Leaving Graduate School: Delicious Ambiguity

(Disclaimer: This is not a science news post, but a personal account of my choice to walk away from grad school. Regularly scheduled science will return on Wednesday, but until then be prepared for excessive use of the word "I.")

Quitting grad school.  I don't know how many times I typed those very words into my Google search box.  I was looking for someone else who'd been through it, just one person to tell me it would be okay.  I heard a lot of "You'll regret it" and "Don't throw away this great opportunity."  I didn't hear much of "This isn't for everyone" or "There are benefits to quitting."  But I did feel like a failure, through and through. Still do sometimes if I let myself. 

It didn't seem to matter how much I'd already accomplished or how much I hated it, I felt like it was my destiny.  I was smart and accomplished and I didn't want to walk out of school with $120,000 in debt like my vet school friends. Grad school was the only real option for me, or so I thought at the time. I was in a competition with no one, fighting only myself. 

My first semester was rough. I was in and then out of a dysfunctional relationship, missing my friends, and failing at focus.  I knew that I didn't want to be there anymore, but I kept telling myself that it would all be better next semester. I convinced myself that the outside distractions were the real problem.  As luck would have it, I got into my first choice lab, one of the best in the field. I told myself that this was the change I was looking for and that it would be smooth sailing from here.  But it wasn't.

I was surrounded with solid mentors, friendly lab mates, a supportive program, and a stimulating project. I was in graduate school heaven. And yet, that tiny voice was still there in the back of my mind telling me that this wasn't right.  The voice grew louder and louder and I grew angrier and more depressed. Why didn't I love it?  How could the girl who had everything she worked hard for be so unhappy?  So instead of blaming the rest of the world this time, I blamed myself.  Grad school wasn't the problem; I was.

I'd beat myself up daily over failures. If an experiment didn't work, it was because I couldn't hack it. If I misunderstood a paper, it was because I was the dumbest person in the room. If I missed an opportunity for a grant, it was because I didn't deserve to be there in the first place. I honestly remember telling people that I felt I was at the bottom of my peers, but at least I was in the race at all. My self esteem went out the window, and after a couple years of self emotional abuse, I became numb.  I couldn't bring myself to read the papers or run the experiments.  I dreaded going to lab. And all of this only got worse the closer I inched to my preliminary exam.

When my exam day came, I had everything planned for my own demise.  I was certain I was going to flop and be forced to leave the program.  Yes, I'd studied and knew my stuff up and down, but my head was full of doubt.  Instead my exam was stellar. How could that be? I reinvested myself in my work, banking off this molehill of confidence. My confidence took me elsewhere though, and I began to see the truth.  I was and am a capable person. I was smart enough to excel and get myself into the program in the first place. But determination and perseverance trump intelligence in academia. Not to say that those in academia aren't smart, they are among the brightest in the world, but their tenacity sets them apart. Why should I be tenacious about an end goal I couldn't justify to myself anymore? If I knew I never wanted my boss's job then I didn't need to be there.

Now, in the aftermath of it all, I do have some regrets, but none worth three or four more years of unhappiness.  No, I didn't leap into my dream job, and yes, I miss the people and the freedom that grad school allows, but I feel great about quitting. Maybe I can't be Dr. McDaniel this time around and for now that makes me incredibly happy. Gilda Radner said it best: "I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."