December 2013. I’m a 3rd year PhD student in biological physics and I just came home from another night in the lab. It’s 2 am, my experiment failed… again. My plans for the weekend? Sleep 6 hours and go back to the lab to try again. Nothing very special here, this is what PhD students in the sciences feel obliged to do – spend their life in the lab. The project I focused on for the past two years wasn’t fruitful, so we decided to change strategy and start from scratch, adding stress on to an already stressful PhD. New project, new unknowns. To produce results and catch up with publications, I’ve been working close to 80 hours per week for the last 6 months.
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At Breaking Point: Burnout and its Consequences Post-PhD by Marissa Edwards
As I leaned against the wall of my apartment, tears running down my face, one thought kept circling around and around in my head: “This shouldn’t be happening.”
Indeed, from all outside appearances, my life was pretty good. I had completed my PhD with no major difficulties, I had a supportive family and a wonderful circle of friends, I had no major health problems, I had a job that I loved and knew I was a strong candidate for a tenure-track position in the near future, and had no significant financial difficulties. I was incredibly privileged and still recognize how lucky I was. So why was I crying so hard, and why couldn’t I leave my apartment?
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