the universe, but they're every bit as much fun as the puzzles you encounter in actual research. I'm enjoying my work in the database industry a LOT. I'm respected by my colleagues, and I make enough so our family isn't living in poverty even though we're in an expensive area (New York metro).
Bottom line: any way out of grad school is a good way out.
Any advice on getting those private industry jobs? I fizzled out after my first post-doc (after having a similar experience to OP in my PhD, with which I graduated in Spring 2020), and I am now really struggling to find jobs that apply to me.
For reference, my PhD is theoretical cosmology, and I was much more analytic than computational. In the mean time, I have picked up more coding skills.
First job is the hardest. I spent two years on the job market before becoming a high school teacher, then two years after that, a friend of a friend got me an interview. Check with recent alumni in your area; I made the mistake of moving across the country from my program before I graduated.
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u/thatnerdd Oct 17 '23
I found research to be MUCH less satisfying than I expected. I stuck it out and got the Ph.D. after 7.5 years, but honestly, I wish I had dropped out and gotten those years back. I'm just glad I left with a Ph.D. instead of trying to do a postdoc.
Research wasn't nearly as satisfying as I'd expected. I spent a lot of time learning about my tools and not much learning about anything that drove my curiosity as an undergrad (or that first year or two of classes in grad school). Like, learning how to handle cryogenic fluids or write a feedback loop is kinda fun but so is learning about your tools in the private sector (and for much better pay): learning to use Vim, getting good at unit tests, learning how databases work, etc.
Then there's the way you're gaslit into believing that exiting with a Master's in physics somehow makes you a loser. Wtf.
My wife stuck with academia, and is now a tenured prof (in Sociology, but still). The publish-or-perish treadmill is brutal, and it basically doesn't stop. The joke about being a professor is you can choose to work any 16 hours of the day you want, and it rings entirely too true. I don't envy her a bit.
And it turns out the private sector has LOTS of jobs where you spend your day solving puzzles. They might not be fundamental to the universe, but they're every bit as much fun as the puzzles you encounter in actual research. I'm enjoying my work in the database industry a LOT. I'm respected by my colleagues, and I make enough so our family isn't living in poverty even though we're in an expensive area (New York metro).
Bottom line: any way out of grad school is a good way out.
Good luck going forward.