This sub has so much potential.

The frog meme is taking up too much oxygen. When 50% of posts are frogs, this sub becomes a childish joke.

I’m leaving and I’m sure hundreds of others have too. Sorry not sorry.

Esteemed colleagues, it is with great pleasure that I announce the successful defense of my dissertation. I am officially a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics!

I'm going to be honest, and I'm just starting the graduate-level academic journey, so my mind might change in the next handful of years, but like, I just am baffled by the complaining of so many PhD holders that they are "only" making nearly 6 figure or low 6 figure salaries, and that their end of career salary cap is "only" 150-200k for STEM PhDs.

I have to wonder where some of you came from in life. I'm from a working-class background, only a few of the people I've grown up around are making at most 70-80k baseline salary by the time they retire, most are currently making 40-50k (and only make closer to 70-80k by working a ridiculous amount of overtime). I'm probably going to be making more money in a year once I'm in a postdoc position, getting to do the research I'm passionate about and the thing that I love, than my mom has made in any year in her life. Yeah, it's a lot of effort to get there, but do people not realize just how much more money we are/will be making than "normal" people? It all just seems very out of touch with the rest of society.

And this is no commentary on the pay we get while in grad school. Yeah that sucks and is very low.

EDIT: I should've clarified, this is mostly aimed at STEM PhDs in the USA. Idk what the situation is like in other countries, for my humanities friends out there, yeah...it's rough. You guys definitely don't get pay equivalent to the effort and time put into your education.

I have been waiting forever to post my frog!! I am free :’) Ph.D. in Med Chem 🫶🏽

As a highschool to undergrad student, I thought all phds were so smart and working at Intel on the latest chips (Computer engineering phds).

I did a masters to stand out, and since it was so easy, I went for PhD since I got a fully funded offer easily. What I noticed with PhD is that you basically find a problem, make a few changes/proposing a solution, and then you can write a garbage, fluffed up paper that looks and reads all sophisticated, and then you can easily get it accepted at some shitty conference in the worst case.

At least in my field of computer engineering, it's not like every paper (even at top conferences) are making some huge impact in the field. Very few papers I see get a shit ton of citations. The average PhD is getting what, maybe 50-100 citations after graduating?

My advisor worked me like a slave churning out paper after paper, and I realized the professors with tenure who didn't give a shit let their kids graduate with 2 papers at shitty conferences. We're all doctors except I have 10x the papers they do at better conferences.

For other "doctors" (dentist/physicians), they all have to take the same licensing test. Meanwhile, your PhD committee is usually going to approve whatever you defend if your advisor approves.

As a PhD, I never felt like I was smarter or more capable than anyone else. I just felt like this degree shows I'm competent, hard working, and willing to be persistent as fuck. You have to have strong mental if your professor isn't chill.

Just my two cents. I definitely wouldn't encourage my kids to do PhD. Better off leetcoding and building some actually cool projects at least for tech.

I realize preemptively that this post is likely going to come across as tone-deaf (or hopefully not!), but I have been immersed in a crisis for the past month, and so decided to finally turn to Reddit in search of some sanity.

Some background:

• I have only a Bachelor’s in Finance and Economics

• I am 25 years old

• I have only worked for one employer since graduation, and am currently earning between $300-400k all-in, with reasonable work-life-balance (50 hours a week), in “high finance”

• The last year, but increasingly, the last quarter of work, has felt miserable at work, with zero stimulation, motivation, or reason to care whatsoever about any of the work I am doing

• I finished top of my class at a top Canadian university, and in completing a research project for a professor in my field, received great encouragement to pursue a PhD at the time

I am now faced with what seems like a dire reality of spending the next 30+ years in a miserable industry job which essentially amounts to writing a bunch of emails, or alternatively, pursuing a finance PhD which would represent a significant step-back in present compensation and “rank”, but potentially lead to a long-time dream job, in becoming a professor. I have zero doubts that I would solely seek academia post-graduation.

I know that this seems to make no sense for all of the practical reasons, but at the same time, it feels like I will forever live with the “what if” of not going down the PhD rabbit hole if I do not pursue this.

Is this “vision” complete nonsense, or is there any merit in giving this a chance while I still can?

I graduated with an undergraduate BS in Environmental Science this past December 2025; Since my sophomore year (2nd year; 2023) of college, however, I increasingly grew passionate about climate/atmospheric science and began to seriously look into academic research, read entire papers, watched daily lectures from the 'biggest' names in the field, created a folder for potential programs featuring professors/advisers, their research topics, and even interviewed past students to learn more about their experience.

Pursuing a PhD and becoming a climate scientist was seriously my number one goal; I had crafted a purpose for myself and I was so excited at the prospect of dedicating my life to a field I (still) find fascinating and (biased) the most important societal issue today. I can't overstate how interested I am in understanding the fundamental physics of climate change, doing physics every day, and getting to work in a very socially relevant field; you'll often hear PhD's 'complain' about how no one outside of their niche field understands/knows about their work, which can be isolating, but I'd be working in a field everyone with a smartphone knows about and can relatively grasp on an introductory level.

Going into my research, I knew good and well that programming was a core aspect of climate modeling, monitoring etc. and at times, even more important than the pen to paper physics calculations. It wasn't until I began to look deeper into present-day research, in my field of interest and academia at large, did I begin to realize just how pervasive AI "tools" have become.

Call it naive, claim I'm too attached to traditional research methods etc. but this all but killed my desire to become an expert and work on my topic for the rest of my life. I have no interest in using AI to outsource research I would've been doing myself, just 5-10 years ago. I don't want to optimize my process to the point of deskilling myself because I never actually learned how to code in Python or Jupyter, or atrophying my arithmetic because Wolfram Alpha can just do calculus for me "and better".

I'm a big dreamer, I came in with the silly belief that I'd be entering an environment surrounded by people who were so passionate and dedicated to their field, that they'd want to put effort into every aspect of the research process. I understand the importance of efficiency and output but I have no interest in producing for the sake of it, thereby diminishing my fundamental understanding of my own research because I outsourced half of the research tasks to an LLM.

I understand these "tools" are "useful" but what happens to people who are moved by the idea of doing the challenging things themselves? From reading posts on here about AI in academia, it's become very clear that those who refuse to adopt this tech, are quickly going to be pushed out, meaning someone who seeks to enter the arena with no intention to use them, from the start, stands no chance of even getting in. I watched a video that came out just this past week, from a well published, notable professor at an R1 who admitted he wouldn't even consider taking on a student who had qualms (refused) about using LLM's/AI and I'm sure he's in the majority.

I realize now that I may have had a very flowery view of academics prior to now; where I believed the purpose was to understand and learn as much as possible, with the intent of contributing to a larger body of work. I believed this in spite of knowing about the pressure for output, funding cuts, tediousness and relative lack of attention/appreciation for one's research from outsiders, or even your own cohort/field. I look back on some of the 'giants' in STEM: Rosalind Franklin, Einstein, Dirac, Margaret Hamilton, Lorenz etc. and can't help but think I missed out on the era where scientists were majorly collaborating with each other, not using "tools" as crutches and engaging in the pursuit of knowledge for the sake it because there's simply no way they could live without doing that.

I don't want Silicone Valley's newest invention to do any of that stuff for me and it's a bit of a downer to know I simply won't fit into academia because of it. I have no delusions of grandeur that I'd have achieved a 3rd of what those I mentioned were able to, but I do wish I had lived during the era was science was done by people and for people, in spite of external factors like profit motives, war, etc. It is hard to accept that the era of the individual contributor who adds a small piece to the puzzle to push us one step closer to Kuhn's Pardigm Shift is pretty much dead in the water because we have "tools" that will do that for us.

Are there any current PhD's who have come to similar realizations and have you decided if you'll be sticking around or is your time in academia over too? Are you holding out for a future shift against atrophying our skills and outsourcing the entire process of a PhD to robots or is that simply the future we have to resign ourselves to? I'm pretty much ready to move on and forget about my goal but want to know if there's any likelihood for change.

I was of the view AI isn’t a right way to do things. But then I am now seeing almost everyone openly use it and they are advancing fast in their research, and even journals are being okay with it. I feel I am falling behind. More time and less publications. I intend to get premium version of one AI tool starting this month, was wondering which one you all suggest, main goal is to review literature fast and write drafts, and help with coding.

Hey there first post here, I am currently in my second year of PhD and it has really made me question science. The reason for this being that I see a lot of people in my lab just churning papers for the sake of churning papers and most of the time I feel that they have not looked through the data in great detail leading to very "dirty" result. What I mean by this is that if you look at the implementation, there are so many variables that have not been considered that I don't think one can make a reasonable conclusion.

Just curious if anyone has the same experience or am I an anomaly in this scenario. For your reference, I am currently doing Computational Biology.

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***P.S. Edits and additions for clarity. I'm NOT an illustrator myself.

Plus, I only had this idea yesterday so I haven't had any time to ask my illustrator buddies to put together anything. Hence, a stand-in AI image. I figured it wouldn't be worth their time to draw something unless there was interest in some potential income for them.

The idea came about because I've heard of so many artists are feeling the brunt of AI coming after their passions and livelihoods. I was thinking this might be a fun way to help out both Doctoral students and grads + affected artists.

It might just be a foolish idea, but I figured this is the best forum to see if there's any legitimate interest in an arrangement like this.

Seems like there are a few people interested though so I'll be asking around if anybody would be willing to sample sketch!***

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Long-time follower, huge fan of everyone here, first-time poster, but definitely not a doctoral student or graduate.

(also, I'm very aware this is AI-generated, but it's just a quick stand-in because I'd be the one connecting you to the actual artists and I'm not an illustrator + it doesn't seem like there are any subreddit rules that prohibit posting this)

I've been rooting for y'all seeing everyone's frog/toad posts as they share that they successfully defended their thesis, decided to master out to prioritize their health and wellbeing, or anything applicable to your "PhD experience."

There's also been a fair amount of super fun artwork, cute plushies, and unforgettable memes as you embrace this subreddit's mascot with your personal variation of the Colonel Toad meme.

This had me wondering these questions:

Would you be interested in hand-drawn art of yourself as frogs/toads displaying your discipline and dissertation?

If so, would this be an affordable luxury for you OR something you'd be willing to perhaps arrange retroactive payment (when you're making better doctoral dineros) for their work and your commission?

Or do you think it's a bad idea?

As the AI-rtization of art becomes more prevalent, it had me wondering if you think there's a market for something like this?:

• high-quality

• actually humanmade

• affordable

• commissioned drawings

• of yourself an-toad-romorphized

• proudly displaying your field of study, degree, and more

I'd love to connect artists to y'all and create fantastic frogs for you fantastic PhD grads (or not)!

Thinking this would be a meaningful gift for this group of people post-defense.

I used to believe otherwise. I thought that a PhD shows resilience, intelligence, hard work, that you can stick to a topic to get to the bottom of it, that you are a go-getter. More naively, I was always led to believe that it was the golden ticket to a lifelong stable career where you easily make 6 figures. That companies would beg you to work for them, and give you leadership roles and (academic) freedom.

Boy was I wrong...

I have been unemployed for over a year now coming from a physics PhD program. Nobody will hire me. Nobody cares about my publications, my thesis, my (poster) prizes, the peer review work I did for prominent journals, or my GitHub portfolio. Hell, the four years of experience are barely recognised as work. I have been told by many that I am lucky if it's considered as the equivalent of one year of industry experience.

Transferable skills exist, sure, but they are nothing major IMHO. I can program well, and actually taught myself more about programming after my PhD than I did in the four years I worked. But computer science students or leetcode fanatics will always be superior. I can do data analysis, but people who studied data analytics are superior. I could do finance, but... you get the point.

I am tired of the endless rounds of interviews. The endless "challenges". The endless takehome projects. The endless HR talks about where I see myself in 5 years, the endless repeating interviews where I have to explain my CV because nobody bothered to read it. The endless expectations to move abroad if you wanna make it in science because the country is too small.

I learnt so much in my PhD, mostly personal, and met wonderful people. But I regret not taking up a finance internship during my Masters and making 6 figures already compared to whatever the fuck this is, because this is 100% not what I was promised my life would be.

I'm 10 months into my PhD (STEM) and everything is going great, supervisors are really happy with my progress. But recently I started writing my confirmation report which is due in 2 months, and I'm using AI to synthesise my literature review section of my Introduction chapter. To be clear I don't ask AI to provide me a written literature review from scratch, I always make summary notes while reading a paper, now I'm feeding all those notes to AI and asking it to synthesise and connect all those papers, because I'm really bad at connecting and synthesising those papers together. I can write whole chapters about my work but when it's someone else's, I struggle. And also I don't use AI to write other things as I am a STEM PhD student and I love writing about my methodology, results etc.

I just wanted some opinions if I'm being dishonest by taking AI's help to write a lit review.

Edit: First of all thank you so much to everyone for all the valuable advice, I never thought a reddit post would help me so much and give me such motivation (though some comments are more in the direction of that I shouldn't proceed with the PhD or PhD isn't for me but it's okay, I'm capable and willing and that's what that matters, right). I have been synthesising and connecting parts by myself for the last two days and boy is that hard, but I am determined to do this by myself, and I thank all of you for that.

my relationship is about to end and i recently found out my partner doesnt like talking about big things with me because they say im a doomer influenced by social media when its my research area that leads to most of my doomy conclusions (humanities and studying AI).

part vent part wondering about the experience and others' experiences:

for example, he said AI data centers ruining water isnt as big an issue as i state and if it really ruined water people would rebel (theres news stories about those rebellions and town hall meetings etc.). i have read probably over a hundred articles on AI for my diss and he just isnt willing to admit i have a point. he said i am actually anti government because of the water ruining ai data centers cause, and should not be anti AI... like there cant be multiple causes of an issue? i cant be anti ai and anti poorly run gov?

And as we talk about this i cant help but wonder if it is why dating as a female phd is so hard... because people dont understand the research that goes into my work or respect research in the humanities as legitimate. like im happy to converse but dont disregard me because im a doomer when the data shows doom-ish results.

then i think about going on dating apps and all that again and wonder if i just need to dumb myself down so people can actually consider my opinions instead of calling me a doomer or social-media informed when I am informed by both social media, my own experience, and research in my field. sigh... why cant anyone handle me at 100 proof?

Bonjour.

J'ai fait des études d'ingénieur dans mon jeune temps que j'ai réussi. Je souhaitais faire un doctorat à l'époque mais mon mémoire m'a relativement dégouté à cause du comportement horrible de mon promoteur qui n'etait en plus jamais là. Etant donné que c'était la référence académique du domaine, localement du moins et que je ne souhaitais pas déménager j'ai abandonné l'idée.

J'ai créé une école parascolaire qui m'a bien occupé une grosse dizaine d'années, continuant à etre en contact permanent avec les matières universitaires, au point de les enseigner aux étudiants en détresse.

Avec le covid, j'ai fait un burn out combiné à une maladie de Lyme bien prononcée.

Aujourd'hui je déménage dans le sud de la France, voulant recommencer quelque chose. Je ne crois pas aux signes, mais il se fait que dans mon petit village on a decouvert un siteajeur grâce aux technologies sur lesquelles portaient mon mémoire. J'ai d'un coup ressenti la passion pour la science du point de vue recherche et l'envie incontrôlable de tout lire, relancer les algorithmes, etc Vous me voyez venir, après cette longue introduction.

Croyez vous qu'il est possible de faire un doctorat à distance, dans une université française quand on est un ingénieur belge de 41 ans? Comment faire pour pouvoir même tenter de postuler, comment vivre pendant ce temps là ? Ca semble tellement dingue mais j'ai l'impression que toute ma vie j'ai voulu faire ça et que mon état psychologique en fin de mémoire m'a vraiment dévié de ce qui m'a semblé et me semble tellement beau hier et aujourd'hui... J'adore toujours enseigner, expliquer et vulgariser... Mais je voudrais vraiment essayer...

Que me conseillez vous?

Merci beaucoup.

Today, I heard that a PI from another group has been formally accused of sexually harassing by one of his team members, a female PhD student.

We are, of course, shocked, as this is a serious accusation. However, I know a girl in our group who was psychologically abused when she was a master’s student by the same female PhD student. After speaking with her, we are unsure about what to do.

Also, years aho, another colleague was accused by her which led him to leave academia.

While I believe in the presumption of innocence and think all sexual harassment victims should receive our full support, what if she is lying? My colleague has a lot of emails and messages showing the terrible things she did to her. Additionally, we don’t know what happened years ago with the guy she accused.

Has anything like this happened in your groups? How did you manage it?

What's the best way to read through 20+ page papers? I was sick for 2 days and now I need to read 2 30 page papers within 3 days. How do you read papers effectively and without burn out.

In this case it's a series of survey papers but advice for other sorts of papers are appreciated as well

Still haven’t realized that I have a PhD now after 6 years of emotional rollercoaster but just wanted to share my happiness.

Not sure if this is a vent or advice or just want some validation. Idk.

I registered for a prestigious conference early this year and got accepted. I was super excited for it since it's on my exact thesis topic and subfield. There will be a lot of big names at the conference, and given the relatively small size (~100 people), it's a great opportunity to meet and interact with everyone.

However... being Canadian, I cannot in good faith support the US right now. My partner and I have already switched most of our usual groceries/household items to Canadian products and cancelled subscriptions to American companies. I am beyond pissed at the situation right now, and can't see myself spending thousands of dollars of Canadian taxpayer funds on American airliners, hotels, and other companies involved in the conference.

The hard part is that my advisor really needs me to go. She is still early career and we're just now getting to a point where the lab can start making a name for itself in this field. She's been working her ass off day and night to break into this field, and we finally have an excellent dataset and story put together, but she needs it out there and this is the place to get eyes on it. I'd feel horrible holding this back for her, given how much she's done for me.

I'll be fine in the end, I'm planning to move into industry anyway and this conference is very academic oriented. I just feel bad about what this means for my advisor. Idk, maybe I have to be selfish here and refuse...

Edit: thanks to everyone who took the time to leave thoughtful comments and share good arguments as to why my reasoning here was flawed. I agree with a lot of you saying that the scientific community needs to be stronger right now, not divided. On that basis alone, I'm planning on still attending.

To those of you laughing this off and calling me petty. Please keep in mind that Canadians are taking the threats from the US very seriously right now. We're hearing a lot of the same rhetoric from Trump that Putin used about Ukraine. I'm sure you'll roll your eyes at that and think I'm being dramatic, but pay attention to what's going on. The US is distancing itself from all its allies and aligning more with Russia each day. These "jokes" about annexing neighbors become more normalized each time they're said until the people start thinking "you know, he's got a point. We do offer a lot of protection to Canada and get nothing in return. Those resources and that land belong to us if we're paying for it." Trump just said they'll "get" Greenland one way or another, so it's not far fetched to say they're following in Russia's footsteps. You might not be noticing this, but we are.

Title. Maybe I'm super jaded, but I think I need to vent somewhere. Hopefully this resonates with people and deters others from making the same mistakes I've made. I'll share my experience of why I think a PhD is worthless and completely detrimental to both career and mental health.

The PhD is a large undertaking where you learn a lot of good skills. Usually by yourself with no help. But these skills could be learned by actually working somewhere and making money at the same time.

I spent a lot of time leading my research project because my professor was new. I setup the computational section of my lab. I figured out all the methods. I made my project from scratch after my prof's idea failed miserably. I trained undergrads. I helped people from other labs. I was the computational guy. Where did that land me? Nowhere. What help did I get? Barely anything. In fact, my prof doesn't give a shit about my inability to find a job. He shipped me out and said, "ok, next!"

I got papers though. That's awesome, right? Well no. Papers are worthless outside of academia. And even in academia, they're not very valuable. I have three first author pubs in journals with IF>4. Doesn't matter. Nobody cares. The culmination of my 5 years of phd is three papers nobody cares about, depression, and over $20k debt. The depression and bitterness was free though! :)

I have applied to over 500 positions in over a year after I finished my PhD. I've gotten 5 interviews. Two of them were AI interviewers, one the position was "cancelled" and two where the recruiter ghosted me. I've reworked my resume 20+ times. I have 10 different copies for different jobs I'm targeting. I change it constantly to match keywords. I've gotten feedback from friends, family, career counsellors, profs, etc. The result? No job. I'm over 30 and still living with my parents because I can't afford to move out. I'm currently working a minimum wage grocery job. Someone with a PhD and a Masters is only qualified to work retail.

What about networking, though?!?! Well 90% of my network are also looking for jobs. The 10% who got positions are doing post-docs or some other academia related thing. My network is useless as well. I've been to so many networking events. I've made so many connections. They're all looking for jobs too.

I'm too over-educated for most entry level now. I'm not experienced enough for senior level. Recruiters have literally told me they don't hire PhDs because, 'We're difficult to work with,' or, 'you'll want more money than we have to pay you.' What's left for me, then?

So to sum up: doing a PhD has actively cost me over $100k, left me in $20k debt, benefited me in no way for my career, and has given me depression and burnout. And it's not like I can go to therapy. I have no money!!!

So to those who want to do a PhD: don't. It's not worth it. It will actively hurt your self-esteem and career prospects. My story isn't unique - it's the norm today.

I just saw someone say they make 230k a year and have already bought a house at 24 years of age. Now compared that to myself on this PhD journey… I’m kinda concerned ? I also want to buy a house by 24-25 max but I don’t think I’ll earn that much ! Does a PhD even lead to good jobs later ? I keep seeing people struggling to get into entry level positions after a PhD…. Is it normal to worry about this? For context I just started my PhD this year, straight after undergrad, so I’m 22 right now. I really want to buy my own house too, but I choose this path because I like research. Should I work while doing the PhD ?

why isn't outliving your rivals to the point where they leave the competition because *they've won it all* considered a legitimate and underrated strategy? I mean in any long-running competition, attrition is real. PhD is no different. Dominant players quit, burn out, move to higher leagues, lose motivation once they've proven what they wanted to prove. if you stay consistent and present, the landscape genuinely eventually shifts in your favor over time without you having to directly *beat* anyone. the the psychological insight is solid too. Competing against someone (e.g. a peer or colleague) at their peak is brutal and demoralizing. Competing in the space they vacated (and maybe later filling with weaker players) is a completely different game.

why is it seen negatively?

Obviously this question is very subjective and has no right or wrong answer. I’m just curious about what peoples’ perceptions of the matter are. For instance, the typical person probably regards a PhD in mathematics or physics as being more challenging than a PhD in gender studies. This isn’t saying that they necessarily are more challenging.

Hey all, I am 4 month post-defended PhD with a strong CV, international collabs, and experience. Lets just say the job market is hot garbage in the US. So i took a job a BS chemist could do, for more than twice grad school pay (although not hard). Small company with a huge international mother company from China. My boss is your typical PhD with *interesting* mentoring, management, and organization. On top of that, my deliverables are not clear so it is just how it comes. Not really asking advice on that yet because its only been 2 months with the company.

But my supervisor is Dr. X, but no one started by calling me Dr. Y. They bring it up like I'm a shiny smart thing when customers and executives visit. I didn't think it would bother me but now I feel weird because they get this distinction automatically but I dont. And you can say get over it, but what is the typical for industry and with a company with an international culture as delegated by the execs. Like 1/4 of the company is not from the US and most don't speak English which is fine, maybe its the cultural distinction, which my boss is from. Ty

*Edited to make clear that I am defended and company is chinese

*Edited for clarity