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About a month before my dissertation defense, I had already accepted a postdoc offer across the country, put in notice on my apartment, signed a new lease and a

About a month before my dissertation defense, I had already accepted a postdoc offer across the country, put in notice on my apartment, signed a new lease and arranged my cross-country move, but I had an absolutely impossible amount of work left on the list of things my dissertation committee claimed I needed to do before I could graduate, and my experiments just weren't working. It was clear that the work was impossible, but the committee wouldn't budge on the fact that I had to finish it. I was working around the clock and then laying in bed for a few hours worrying before working some more, and I absolutely couldn't take it anymore. I decided the only solution was to drop out, which meant the postdoc would rescind my offer, and I'd have to break the new lease, cancel the move, etc. I went into the admin office to let them know I was simply not coming into the lab anymore and they could do whatever they wanted to do about it. Suddenly the "must do" list evaporated and they said I could just write up my work and graduate. So I did, and I got the phd and went off to the postdoc and it all turned out fine-- it turns out all I needed to do was decide to throw my life away and really mean it, in order to call their bluff. I think the experience gave me a better sense of when I'm approaching the burnout zone, so that I can better avoid it. I've also never experienced anything even close to this in a work environment -- if my job was like that, I'd quit in a hot second and go work somewhere not-awful. It was only the fact that they were holding the degree hostage that caused me to feel forced to overwork myself into an unhealthy state.

ben_jones 9y ago
I think extreme apathy to the point of "throwing your life away" is extremely common and should be warned against. Whether its quitting your job, leaving a relationship, moving, large decisions are often not best made in emotional states or under extreme duress - though they are completely understandable. From personal experience the only advice I would beg people in similar situations to take is to reach out for help on all fronts. Professional, family, work, friends, etc. can all offer advice at times like these. I say this hypocritically because I myself did not choose help throughout my life when I was in similar situations. Getting help is really hard sometimes. But if you are not trying to get help you are not actively accepting all your options. And I want to say I'm not trying to take away from your story at all. I've just seen many who have thrown it away where it didn't "all turn out ok".
- Mz 9y ago
  I think the only warning you need to give people is that this needs to not be a bluff. You need to be fully prepared to accept the consequences. It needs to not be grandstanding, thinking that if you are willing to "throw your life away" it will somehow magically open doors and those consequences will go away, like you read on the internet that they did for someone else. I had a similar experience to the OP, not with burnout per se, but with health issues. I spent 3.5 years in constant, excruciating pain. When I no longer cared whether I would live or die, I just wanted to hurt less, I stumbled across a path forward. It turns out that doing things that genuinely reduce your pain (after pain meds no longer work) tends to get at the root cause of the problem. I was medically on "death row" anyway. This is not a thing you can recommend for people to just throw caution to the wind and wildly experiment. But, when you are 100 percent clear that this path is so broken that anything else is preferable (even literally death), it can be very freeing in terms of allowing you to make choices that were previously unthinkable.
  - xaa 9y ago
    Oh, yeah. Health issues. For me, it got to the point where every morning I would wake up and vomit. It got to be part of my morning routine to just get it over with before heading straight to work. Otherwise it might happen in the car. I think the apathy that accompanies depression and burnout is your body's way of telling you: "your current set of goals and priorities is really, REALLY not working for me, and you need to change something". What leads to burnout is ignoring these increasingly desperate signals from your body and brain.
xaa 9y ago
I just defended on Wednesday, and had a similar experience, but not quite as extreme. For me, the pressure was internal rather than external -- my committee was (in retrospect) OK with my progress and ready to let me go, but I wasn't. I felt my dissertation wasn't "ready", I didn't want to have my name on something that wasn't "good enough". But even though the circumstances were different, it led me to the same place eventually. After months of the same kind of lifestyle, I decided I just didn't care anymore, was ready to go be a farmer or something if they failed me, and would just submit what I had. Obviously it worked out fine (so far). But it will be some time before I recover from that level of stress. I developed fairly severe alcoholism that I am just now starting to step down from. As happens with burnout, my efficiency was terrible during this period, which made everything worse. I hear this kind of experience is pretty common for a dissertation -- everyone goes through some twisted version of the stages of grief before submission.
throwa889889889 9y ago
I had the same experience, but I did quit. I joined a famous lab in Europe to do a PhD. My second supervisor was and still is a really highly cited. He interviewed me and I got an offer next day. The odd thing was I got an email a few days after the offer stating a different person I had only briefly met during my interview would be my first supervisor. This made me very suspicious. I did in fact reject the offer initially due to concerns over this, but they did convince me to accept it. Big mistake. Things started going south after half a year. The group dynamics was very strange. My first supervisor, a young PI, was trying to block all project opportunities I had with my second supervisor. The latter was a very good guy, with some anxiety problems, and did not know how to play this kind of corridor politics games. After two and a half years, things were in such a bad shape, I started applying to other programs. It's an interesting experience to apply to some places without recommendation letters. I got many weird looks during interviews. Fortunately, my CV is good and I got offers from half a dozen top 10 universities. When I announced I would leave, shortly before the time I should start writing, everyone panicked. They guaranteed me I would pass, but I couldn't cope with the idea of handing in a rubbish dissertation. Maybe it was the wrong choice. It was a really exhausting situation, and I am still coping with some long-term burnout. A year after I left, the lab melted down as they exhausted all funding. PIs were living a luxurious lifestyle. We would even have group retreats abroad in 5* hotels. Ridiculous and sad, because it was a lovely place.
amelius 9y ago
Whenever I feel a burnout coming, I'm going into max-sleeping mode: I then sleep 10 hours or more each day. It seems to help.
- 0xbear 9y ago
  Solid advice. That's what I do as well.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  This might sound weird, but I seriously love my sleep. Self employed independent developer now so I can structure my life in whatever way I want it to. I just feel way better and am more productive whenever I get between 8 to 10 hours of sleep every day + don't have to wake up from an alarm.
sndean 9y ago
> It was only the fact that they were holding the degree hostage that caused me to feel forced to overwork myself into an unhealthy state. Though I didn't have as extreme of a situation, I did have to do another year before I could get the PhD. I gained 50+ pounds, stopped shaving, became nocturnal, and averaged ~5 hours/day of sleep. Really don't understand how my SO stayed with me through that. And I only took ~4.5 years to finish. Can't imagine what sort of shape I would've been in if it was strung out to 6 or 7 years. It really made me appreciate being healthy, getting 8 hours of sleep, and time. While I don't necessarily recommend going through that, I do think everyone should experience what it's like to work 80+ hour weeks (at least for a short period of time), because it's difficult to convey how awful it is.
- adamzerner 9y ago
  > While I don't necessarily recommend going through that, I do think everyone should experience what it's like to work 80+ hour weeks (at least for a short period of time), because it's difficult to convey how awful it is. Interesting idea. Seems similar to what stoicism recommends, from what I understand. I think they say to give up your comforts once in a while so that you appreciate them more. Which seems sensible to me.
  - madengr 9y ago
    Ugh, 80 hour weeks. The hourly staff at our facility went on strike for several weeks. Engineering had to do their normal work, and cover production. Not doing that again.
eob 9y ago
I have long thought the PhD experience is kin to historical tales from Zen monasteries. "Enlightenment" comes not when you pass the master's test, but when you realize you've gotten what you came for and simply tell the master you're leaving. I allocated and enforced a timeline of only 3 months for dissertation writing -- to the frustration of my committee -- precisely because I had a sense this was how the game worked.
- nugga 9y ago
  This hits close to home so I have to chime in: Got burnt out at work, pretty much did nothing for weeks, spent all my vacation days, some sick days, a month on actual sick leave and then finally told boss with 2-3 months left of my contract that I can't do anything on site please let's cancel the contract or I'm taking more sick leave. He gave me remote work instead with less responsibilities. Getting better.
hyperpallium 9y ago
They get funds when you graduate.
audiometry 9y ago
How did they justify (to themselves) how their laundry list of must-do's became can-skip's? Did it make a meaningful difference to the conclusions or strength of conclusions in your thesis?
- bonniemuffin 9y ago
  Who cares-- it's not like anybody reads dissertations. :) My dissertation was composed of several papers which were each published in peer-reviewed journals, so the last unfinished bit just had a lot of "future directions" and became a different grad student's paper (e.g. I passed on the end of the project to someone else to finish and publish), as I recall.

ben_jones 9y ago

I think extreme apathy to the point of "throwing your life away" is extremely common and should be warned against. Whether its quitting your job, leaving a relationship, moving, large decisions are often not best made in emotional states or under extreme duress - though they are completely understandable. From personal experience the only advice I would beg people in similar situations to take is to reach out for help on all fronts. Professional, family, work, friends, etc. can all offer advice at times like these. I say this hypocritically because I myself did not choose help throughout my life when I was in similar situations. Getting help is really hard sometimes. But if you are not trying to get help you are not actively accepting all your options. And I want to say I'm not trying to take away from your story at all. I've just seen many who have thrown it away where it didn't "all turn out ok".

Mz 9y ago
I think the only warning you need to give people is that this needs to not be a bluff. You need to be fully prepared to accept the consequences. It needs to not be grandstanding, thinking that if you are willing to "throw your life away" it will somehow magically open doors and those consequences will go away, like you read on the internet that they did for someone else. I had a similar experience to the OP, not with burnout per se, but with health issues. I spent 3.5 years in constant, excruciating pain. When I no longer cared whether I would live or die, I just wanted to hurt less, I stumbled across a path forward. It turns out that doing things that genuinely reduce your pain (after pain meds no longer work) tends to get at the root cause of the problem. I was medically on "death row" anyway. This is not a thing you can recommend for people to just throw caution to the wind and wildly experiment. But, when you are 100 percent clear that this path is so broken that anything else is preferable (even literally death), it can be very freeing in terms of allowing you to make choices that were previously unthinkable.
- xaa 9y ago
  Oh, yeah. Health issues. For me, it got to the point where every morning I would wake up and vomit. It got to be part of my morning routine to just get it over with before heading straight to work. Otherwise it might happen in the car. I think the apathy that accompanies depression and burnout is your body's way of telling you: "your current set of goals and priorities is really, REALLY not working for me, and you need to change something". What leads to burnout is ignoring these increasingly desperate signals from your body and brain.

xaa 9y ago

I just defended on Wednesday, and had a similar experience, but not quite as extreme. For me, the pressure was internal rather than external -- my committee was (in retrospect) OK with my progress and ready to let me go, but I wasn't. I felt my dissertation wasn't "ready", I didn't want to have my name on something that wasn't "good enough". But even though the circumstances were different, it led me to the same place eventually. After months of the same kind of lifestyle, I decided I just didn't care anymore, was ready to go be a farmer or something if they failed me, and would just submit what I had. Obviously it worked out fine (so far). But it will be some time before I recover from that level of stress. I developed fairly severe alcoholism that I am just now starting to step down from. As happens with burnout, my efficiency was terrible during this period, which made everything worse. I hear this kind of experience is pretty common for a dissertation -- everyone goes through some twisted version of the stages of grief before submission.

throwa889889889 9y ago

I had the same experience, but I did quit. I joined a famous lab in Europe to do a PhD. My second supervisor was and still is a really highly cited. He interviewed me and I got an offer next day. The odd thing was I got an email a few days after the offer stating a different person I had only briefly met during my interview would be my first supervisor. This made me very suspicious. I did in fact reject the offer initially due to concerns over this, but they did convince me to accept it. Big mistake. Things started going south after half a year. The group dynamics was very strange. My first supervisor, a young PI, was trying to block all project opportunities I had with my second supervisor. The latter was a very good guy, with some anxiety problems, and did not know how to play this kind of corridor politics games. After two and a half years, things were in such a bad shape, I started applying to other programs. It's an interesting experience to apply to some places without recommendation letters. I got many weird looks during interviews. Fortunately, my CV is good and I got offers from half a dozen top 10 universities. When I announced I would leave, shortly before the time I should start writing, everyone panicked. They guaranteed me I would pass, but I couldn't cope with the idea of handing in a rubbish dissertation. Maybe it was the wrong choice. It was a really exhausting situation, and I am still coping with some long-term burnout. A year after I left, the lab melted down as they exhausted all funding. PIs were living a luxurious lifestyle. We would even have group retreats abroad in 5* hotels. Ridiculous and sad, because it was a lovely place.

amelius 9y ago

Whenever I feel a burnout coming, I'm going into max-sleeping mode: I then sleep 10 hours or more each day. It seems to help.

0xbear 9y ago
Solid advice. That's what I do as well.
charlesdm 9y ago
This might sound weird, but I seriously love my sleep. Self employed independent developer now so I can structure my life in whatever way I want it to. I just feel way better and am more productive whenever I get between 8 to 10 hours of sleep every day + don't have to wake up from an alarm.

sndean 9y ago

> It was only the fact that they were holding the degree hostage that caused me to feel forced to overwork myself into an unhealthy state. Though I didn't have as extreme of a situation, I did have to do another year before I could get the PhD. I gained 50+ pounds, stopped shaving, became nocturnal, and averaged ~5 hours/day of sleep. Really don't understand how my SO stayed with me through that. And I only took ~4.5 years to finish. Can't imagine what sort of shape I would've been in if it was strung out to 6 or 7 years. It really made me appreciate being healthy, getting 8 hours of sleep, and time. While I don't necessarily recommend going through that, I do think everyone should experience what it's like to work 80+ hour weeks (at least for a short period of time), because it's difficult to convey how awful it is.

adamzerner 9y ago
> While I don't necessarily recommend going through that, I do think everyone should experience what it's like to work 80+ hour weeks (at least for a short period of time), because it's difficult to convey how awful it is. Interesting idea. Seems similar to what stoicism recommends, from what I understand. I think they say to give up your comforts once in a while so that you appreciate them more. Which seems sensible to me.
- madengr 9y ago
  Ugh, 80 hour weeks. The hourly staff at our facility went on strike for several weeks. Engineering had to do their normal work, and cover production. Not doing that again.

eob 9y ago

I have long thought the PhD experience is kin to historical tales from Zen monasteries. "Enlightenment" comes not when you pass the master's test, but when you realize you've gotten what you came for and simply tell the master you're leaving. I allocated and enforced a timeline of only 3 months for dissertation writing -- to the frustration of my committee -- precisely because I had a sense this was how the game worked.

nugga 9y ago
This hits close to home so I have to chime in: Got burnt out at work, pretty much did nothing for weeks, spent all my vacation days, some sick days, a month on actual sick leave and then finally told boss with 2-3 months left of my contract that I can't do anything on site please let's cancel the contract or I'm taking more sick leave. He gave me remote work instead with less responsibilities. Getting better.

hyperpallium 9y ago

They get funds when you graduate.

audiometry 9y ago

How did they justify (to themselves) how their laundry list of must-do's became can-skip's? Did it make a meaningful difference to the conclusions or strength of conclusions in your thesis?

bonniemuffin 9y ago
Who cares-- it's not like anybody reads dissertations. :) My dissertation was composed of several papers which were each published in peer-reviewed journals, so the last unfinished bit just had a lot of "future directions" and became a different grad student's paper (e.g. I passed on the end of the project to someone else to finish and publish), as I recall.