68. It is stressful.

Graduate school is stressful. Sometimes it is terribly stressful. Stress is virtually unavoidable in any kind of work, but there is a peculiar quality to the stress of graduate school. The worst thing about it is the fact that it is caused by things that really do not matter. No one’s life (not even yours) depends on your meeting thesis deadlines, on your comprehensive exams, or on your finishing a dissertation (see Reason 60). The world will not fall to pieces if you publish an imperfect article, or fail to publish anything. Apart from what it contributes to your progress down a career path, the substance of your work will probably have no significant effect on anyone. But the stress it causes you is very real.

Why is it so stressful? In grad school, the work is not only hard (see Reason 9), but it rests entirely on your shoulders and is constantly subject to the judgment and subjective standards of others. You perform it with little immediate reward and no certainty of any future reward (see Reason 8). And you do so in a competitive environment populated by people who are just as stressed as you are (see Reason 50). You have little money and perhaps a great deal of debt, and even though you are free to walk away, there is a price to pay for leaving (see Reason 11). It takes longer to complete than you expect (see Reason 4), and while you spend so much time on things that really do not matter, your life options dwindle as your investment in the great academic job-market gamble increases (see Reason 29). Rather than giving you an increasing sense of confidence, every passing year of graduate school can be more stressful than the one before it.