Why you shouldn't do a PhD. Ever.

Have a look at this. And this. Those should both be very familiar to anyone who's done a PhD. If they make no sense, then hopefully this post will clarify. It is a long one, you have been warned. I'd get a cup of tea first.



Having read Craig's blog, I got thinking about why it's so hard to do a PhD. Suprisingly, it's not the complexity of the material, it's not the hours of work (compounded by the view of most people, who seem to think you've managed to get another 3 years of student dossing), nor is it coming up with original ideas and exploring the boundaries of your subject.

The difficult bit is when (approximately 2 years in), you realise you hate your project. You're disillusioned, tired, and want to do anything else but continue. The problem is that you've now invested two years of your life, and can't just give up.

So why does this happen? It's not just me who's been there; the experience appears to be standard, and the timing is remarkably similar (certainly amongst pure mathematicians).

One of the hardest things about research is the complete lack of punctuation. As an undergraduate, you have lectures, exams, stop. Lectures, exams, stop. Repeat a few times then graduate. There are constant targets, goals and feedback. You know what's coming next, know what you did wrong last time, and can learn from your mistakes and improve on your performance. You have mates doing the same course who are stuck with the same things. You can get help from them, and feel good about helping others.

There's virtually none of that in research.
There's no punctuation. From your first year report to the submission on your thesis (typically 2.5 years or so), the biggest comma that gingerly rears it's head is merely the gentle drift from concentrating on research to concentrating more on typing it all up.
In terms of emotional support and goals: If you're lucky, you'll have a weekly meeting with your supervisor (who, by this stage knows less about your research than you do) who will offer suggestions on directions you could take, when you should start writing up, and go through a few specifics. If you're very lucky, you'll also have some mates working in loosely related fields who you can have a moan with, and throw ideas around with (not on the hard stuff, as you'd often be there all week (literally) explaining the background to it. Apt comparisons would be that you're the only person in the room learning calculus but you can only ask when you get stuck adding up, or that you're writing an essay, but can only ask your mates about the spelling and grammar). Your peers are distanced from you due to the huge specialisation required to get a project completed in three(ish) years.
I didn't realise how much I'd missed feedback until my examiners gave their opinions on my thesis (they were extremely complementary, in case you were wondering). Nige obviously felt the material was good, and had made this clear, but having some outside feedback is a very different thing psychologically.

This all leads to a mounting sense of uncertainly. It's difficult to keep slogging away when you're always wondering:

• Is my work any good?
• Should I have finished yet?
• What should I be doing now?
• What should I be doing next?
• Is this avenue of research going to yield no results, and just be a wasted month?
• How much material do I need for a thesis?
• How much detail do I need to go into?
• How much background is needed?
• Will I just fail after all this?
  

For some of these questions, you won't get an answer until you submit, for others you can only get an approximate answer from your supervisor. Then there are some for which you just have to do the work to find out.

I didn't realise as clearly as I could have what was happening, didn't recognise how disillusioned I was, and ground to a halt roundabout Christmas '05. I attempted to slog through by putting more work in when, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see now that I'd have been better off taking a good break for a month.

So how did I do?

• Stuff I got right: Stuck with it, kept complaining about it to anyone who'd listen (kudos to parents here, and to everyone I've played hockey, badminton, sung or drunk beer with), and most importantly, kept on doing other things (mostly hockey, badminton, singing and drinking beer) that I enjoy. Exercise is good too: I found that I got far more work done when I was cycling to and from uni than when I got the bus.

• One I wish I'd done more of: Given talks. I hate the idea of doing talks, but actually doing them is suprisingly ok. They're too easy to avoid doing. The highlights are giving a talk on my thesis (an exercise I'll repeat in Leicester in a couple of week's time), and a short series of teaching talks on Spectral Sequences (very complication computing machines) to the then junior topologists. Why? Feedback and interaction. Talking about my thesis generated some much needed external feedback. Teaching other postgrads some complicated material has several benefits: I learnt a lot writing the talk, I felt good about helping others, and I felt good about interacting with other students - it eased off the isolation more than I realised at the time.

• One I got right eventually: Took time off to do something different. I had a better view of what I'd achieved after a break. Taking a month out to earn some money felt like a holiday!

• One I wish I'd thought about much earlier: Punctuation. I'm planning on cycling to Swansea when I've finished my corrections. Purely because it'll then actually feel like I've finished.

Well done for reading this far. Hope this is helpful to someone, or at least gives you some understanding of what I've been whinging about for so long. So remember kids: just say NO to postgraduate study!



That said, in a year's time when the dust has settled and I can't remember any detail of what I've been working on for all this time, I know I'll be glad I did it.