>Go into grad school and pursue a PHD because you've got a burning desire to turn one of your good ideas into a breakthrough. Yeah, this doesn't apply to mathe

>Go into grad school and pursue a PHD because you've got a burning desire to turn one of your good ideas into a breakthrough. Yeah, this doesn't apply to mathematics, where the undergraduate degree often doesn't even prepare you to understand the problem you would eventually get to work on. I participated in REUs and was a co-author on a published paper before I started my math PhD, and it was still a long journey to arrive at a project that ended up in a dissertation. One of the great things about grad school was that I got to learn mathematics that I wouldn't otherwise - not just in classes, of course. Getting more educated would have been a good enough reason. Aimless wandering was just a part of the journey, and a nearly inevitable one. While I am talking about mathematics here, theoretical computer science is just a branch of math, and is not much different. Looking back, there are many things that I could have done differently, lots of bullshit I could have avoided, and many things in that broken system that I could have dodged. But "don't go to grad school if you don't already have a project" just isn't a solid advice, in my opinion. It's great if that is the case, but you need to be very lucky for that to happen.