- Let's take the answers from the previous question, these bunch of jobs, maybe in industry, or in the market place in whatever position. What I want to know is: if I stop my PhD before finishing, will people offering these jobs will still considering my nearly 3 years of PhD as useful experience? Or will it be as if it never existed?

- If you did stop your PhD half the way, or left academy to pursue a completely different career, what did you struggle with during the change? For how long?

- Am I giving just too much importance to the whole thing? Do you think that I should just stop my PhD and see what happens? After all, life is an experiment, or is it?

Thank you very much for reading so far down here. I know that these are a lot of questions, but if you can answer even one of them, or give me a bit of your personal experience on the matter I'll be most thankful.

Thanks a lot

Hi all,
I'm currently a PhD student in science, and I want to ask for help and advice from people who went through the PhD experience. Maybe you stopped, maybe you finished it and you're working as a post-doc, maybe you went to a company, maybe you created one, etc.
I happen to find many things that I dislike in my PhD, and although I am about hitting the 3rd year, I am very seriously thinking on leaving, mainly because I don't find a clear reason to continue and stopping simply feels sensible. Right now I hold a VERY cynical view of a PhD, so it could be that my thoughts are biased, partly because of the soul-weariness caused by doing a PhD.

These are the most painful facts:

- I know for sure that I don't want to be a professor. As a matter of fact, I realized that I don't want to stay in academy, and I don't want to be a researcher. And very sure about that. I do not know about industry, because I have never been there. What my feelings and knowledge tell me is that I want to be an entrepreneur.

- I find research very dull and boring. I dislike most of the activities involved, like reading papers, the whole process of writing scientific documents, or listening to talks. However I find some joy in programming, and I find task automatization an amazing concept.

- I hate the unsocial environment. No one ever seems to be happy (in fact almost everyone seems to share some degree of a cynical view about their work), and overall the working hours are detached from any interesting social interactions.

- I have a constant feeling of worthlessness. I can't seem to find any motivation on what I'm doing. The whole thing seems pointless to me, and this makes me feel like I'm wasting my life.

- Most of all, I am afraid that I am wasting time and not learning any useful thing at all, and that in another job in the "real world" I could be learning much more relevant and important lessons. So overall the feeling of life-wasting is overwhelming. My mind warnings tell me to quit immediately and run away as far away as possible and fast. I believe that the only thing I'm learning is to value my time and what I do with my life.

I came to the idea that I only want a PhD if it is going to be really USEFUL, with a reasonable high chance, even if I change completely my job. Otherwise, I am probably better getting out of here, getting some real training and trying a brand new experience.

So, what I'm wondering that maybe you more experienced people can answer is:

- Do you believe that all these are biased thoughts due to me having a hard time?

- Really, how useful is a PhD in the "real world"? What jobs would it allow me to apply to that I couldn't without a PhD? Can it make other jobs more accessible? Can it make jobs LESS accessible??

(continues in next post)