I don't regret my doctorate. I don't.

But if I had everything to do over again, I would *never* get a PhD.

It narrows your options in ways you'd never imagine. But that's not why.

The process of getting a PhD--at least, at this point in time--is inherently abusive. It's cruel. And it demands that you accept the abusiveness, the capriciousness, the lack of control over your own life and your own destiny, as both appropriate and inevitable. That you internalize the abuse and perpetrate it against yourself, without end. That service to others is everything, that you don't deserve time to yourself, that you never,ever deserve a vacation from your work, that your only human value is in whatever knowledge you have--knowledge which is constantly devalued and denigrated by others.

The PhD process is nothing short of hazing.

I love teaching at university. It is a great joy in my life. But it wasn't worth the price of admission, and I can never get off of this ride now.

Think twice before you walk this path.