When to Stop a PhD

I have supervised many doctoral students. Some have gone on to successful careers in academia, others in industry, a few are in the early stages of making their way in the world. Some completed their doctorates, others did not. I am proud of all of them, and of their achievements.

I have provided quite a bit of advice at prof.so. Too much, you may say. There are articles on how to start and how to finish a doctorate. But not when to stop. Because we do not tend to discuss that. I want to break the taboo. I want to talk about when a doctorate does not 'work out'.

There are very many clever, hard working people who cannot and will not finish a doctorate. These people will go on to successful careers and will contribute to science and technology, perhaps more than some of their counterparts with 'Dr.' in front of their name. The inability to complete a doctorate does not make them any less clever or hard working. It simply means they have different skills, motivations, interests and, perhaps, circumstances - not less worthy, just different.

How can you tell if you (or your student) are one of these? First, it is necessary to establish whether you are suffering from a common disease whose symptoms can confuse - 'the PhD blues'. If you feel lost, that your progress has slowed to a crawl, that you flip-flop between a fear that your problem is insoluble and that it has been solved many times before, that your chosen topic is, in the great scheme of things, unimportant, that all your ideas are proving infeasible, do not worry. This is perfectly normal. I would go further, it is an experience that all students have and probably is a necessary phase in independent research work. Some, many, students, also suffer, concurrently with the PhD blues, from a variant of 'imposter syndrome' in which they feel unworthy and that they will at any moment be 'discovered' as less clever than they have held themselves out to be. Suffering from the PhD blues or bouts of imposter syndrome are not, repeat not, reasons to stop

The very fact that you have qualified to undertake a doctorate most likely means that you are industrious and that you are persistent. Giving up, walking away from things, is not in your nature, or perhaps, more accurately, not in your experience. Persistence for persistence's sake is however not a virtue. If you are doing a doctorate for purely instrumental reasons, stop. You have to care about your subject, you must have passion, you cannot fake it, because you are only fooling yourself. Why? Simply because research is a creative act and creativity absolutely requires that passion. Second, you cannot do a doctorate for somebody else, simply to meet parental or family expectations. Yes, duty and responsibility can get you through some of the long dark nights that are part of research, but research is at base a deeply personal undertaking, it is ultimately about you, and who you are.

The test you might want to apply is whether you are enjoying yourself. For sure every day might not be enjoyable but overall the experience of a doctorate has to be enjoyable, even fun. Otherwise why are you doing it? Where is it leading you? Most likely to more of the same. Now this may seem a strange thing to weigh in the balance against obligation, expectation and a perhaps a large amount of 'sunk' investment in fees. Trust me, it is not.

There are very few skills that cannot be acquired, mathematical, practical, analytic, experimental. All of these require that you are unafraid to confront and overcome the difficulties of doing so. You must be able to draw on inner resources of what is politely called courage but less politely foolhardy self confidence. The willingness to take a risk, to fail and to pick yourself up and not to think the skill is beyond you. This egotism combined with sheer bloody mindedness is not a social virtue but is a requirement for completing a doctorate and you must honestly assess whether you possess it.

A doctorate will also call on a certain kind of ruthlessness. It is usually easy to be critical of others. You must be prepared to look at your own work and at ideas that you have invested time and emotion in and judge them unworthy. More, you must devote yourself to seeking ways to subvert and invalidate these ideas. Many highly creative individuals cannot do this, and perhaps this is why they are creative, they lack the ability to self-edit, yet it is of the essence for science and scholarship. Are you sufficiently black hearted?

Finally, though you cannot complete a doctorate for somebody else, you will need a network of personal  support. If you have a partner they must be completely behind you. Your partner, or your friends, may not understand what you are doing or even why you are doing it but they must be supportive. If they cannot support you, you had better decide, the doctorate or them.

Whatever you decide, I wish you well