Tee hee, 404. You are right. It is clear that I spent my undergrad years watching midday television!

I am also a doctoral student - just started. I am doing an industrial phd, this means that I am working for a company (8 hrs per day) and this work is put towards the topic of the dissertation.
I personally hate the academia (its a strong word but thats the true). Doing a phd in a research lab in a university basement is a waste of time for me, regardless the research topic. In most cases, you are being taken advantage of, and work overtime for nothing. This is not a healthy life, it is a perverted notion of someone that thinks that he is doing something great for himself.

If I were to briefly point out the reasons I am continuing, I would have to say the following.

- I am 24 years old, a normal age for doing a phd.

- I am working at a multinational corporation, so when I finish I will have working experience as if I was working in the private sector all along.

- I like (not love) my research topic.

Although I hate aspects of academia, and agree about it being potentially unhealthy, I would question the part about "thinking somone is doing something great for themselves". I, and most people I know, start off in research because they are really want to learn as much as they can about an area they are passionate about.

I don't know any that go in thinking "I am doing this so I can become great!". I would argue that working for a multinational, just clocking in for a paycheck and making shareholders slightly richer is a bigger waste of time, but thats just me.

I concur with your points of being taken advantage of and the overtime, but I still believe that if PhD students and researchers asserted themselves more, and bargained collectively, they could get better working conditions.

i am in my 2nd year, ready to study with my field work- collecting data in hospitals and GPs- but sounds really complicated and difficult to manage, if not impossible. on top of that i have recently been informed that the organisation that granted my scholarship will close in 2 years time (8 months before i finish with my PhD, and even though people say that my grant is secured i doubt it) and my main supervisor is quitting his post and joins another department 5 hours away from the one we are based. And to finish with my story I have just came back from Greece ( that’s where I am coming from) after 3 weeks of holidays and I am as depressed as never. i don’t know what to do... quitting is an option but it is an easy one and I don’t really like.... but i guess this is the life of a PhD student. 3-4 years of great changes.... as far as money is concerned i am sure that PhDs will open the doors for huge opportunities to earn a lot of money( not necessarily in the academia).....

Hi, someone above mentioned, that he/she is doing an industrial PhD. How does that work? Which field?
Thumbs up for that topic! Made my day.

I like all of the posts here.
I basically would say that people drop not because they are lazy or not smart enough. People drop due to many more complex reasons. I guess most of the times, people just don't like the grad student life: isolation, loneliness, very competitive colleages, being treated like scum, lack of social life, not loving their topic, horrible supervisors and so on.... and the thinking that there is wonderful life outside of academia!! Being in the basement of a university building stuck for 4 years while your friends are living a life seems odd.

And...
One must think what is to have courage. Is it courage the force to keep doing something that makes you so miserable? Or is it courage to stop what makes you so miserable? Is it courage to stand a horrible life? Or is it courage to change your life? There is more risk to drop than to stay the course. If you stay, you know you will be miserable, but you have a certainty. If you drop you don't know what is in store for you, there is a lot of uncertainty in quitting.
People must be brave and look for happiness for, after all, the objective of life is to be happy!!

is it?

absolutely!!