It’s Decision Season in academia.
Across the country, high-school students are losing sleep at night worrying about where to go to college next year. We’ve had our annual Accepted Students Open House days (the second was Monday, with the turnout significantly reduced by the bad weather), at which we meet with students who are considering coming to Union, show them around, and try to talk them into coming here next fall. Our chairman desevres a special award of merit for the effort he puts in– in addition to going to the massive all-campus lunch, and talking to students there, he’ll conduct individual tours of the department facilities for any student who shows up in the office. This is not completely altruistic, of course, since it’s in our interest to get the best students possible, and our research facilities are one of the biggest selling points for the department.
At the college level, students are in the process of deciding on graduate schools. They’ve spent at least a weekend or two being wined and dined and flown across the country by various graduate programs, and now’s the time for them to make a decision about where to go. The senior physics majors who are definitely going to grad school next year have all made their decisions, and they’ve all gotten into good programs, which makes me very happy.
And, in the bloggy corners of academia, Brad Hagen is headed in the other direction:
I have decided, after countless hours deliberating, discussing and researching, that I will leave grad school for a “real” job. I applied for and accepted a position at a company in the Bay Area that does some pretty cool work. The job will be technical but also interdisciplinary and (hopefully!) interesting.
I mention this not just for the contrast, but because it brings up an important point about graduate school: Grad school is not an eternal committment.
Brad explains a bit of his reasoning in that post:
I gradually came to the conclusion that I don’t fit into the academic mold. I realize that academics come in all shapes and sizes, but I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life studying galaxies or cosmology. Part of the reasoning here is that I need some ties to the “real world”. I also dislike the pure research atmosphere and crave a little more structure. I want some semblance of job stability and an ability to put down roots. Please understand: it is amazing stuff that needs to be worked out, but I feel that my future does not lie here. Given my distaste for continuing research work after grad school, I started to seriously consider the point of finishing grad school itself. I don’t need the Ph.D. to feel good about myself.
A parallel self-conversation concerned the fact that I never really enjoyed grad school. I understand that this is not exactly a unique or meaningful statement. I knew going into grad school that it would suck on some level. Nevertheless, there should be a few moments of accomplishment and excitement sprinkled into it. I accomplished a few things, yes. But the excitement never surfaced. My motivation for conducting research was never the subject itself or a thirst for understanding. I did the work because my advisor would be upset if I didn’t. This force alone does not a good researcher make.
This can’t have been an easy decision to make, but from his description, it’s almost certainly the right one. Grad school is not a path to riches, fame, or glory. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, for the love of God, stop.
And his post is an important example for current and prospective grad students to see, because it points out the other important truth that is too often forgotten: there is life after graduate school, and there are options outside academia. You don’t need to slog all the way to the end of the Ph.D. to be able to get a job doing something that you’ll probably enjoy more than continuing to be a graduate student.
As has been said a million times, here and elsewhere, the decision to go to graduate school is not one that should be taken lightly. It’s not going to be just like continuing your undergraduate career for a few more years, and it’s not going to be a carnival of fun all the time. It’s something you should do if and only if you really want to do research for a living, either as a faculty member somewhere or a research scientist in industry.
At the same time, as Brad demonstrates, it’s not an irrevocable decision. If you go to grad school, and find that you don’t enjoy doing research as much as you thought, it’s OK to leave. You’re not a failed person if you don’t get a Ph.D., and you’ll almost certainly have a better and happier life by getting off the academic track than you would by trying to stick it out to the bitter end.