Thursday, February 18, 2010
Third year attrition
Many people in my program are thinking about leaving. Some already left. Some are switching from a Ph.D. to Masters. After two or three years, maybe they still haven't found something they are excited about, or maybe they found something they are excited about outside of grad school that doesn't require them having a Ph.D. Some of them are good friends. They all need to do what is best for them, and right now that's not staying in grad school, at least not here. Still, I'm sad that they will be leaving Big City.
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2 comments:
It's nice that people are actually leaving when the realize that the PhD is not what they want! I know so many people who were completely miserable, and some who switched careers right after they finished, and they could have saved themselves so much pain and suffering if they had just been able to leave. But there's such a strange stigma of failure associated with admitting it that many people drag themselves through.
Please do me a favor and still be friends with them! One of the worst parts of leaving my PhD program (I mastered out after 2 years) was losing my friends. I had one, in particular, that completely blew up on me 6 months before I left, and it was difficult to stay friends with everyone else since we were a close knit circle.
I guess I can't speak for everyone else, but the fellow students in my program had nothing to do with my decision to leave. My advisor, on the other hand . . .
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