When is it time to leave a PhD program

Abstract

How do you decide a PhD is not for you and that perhaps you should downgrade to a master’s and leave academia?—Natasha Anyone who has completed a PhD has probably thought about leaving. Possibly multiple times. I certainly did. What is highly variable are the reasons why we might want to leave. In my case, I had burned myself out as an undergrad, then taken a 4-month break to recover, reassess my priorities, and live out my “dream life” snowboarding every day. I started grad school excited to get back to research and instead was confronted with classes and the looming threat of preliminary exams, the exact types of high-stress situations that I didn’t ever want to put myself through again. As a result, I spent what felt like every week of my first year of grad school informing my research adviser of my plans to leave. My adviser helped