I quit.
After four years and two universities, I’m done with graduate school. But why?
Some might say graduate school is meant to be difficult and challenging. It’s meant to separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s not for the fainthearted and isn’t meant for everyone. Many upper-echelon schools take pride in their attrition rate as evidence of their quality.
And it’s certainly not about being smart. Someone smart would know better than to get a Ph.D.
There are a few reasons to get a Ph.D., and maybe the only good one is to become a professor. In some ways, that was the false idol I fixed my gaze on. A deep-seated call to teach a subject I love to others has been my guiding framework since I was 16 years old tutoring my friends in high school.
But in an era of decreased public funding of the sciences, the competitiveness for tenure-track positions has become untenable. No longer do freshly minted doctoral graduates begin a career in academia in their late 20s. Now they’re expected (and have no other option than) to complete one or two postdoctoral appointments.
After reading a paper by three Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers asking if there are too many Ph.D. graduates or too few academic job openings, I realized how dire my circumstances would be. They concluded only about 13 percent of Ph.D. graduates can attain academic positions in the U.S.
And this is more than just your typical millennial bemoaning. The creative destruction of yesteryear that eliminated one job while creating 10 down the road has devolved into a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. Average is over, and it is impacting all sectors of the economy.
But my desire to teach has another outlet, perhaps one with a greater opportunity to effect real change. Come this fall, I will enter a classroom at a Title I school in the New York City public schools. Title I schools are designed specifically for children who are at risk of failing. I’ll check my naïveté at the door and come prepared to do the hard work that needs to be done. I’ll bring the full force of a university-trained physicist to do what small good I can do in my corner of the world. I will do what I can to inspire the next Neil deGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye.
Psychologists and behavioral economists are too familiar with the sunk cost fallacy and how it adversely impacts our lives. Whether it’s putting in too much money to repair a run-down car or staying in an intimate relationship well past its expiration date, we fear quitting because we’ve invested too much time. But only through quitting can we take back control. Only then can we take that time and money and put it toward a new aim. Quitting is our friend.
I’m quitting grad school, but I’m not giving up.