Why do we do this to ourselves?

...or, I go off on a self-indulgent rant.


A friend and I at work have recently found ourselves comparing notes on our respective graduate school experiences. Neither of us had a very good time. Hers was significantly worse.

Another friend, who is still in school calls me regularly with tales of how she isn't sure she can do it any more.

People I started school with eight years ago are still struggling to find some way to finish.

There is a comic strip that highlights the suffering of graduate students.

An old friend, a brilliant graduate student in astrophysics, had his funding destroyed and can't afford the equipment upgrades he would need to finish his thesis. He's been a grad student so long that he actually took a sabbatical.

I know of at least three marriages that fell apart while one partner was in grad school. I know of a handful of developed or near drinking problems. I know of a half dozen or so people who found themselves medicated for a variety of stress-related illnesses. Still more people ended up in therapy for at least a little while.

And yet, we still find ourselves telling others that getting a graduate degree is worth it in the end. We don't look back on our days in grad school with any fondness, but we value the knowledge we gained.

I think it's telling, though, that I don't have any friends from graduate school who took positions in which they themselves oversee graduate students. We work in industrial research or at government institutions or in administrative positions at hospitals or at small liberal arts colleges.

Stories of the kind of suffering I have heard seem to be much more rare among the older generations of Ph.D's. The system is broken. There is something inherently wrong with a process that seeks to destroy the very people it thrives on.