[blackbear_]

A PhD is one of those rare periods of life where you are completely on your own, navigating unknown territories without anybody telling you what you should or should not do, where your professional success depends entirely on your own ideas and decisions. The reason to try a PhD is that you are truly free to test your limits. It can be liberating, but also daunting. And definitely humbling.

In some ways, it is not so different from being an entrepreneur, as in both cases you are forging your own path trying to do something new that a certain community likes.

[jacurtis]

I really love what you said, and this is why I did it too.

The journey is long and hard and there are a ton of bumps along the way to complain about. But the overall journey is worthwhile.

I think it is similar to marriage. If you meet someone who's been married for 50 years, and you ask them how it has been they will say it was wonderful and then immediately start telling you about all the tough times them and their partner went through. THey might tell you how hard it was when they both lost their jobs or when they almost broke up 10 years in, but they still love the other person and are happy to have had them.

To an outsider it feels like these aren't compelling reasons to get married, but the married person has other feelings that are hard to quantify like the joy of being next to their partner during the hard times, the ability to share in the joys of that new job, the ability to offload some of their stress, or even the joy of waking up next to them each morning. Those outweigh the shitty things, but the shitty things often get mentioned the most because they stand out.

I think the same thing is true for the PhD. It takes most people 3-7 years (averaging around 4.5) to get a PhD. This is a significant journey that will have ups and downs. You hear all the shitty things on here. But there are joys of learning something you truly love at a detail of focus that is not possible with any other degree. There is the joy of breaking new ground with research and the satisfaction of being the shoulders that future generations will stand on with their own research. The joy of having a paper published or the networking that you get to be a part of. The journey is worth it. It is unique for everyone and you are in control. Its a ~5 year journey that will inheritly have ups and downs. Do you need a PhD to succeed in life? Certainly not. But can it be one of the core pillars of your life if you choose to do it? 100% Yes.

[gorjusborg]

Interesting that you point out the symmetry between pursuing education and entrepreneurship.

One of the tough things about the education route is that winning at entrepreneurship can result in huge tangible life changes, but it seems like the effects of winning at education is harder to visualize.

I get to put PhD after my name, but what else?

[78124781]

I actually really like the analogy. You are running a "business" of ideas. You are competing against a lot of other very smart people who are also trying to start their own ideas business and competing for a very limited pool of support (funding, postdocs, tenure-track jobs, etc.). The professors you are trying to impress in grad school are "investors" and having their imprimatur on your business will help in both advice and in obtaining more funding and convincing others that your business is worth supporting.

If you can run a successful ideas business for 10+ years in multiple locations and convince several gauntlets of committees to keep supporting you, then there's a great deal at the end for choosing this education route--your business gets a significant degree of permanent support and protection (tenure)! But to get to that point, you have to sell your ideas and develop a product that will get buy-in and support from others in your field.

There are no limits on how hard or how much you can work. There are also no guarantees that working hard will pay off either. There's a lot of luck and sometimes the market just isn't buying what you're selling at that time, even if your product is great.

[xyzzy3000]

Sometimes hotels and airlines mistake PhDs for medical doctors and give out upgrades... just keep your fingers crossed that there won't be an in-flight medical emergency.

[Ultimatt]

Dr at the front?

[Derbasti]

Very much on point. Where else can you get payed for doing essentially whatever you like for a few years?

At least for me, that was actually worth the hardship. Although there was a lot of hardship. It was still an incredible, and ultimately empowering, experience.

[mizzao]

I wrote about that overlap with entrepreneurship here: https://twitter.com/mizzao/status/1505529213612609536