So as many graduate students are aware, burnout is real. That's why I took a hiatus from my blog. I do apologize to everyone for my hiatus. It's been a tough year.
Reason 1: My advisor.
Don't get me wrong, he's been great overall, but this year, he has been dragging ass hardcore. To be honest, I'm not even sure I'll be able to graduate on time because he keeps procrastinating. I honestly feel like he's put me on the backburner. I was his first master's student and his first full term PhD student, and it feels like I'm just an afterthought at this point. Yes, family comes first but you can't completely sacrifice your professional commitments (especially when someone else's professional career hangs in the balance). I keep asking him about the data for my dissertation and I keep getting the same answer "We have to wait for ___". Honestly, I'm over it. I was strung along for a lot of my master's degree because of his divorce, and to be honest, I'm going to be very pissed if my PhD gets delayed because he kept dragging ass about it. He's been good to me up until the last few years. I tried my best to be understanding when the divorce happened, but now, it's been at least 2 years. I feel bad being upset about it, but at the same time, my professional future hanging in the balance. I feel bad constantly hounding him for updates because I know he has to balance family and career, but I've been balancing at least 2 jobs for the last several years. As much as I want to be sympathetic, my sympathy is running out. I have had to juggle multiple jobs, but he can't keep me up to date on a dataset that's already been collected and he just needs to forward to me???? I really have tried my best to be sympathetic to him but I'm over it at this point. If I don't graduate on time, it's going to be his fault because he keeps putting shit off until the last absolute minute.
Reason 2: Retail
Recently, I had to go back to working retail because (not really a shocker) it pays more than being a graduate TA at UTSA. Literally, I'm making almost double what I was making as a TA in graduate school. However, we need more people to complete all the tasks they expect us to do. Instead of asking the district manager to allocate more hours so the customer service reps aren't stretched as thin, they just keep hiring more people, cutting the hours of those of us already employed and expecting us to do the job of 3 people. So that's super fun (not). To be honest, I'm only keeping this job until I can find a salary job that actually puts my degree to use, which is proving harder than I thought because I wanted to work in data analysis. They preach to us about stastistics but don't teach us the programs that are predominant in the field of data analysis. It's not like I've been out of school that long. I literally haven't even gotten my PhD yet, and none of the programs required for data analyst jobs I've heard of. Why preach to us about the benefits of being able to understand statistics and data analysis when I have to dedicate at least 6 months of my own personal time to learn a program that wasn't taught to us in graduate school? I understand they can't prep us for every aspect of the job field, but they shouldn't pretend to know all the ins and outs of a certain aspect of the field when they're only teaching a fraction of it. Until I started looking at data analyst jobs, I had never heard of SQL or Python, but most data analyst jobs expect their applicants to be fluent in at least one of them.
Reason 3: Disillusionment
When I began my PhD, I had high hopes for my future. If I got my PhD, that meant I was automatically going to have a leg up over my competition. It would've been nice to know then that that was a fucking myth. Yes, it gives me increased social credit. Most companies see Dr. ___ and automatically assume they are qualified for the job, but that's not the case. I want to work in data analystics because that's what I enjoyed most about the PhD program, but 99% of data analyst jobs expect fluency in Python or SQL which is definely not taught during our Psychology PhD program. They always preached to us about the benefits of being about to conduct data analysis, but if we don't know the programs data analysts expect us to know, how can we advance in the field?
All in all, as I approach graduation for my PhD in Psychology, I just keep becoming more and more disillusioned. I can't get a job in data analytics because I have 0 experience in the programs they expect me to be fluent in. I can't get a job in academia because I haven't published any work (because I had to work double duty to pay my bills and didn't have the time). I honestly feel like I've been mislead. I pursued my PhD for a chance at a better life, but now that I look into careers, I would've had a brighter future as a welder. I am absolutely heartbroken. I am going to keep pursuing it because I have come too far to give up now, but I'm not even sure if I want to pursue a career with my PhD because of how hard it is to find a job outside of academia without substantial research experience.
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