> I think I realized this subconsciously before I was conscious of it. This is grad school in a nutshell, in a lot of fields. I've seen three common responses

> I think I realized this subconsciously before I was conscious of it. This is grad school in a nutshell, in a lot of fields. I've seen three common responses to this cognitive dissonance: 1. Deny the brutal reality of the job market. 2. "But I couldn't ever be happy doing anything else!" 3. Leave. One of the strangest things about my grad school experience was watching very intelligent people spend years of their lives, and sometimes borrowing money they could never pay back, to pursue a degree even though deep down, they understood that it was a really bad idea. The rationalizations they came up with were pretty transparent to anyone who wasn't also in the grad school bubble. I suppose I sound harsh, but when people ask me if they should go to grad school in the field I did, my answer is always "not unless you are already independently wealthy and never need to work again."