Why do a PhD? There are many good reasons, and a few bad.
I hate my PhD This is a common feeling, but what makes it worse is that it is easy to end up trapped by your PhD. If you have a job you hate, then you look for another one. There is no stigma attached to quitting a job, and it is the obvious thing to do if you are truly unhappy.
You aren’t generally going to get people spontaneously shouting “I love my Ph.D.” And not the least reason for that is that if they love their PhD, they are working, rather than avoiding the work they hate by way of reddit and quora. That being said, most people don’t come to graduate school with a very clear picture of what it entails.
Bad reasons to do a PhD Most of us have several reasons for wanting to do a doctorate, and of course they're not all good. Here are some common bad reasons why some people consider a PhD (and I know there was a certain amount of 'bad reason 5' that led to my own choice.).
I think that PhD students need to know that leaving a PhD half done is ok, it’s not the end of the world, (and it could actually be the beginning of good things). If they hate it, or turns out to be like torture, it ’ s just not worth doing. There are too many opportunities out there to waste time doing something that you hate.
But I don’t think there’s anything darker than doing a PhD.” There are rising concerns for the wellbeing of PhD students generally. A study carried out in Belgium earlier this year found about.
I used to love it, but sweet jesus do I hate it now. What bothers me the most is that it's not even the topic I hate, because I still find it interesting, but I hate the entire system around the PhD. I hate that nobody is really willing to help you when you need it (like most postdocs).
Focus on the problem and alternative solutions, rather than the pessimism of a negativist. If your difficult PhD supervisor is a negativist, get help from your coworkers and other professors. Type 6 Know-it-all expert. A know-it-all expert is someone who believes that their way is the only right way. Know-it-all experts fall into two categories.
To cut to the chase, I hate this PhD, I hate research and I hate academia. It didn't used to be this way. I have been juggling three different projects and none of them are at the stage where something can be published. One of them was a pilot project, something that my lab or even my advisor has no expertise or basic knowledge for that matter.
Slowly losing respect for my PhD advisor. I'm a grad student in what should be my final year of a PhD in the sciences. When I first joined the lab, I had immense respect for my advisor. His work was very interesting to me and he just seemed like someone I could learn a lot from. He was young and relatively new so I knew going in that it might be a risk. Over the years, I've become increasingly.
Working while you study (or, in search of cash and kudos). Whatever else you do in your time as a PhD student, you must exploit the status it affords as much as possible. Let’s face it: you may be a bankrupt nobody, but your university may be rich and prestigious. By association, you may be able to appear more respectable and trustworthy than your financial status would otherwise indicate.
By signing a contract you agreed to do a certain job. Getting a PhD is not part of that job, but lots of other things are. So my advice would be to try and separate these in your head (and in your emotional state). If you hate the project, then from now on it's just an uninteresting (but time-limited!) contract you have to finish. You do the.
As far as my situation goes I am nearing 5 months into my phd which I went into straight after completing my research masters (before I had my result even). This may sound like a rushed decision but I really love research and knew that I was doing good work and wanted to keep the ball rolling. Trouble is I was given a studentship without being given a topic or predetermined project, this.
Later that week, I had reconsidered my options and thought I would find a job after doing a masters so I thought I would talk to a few friends on my course and see what they were thinking of doing. The lecturer must have heard me say I was going to find a job after masters and not do a phd and walked past me saying that he hates when people lie.
