On Grad School And Mental Health

I originally wrote this post as a response to this article.

This is a great article, and an important one, but I would add something. You shouldn’t in any way take this to imply that I think anyone who’s suffering serious psychological stress because of a doctoral program should just “toughen up,” because that’s not what I mean. But, I think there’s something to be said, in addition to the article’s recommendations, for preparing yourself for the reality of what a doctoral program is going to be like before jumping in because “Yay, free tuition!” or “It’d be cool to be a doctor!” or because you’re not sure what to do with your life because you’ve always been in school and you’re not sure where to go next.

I’ve experienced a lot of the stresses the article mentions and have known many, many other people who have, but I also remember from my own experience in grad school that there were a significant amount of grad students in and around my program who had begun their doctoral program simply because teaching for their tuition seemed like a good financial deal and they were at a point in their 20s when they weren’t quite sure what else to do with themselves. Four years of relative financial stability sounded great! Hell, that’s why I accepted a position in my M.A. program, so I get it. But you can get away with that with an M.A. program in some cases. I did. Less so with a doctoral program.
I was aware from the get-go how difficult my doctoral program was going to be. I came in with a strong idea of what I wanted to study and what my dissertation was going to be about. I knew (almost) from day one who I wanted on my dissertation committee. I was prepared to put in godawful hours for four years and had accepted that I would not be likely to even get a decent-paying job at the end. It was still really hard. Many people came in with absolutely none of those things figured out. I can’t imagine how hard it was for them. Many of those people never finished, and suffered needlessly (it seemed to me) in the process.

So, a few things. First, if you want to take on a doctoral program for the value of the knowledge and skills you’ll gain and the experiences you’ll have while completing it, then go for it. Don’t sign up for the future sake of some assumed employment that you hope to receive at a later date and have that be your motivation. You’ll almost certainly be disappointed in the kind of job market we’re facing now. I had a stressful and ultimately great time in my program, but remained realistic throughout about my likelihood of getting a tenure-track job or even an adjunct job after getting the degree. It made a huge difference, I think, in how stressed I was on a daily basis for those four years. Accepting that what I was doing then might be the extent to which I ever progressed in the field helped me appreciate what I was working on at the time and kept me from worrying about the future overmuch. In short, if a doctoral program is just a means to an end for you, you should probably avoid joining it.

I was lucky enough to get a tenure track job after two years of searching, and let me tell you it does not get any easier. Worrying about committee service, teaching an absurd load of classes, playing department politics, staying current in your field and giving presentations, seeking out opportunities for initiatives that will separate you from the rest of the pack come promotion time…well, let’s just say that I’ve worked harder in the last two years at this job than I ever did as a graduate student. It’s only because of the mental structures I built as a grad student, the ones that helped me learn to minimize stress and manage tasks reliably, that I can function in this job without being miserable. Imaging a future tenure-track position as a relatively relaxing paradise is deluding yourself, and if the doctoral program is more stressful than fulfilling the “real” job will be as well. To use an appropriate metaphor, if you were in a psychologically abusive relationship with another person, you wouldn’t expect it to suddenly become fulfilling and supportive when you reached your fourth anniversary, would you? Why would this be any different? It’s not.

Which leads me to my last point: if you are struggling in the midst of a program, seriously consider getting out. There’s no shame in moving on to something else if it isn’t working out for you. I was able to get through because of my aforementioned preparation and a certain degree of mental flexibility. If I hadn’t been allowed to do things on my own terms, if I hadn’t had a large amount of control over my schedule, over my course content, and over the content of my research and the makeup of my committee; if I had been paid less; if I hadn’t had a largely supportive cohort of friends and a lot of great mentors, I would have quit. It wouldn’t have been worth it. You need to know where your threshold is and decide ahead of time on what you’re going to do if you’re driven past it, not after you’re already at your wits’ end.

Simply put: know what you’re getting into ahead of time and don’t be afraid to back out if it’s not working for you. Certainly, all of the things recommended in the article are useful suggestions, but you can also better avoid falling into a psychologically abusive cycle in the first place by honestly confronting the reality of doctoral programs rather than embracing the romanticized and ultimately destructive myth of “the scholarly life” that we’ve collectively inflated for so long. Nobody does this on purpose, of course, but it’s an easy thing to do without realizing it and it is at least partially to blame for the huge gulf between expectations and reality that lead many grad students down the dark paths described in the original article.