Hope you all are doing well in your respective areas.
I have been doing PhD in humanities. Course work is complete just thesis writing n submission is remaining.
I talked to my professor will there be any job opportunity after my PhD.
He said unfortunately dont expect that.
Currently I am working full time & not getting enough time for PhD.
I tried to manage these two different full-time things (job & PhD) but my health started declining, mental stress, insomnia…
So I finally decided to leave PhD & inform my professor of my decision (although I dont know why soul inside me is pricking me for leaving PhD & I know I am not a person by nature meant for corporate culture)
Any opinion, insights on this decision are welcomed and highly appreciated!!!
Hi @Kavita!! I remember you talked about balancing your career and PhD a while ago. I looked out for the topic so I came here updated.
Taking only the Ph.D. perspective first, it looks like you are leaving the Ph.D. program mostly due to its utility in what you see in your future regarding your career rather than not feeling any pleasure in investigating and digging deeper into your research. Please forgive me if I am making obvious questions but have you considered postponing “endlessly” your graduation rather than dropping out of the program? I don’t know if this is possible but maybe working on your thesis on the weekends or just “when you want to” can help you on balancing your responsibilities.
Is taking a sabbatical semester or year an option in your program? This can be an option for you to focus on yourself for a while, and then get back with more energy to balance things out.
Overall, considering there is no job opportunity after the Ph.D., that was even remarked by your advisor, and that you have to put food on your table, I believe you have all the grounds to negotiate a sabbatical or an extension on your thesis deadline. To be brutally honest, if they are not willing to negotiate any extension, my take is that they are a bunch of pricks to the point that I would not want to be assessed on any grounds to become one of them.
I will ask you to forgive me but ideas start coming out as I write so it might get confused. One thing that crossed my mind is that considering right now you don’t have any job opportunities after your Ph.D., why are they offering the program?! What do they expect you to do once you graduate?? Was it always like this? Since when it started to become like this? Please forgive me but if it has been like this for a while it looks less like a Ph.D. program and more like of a scam where once students graduate, they are sent to the real world to die of starvation.
I hear you about not fitting into the corporate culture. Even though studying organizational development, I feel sick just thinking about the idea of supporting methods I don’t believe.
Overall, it looks like you decided to leave your program more due to its lack of utility rather than not enjoying the overall research process. Considering the job opportunity scenario your faculty mentioned, I believe you have all the information you need to negotiate a sabbatical or even an extension on your thesis so you can take your time to gather your energy and thoughts. Back in the other post, I mentioned the option of networking so I hope you were mentally available to think about it and that had led you somewhere. Maybe that can be a good thing to focus on during the sabbatical. I don’t know…
Anyway, I don’t know if I was objective enough but I hope I helped somehow. I am happy to chat more about this if you want to!!
