Considering dropping out of PhD

OpenToSuggestions

OpenToSuggestions

OpenToSuggestions

Soldato
Joined
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Derbyshire
Hey all.

I am doing a PhD in engineering and am 6 months into it. I am an undergraduate hall warden and so get a free flat with free food etc. and I get paid to do the PhD. I turned down a decent graduate engineering job for this as overall it worked out that I had more money doing the PhD than if I was in industry.

The problems are that since I started in October 2011 I have found the PhD very difficult and I find the academic papers are nigh on impossible to understand. I find the whole process very lonely as I am in an office with older researchers who have families and are either at the end of their PhD or have finished their PhD, plus my friends from my course (undergraduate finished last year) have left and a few other friends turned out not to be the friends I thought they were.

I feel like I extremely unhappy and am unsure what to do. I want to leave the PhD but I know that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I am throwing away.

I realise this is in GD but I hope at least a few answers will be sensible :).
 
Ask for some support. Attend extra classes to learn how to read academic work. Thrash things out with your supervisor. Get out into the community and make more friends. Go to appropriate conferences related to your subject.

There is lots of support out there, you just have to seek it.

Source: have been a researcher.
 
Sounds to me like you took on a PhD for all the wrong reasons. Not what you want to hear but if you fel like this after 6 months then I doutb you will last the distance. Speak to your supervisor and get some advice. If you really want to stick at it you need to address the issues sooner rather tha later. You dont need to be fantastically clever to do a PhD but you do need to be comitted and have an excellent work ethic.

/Salsa
 
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+1 to fus' advice,

Although if you really do feel you cannot hack it, now is a good time to step away and move into industry. Just remember that you will be doing this work for the next 3.5 years and will have to write a significant document on your research at the end.

My PhD was soul destroying at times, I didn't have a lot of friends, I was commuting for an hour into and out of university, I had a supervisor who couldn't speak English very well, and I was the only one in my group. There were a few times I really did think about giving up, up and to the last 6 months it was very hard work, massive amount of hours and needing to work at all hours to keep on top of what needed to be done. Unless you are doing a project you enjoy you will find it hard to work towards it. On the flip side though I did complete, graduated a month or so ago and now trying to find a PostDoc to continue my career.

Talk to people, make friends and discuss with your supervisor, dropping out now would only be a loss of 6 months (of yours and his time), dropping at in year 2/3 would be significantly worse. Really spend some time deciding if it is for you.

Source: PhD finished last November.
 
At least stick it out until your transfer. Tell your supervisor your concerns and he / she will probably tell you the same. You'll get to write up and get an MPhil out of it but you never know, you may begin to enjoy it more.
 
OpenToSuggestions said:
I am doing a PhD in engineering and am 6 months into it. I am an undergraduate hall warden and so get a free flat with free food etc. and I get paid to do the PhD. I turned down a decent graduate engineering job for this as overall it worked out that I had more money doing the PhD than if I was in industry.
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Your eventual decision on whether to pursue a PhD or take a job offer came down to your short term potential earnings???
 
Doing a PhD is extremely difficult and if anyone finds it easy then I would truely question if they deserve a PhD, this is partly because a PhD is personal project where one tries to maximize their performance under a lot of external stress and with little to no guidance. It is not like an exam where you merely have to pass or achieve a certain grade, or like working for a company where you need to perform provided tasks to certain standards. Even a 1 in a million genius that is getting publications in Nature or Science will find a PhD hard because they will push themselves to do the best they can.

As was discussed in the earlier thread on PhDs, to me and all of my colleagues and friends doing a PhD, working 60-70 hours a week was the standard, with more hours when teaching load increased or deadlines approached.


So what I am saying is doing an PhD is extremely difficult, stressful and time consuming. If you can't cope with that then you should quit but if that is not what is bothering you then you should know that it is at least normal to feel unhappy about it.

Heck, go read PhD Comics - the truths in that are absolutely remarkable! I actually met Jorge Cham,he gave a presentation to the grad students at my uni.
The take home message was that basically everyone doing a PhD is massively over worked, over stressed, depressed, feels utterly inadequate.

Have a look at the PhD Motivation level:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=125
You have reached that first trough 6 months in.



Going 4 or 5 years without getting the positive results you need is also fairly typical. The breakthroughs nearly always come about 3-6 months before your funding runs out so you have to go crazy writing multiple publications, conducting experiments, writing a thesis, organizing your viva and supposedly applying for jobs/post docs/funding all simultaneously (that is when the 80-100 hour weeks start to crop up.... )


Saying all of that I think it is important to try to make a realistic analysis of your situation. Many people will quit or be dismissed from their PhD within the first 6-12 months. I always thought it was the lucky ones who realized early enough to run to the hills within the first months. A good friend did this, quit within 4 months and promptly landed a job paying obscene amounts of money and which they love doing. An acquaintance persevered for years before having a nervous break down and being institutionalized in a mental hospital. She couldn't work for 2 years after quitting due to psychological issue and now works part time in a supermarket. This is someone who graduated at her Masters egregia cum laude.

I persevered for too long, once I was 2-3 years into my PhD I knew I should have quit but I was too heavily invested so carried on. I greatly appreciate having a PhD and the title of Doctor feels very well deserved but I would never go through it all again for a million dollars.

There is a reason why PhD students have a relatively high suicide rate. Whatever you do, don't continue down a path where suicide seems like a good option. Years of you life seemingly being wasted, papers rejected, the threat of not being allowed to defend your thesis, your professor calling you an incompetent failure that is a embarrassment to the lab and university (which was told to a colleague of mine), can make a very depressing situation.

My advice, speak to you professor if possible (probably not if he is like most professors I know), but more importantly speak to others in your lab and university doing a PhD and see what they have to say.
 
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dowie said:
Your eventual decision on whether to pursue a PhD or take a job offer came down to your short term potential earnings???
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And if this is really the case then the OP should quit his PHD ASAP.

That is completely the wrong attitude to have.
 
This is the same scenario Scrutinize was in. Although he was under pressure to even do a PhD in the first place and struggled academilcally with it to the point where he spent two years just playing WoW to avoid working on it :)

How old are you, it's not really a "once in a lifetime" opportunity. You can work towards it alongside an employable role later in life. You won't necessarily enter a better paid job because of it either.
 
If you're doing your PhD in the UK then ignore what D.P. has to say on the subject as I believe he had a very hard time of it outside of the UK. :p
 
int said:
If you're doing your PhD in the UK then ignore what D.P. has to say on the subject as I believe he had a very hard time of it outside of the UK. :p
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Oh right. Now I understand why he spouted that nonsense of about it taking 4 or 5 years before you get any results.
 
Disco Boy said:
Indeed let's not, there isn't really a lot to discuss... I'm right, let's move on.
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You may be right with regards to the UK, but I know you are wrong with regards to much of the rest of the world and cited supporting evidence from independent bodies.

PhD Comics is so popular because it is so truthful for so many grad students.
The following is a near 100% accurate depiction of my PhD Life:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/most_popular.php
 
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