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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Horror" data-source="post: 1911508" data-attributes="member: 26472">For God's sake man don't do it.  A PhD is one long exercise in pain and frustration.  The stress is continuous and doesn't let up - for 4 years.  I'm finishing off mine in the biological sciences, which I know is very different to a philosophy one given that mine is done purely by research.  Still, you will obtain much pain from it.Here is something I posted on another forum not too long ago re my PhD.  Nothing has changed, so I'll repost it here.  One bit of advice though: it really is all about the supervisor.  If you decide to do a PhD do find someone you know for sure you can connect with.  You'll save yourself an endless amount of agony that way.----------------------------------Well, my current job is the endless horror of my PhD. It sucks. I hate it with a passion.Why? Because it has all the downsides of working, and none of the upsides. I get <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> pay (in fact, now that my scholarship has run out I get close to zero pay). I pull outrageous hours each week, staying back until 10:00 pm on a regular basis and coming in both Sat and Sunday every week. I don't get enough responsibility to direct the overall research of the lab and instead focus on my own small projects - the same projects I have spent four years plugging away at. In fact, my supervisor is so controlling with every minutia of lab work everyone here does that I am lucky to be the first to see my own results. Some nights I get so stressed that I can't get to sleep. Other nights I remember how much I hate the lab that I don't want to go to sleep - because I know that when I wake up I'll just have to go back in again. My girlfriend thinks that I am cheating on her - she just cannot believe that any person can spend so many hours working like this. I also have to kill a lot of very cute animals, though I stopped feeling anything a long time ago. That of course is more troublesome to me than the actual killing itself.The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that I love science so much, and how much I look forward to the day when I'll actually be able to do some real science. The kind of work that is both stimulating and rewarding, and that gives an euphoric high when you discover something for the first time that is unequaled in any other field I can think of. I long for the golden days of my honours year, and I can only but dream of what it will be like when I finish. Ideally that day should come towards the end of January 2005, but I am already resigned to the fact that completion is to a large degree out of my hands at this late stage. So yes, I hate my job. Every week I think of quitting, and every week I have to remind myself how much I would eventually regret it if I did.The Horror</blockquote>

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