[danielford]

I second this. I went to a very forgiving graduate school (at least two chances on each part of the process), and a lot of people still didn't make it past the first couple years.

I also disagree with the author's point that a Ph.D. is about changing the world. My seven years of hard work culminated in a thesis that had a negligible impact on the universe. Many of my friends justifiably felt the same way. I set out with the intention of making the world a better place, but reality had other ideas. It's hard to see how spending those seven years at a startup company could have been worse in that respect.