I see lots of posts on this forum about how much people hate their PhD! I know it's not all fun and roses but maybe if people shared a bit more about why they are enjoying their PhD it might make people feel a bit happier.

I write a blog about PhD life here - http://www.jobs.ac.uk/blogs/real-life/2010/11/02/love-your-phd/

Let me know what you think and why you love your PhD! :-)

I love my PhD because it' s exactly what I want to do at the moment in my life. It entails so many interesting things such as presentations, conferences, meeting the experts of the field etc. and it helps obtaining so many skills during the way. It's hard and challenging enough so that I don't get bored, no day seems to be the same as the previous one. I also get paid for it, so that I'm financially independent. I wouldn't change it for any other job :p.

Mostly enjoy it, I did it real tough early on even though I loved my project (passion and getting to do it for my PhD was great) and it pushed me to breaking point. I made it past that hurdle, and have worked hard since despite other things in my life, and I mostly enjoy the project, even though its just hard work sometimes and grinds me down.

Nearing the point of completion of my PhD, I actually hated that I made that choice. It was because I focused on the negatives in outlook at that point, such as the job market, the economy, the need to make ends meet, and how others would view me. But now that I finished it, I am getting back a lot of the interest which spurred me onto doing it in the first place and finishing it. I spent 4 years or so of my life doing something which I was interested in, made the best out of it by travelling around in conferences, testing ideas (whether good or bad), and got to see another side of me which I never thought I could have or would have if I had stayed in my comfort zone and chosen to opt for working life outside academia. Something a counsellor used to tell me was this about life: when we have bad things coming our way, some of these are not necessarily meant to be evil things, but challenges for us to test our capabilities for changing them into our opportunity to shine. I now understand what she means. It does not mean life gets easier for me because I am now graduated with a PhD and have to deal with strange and negative opinions from people who do not understand the need for graduate studies. But look at it this way. Not many people have even the capacity to get into graduate school, and the dropout rates for PhDs in North America and a lot of other countries is possibly more than 50% at least(it's 50% in Canada where I did mine, as I heard), so instead of seeing a PhD as something "irrelevant" to the working world the way some people outside of it choose to see it, why not see it as a means of proving in fact that you are the cream of the crop and among the most intelligent in society?