I’m in the middle of another sprinkle of grad-school–related email. (I suppose what must happen is that other sites add a link to mine and I get a brief surge of readership, whence the bunched-up email.)
Honestly, it’s gotten to where I almost have stock responses. Not sure what you’ll do outside grad school? Go find out. Not sure if you should go? Don’t. (That simple. It really is. If you’re not absolutely dead certain you should be in graduate school, it is to your considerable advantage not to go.)
And then I get people who are in graduate school, want to leave, but are afraid to. The story I got the other day in email (which I won’t detail) was a real heartwrencher.
If you ask me, this paralysis is the worst stage of the decision to leave academia. Sleepwalking zombiefied through life is—well, it’s closer to undeath than life.
I’m starting to have stock answers for this situation too, though. “But I’ll have wasted all that time!” Yep. Sunk costs. Move on. “But I won’t be able to afford it!” So racking up more grad-school debt is going to help? Move on. “But I don’t have any job skills!” And grad school isn’t giving you any. Move. The hell. On.
They’re like cats in doorways, these people who email me. Not much I can offer, sympathetic though I am, besides a swift boot to the butt.
