"PhD's are not good for you"

Wise words from our Professor, the formidable Cecilia Wong when she spotted me back at my desk the day before yesterday after a period of absence/interruption.

My supervisor had told her about the calamity in my life on all fronts. I don't generally half-do things, so perhaps it is just as well that I have a full-blown crisis in all departments.

I do remember attending a "welcome talk" by the Dean of the School to all new PhD students some 2.5 years ago, and she quoted bleak statistics. So many of us would never complete, so many will end up in a relationship break down and so many will face some other untoward incident the likelihood of which goes up with aspirations for high academic achievement.

The evidence was there, PhD's are not good for you. My good friend and fellow PhD candidate and I didn't think those statistics had anything to do with us - we were mature, sorted and settled sort of people. We were in long-term established relationships with careers and mortgages, after all. So what's the worst that can happen?

Your dad dies, you spend 3 months of a year abroad, fuck up your long term relationship and find yourself looking for somewhere to live, with a major backlog of work that makes your stomach turn.

It's time for serious self discipline and a ban on foreign holidays (that includes conferences, but not any long weekend type city breaks that one's mother is likely to initiate).

Maybe it'll all be worth it in the end?