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Academia is a trap

Written December 7, 2021. Contact me@spxtr.net with any questions or comments. I am a graduate student in physics at a top-tier university working with an excellent advisor. I have loved my time here, but jeez, academia on the whole is seriously messed up.

Most graduate students and postdocs have never spent any significant time outside of academia. We go straight from high school to undergrad, from undergrad to grad school, from grad school to our first postdoc, from there to our second postdoc, and so on. At each stage, we have to make a choice: either continue in academia, or leave for the real world. There is intense pressure to continue. Why?

We strongly identify as scientists. We do what we do for the love of it. We watched Sagan growing up and internalized the message that science is one of humanity's greatest endeavors, that it doesn't matter that our research is not applicable to the real world, that knowledge's sake is reason enough. To leave behind such a romantic world for the brutalist "industry" is a tragedy. My friend's advisor openly refers to his former postdocs who left academia for industry as losers.
All of our friends are scientists. We have to move to a completely new city at each stage of academic life, so it's hard to keep in touch with old friends. Hobbies are something for people with real jobs. For us, our work is our hobby. As such, we spend most of our waking time, including weekends, working on our research. Another friend's advisor told her that he expects her to work at least 80 hour weeks. She joined his group, and does.
We discuss our career options with our advisor. They tell us that if we work hard and persevere then we will succeed. That is how they got their job, after all. We never talk to the losers who now work in industry.
Once we leave, they say we will find it much more difficult to come back. They're probably right.
After we are several years into our PhD, the sunk cost is enormous. If we quit graduate school then we have almost nothing to show for those years of stress, sub minimum wage, and delayed life milestones. A master's degree in theoretical physics is worth nothing at all.

Take for example the graduate student who is considering whether or not to do a postdoc. On the advice of their advisor, they apply for a postdoc a full eight months before graduating. One month later, they are accepted. At that point, their two options are 1) accept the postdoc offer, work hard on research, graduate, and go straight into the postdoc, or 2) reject the postdoc offer and continue to work on research, all the while panicking because what are they going to do after graduating? They've never had a real job before, and all the data science postings require 3-5 years of experience or a CS degree. They don't have savings and their visa won't let them stay in the USA for long without employment. Will anyone hire them? Should they be learning computer programming instead of working on their thesis? They accept the postdoc and kick the can down the road.

It's no surprise that academia and depression go hand-in-hand. This place is a trap, a low key cult, and a comprehensive exercise in cognitive bias. Once we are in, we are strongly pressured to stay in, even if we completely hate the place, even if it is literally killing us. When your friend decides to drop out of graduate school, congratulate them. It probably wasn't easy.