A few days ago I was asked by some last year students advice on how to decide whether doing a PhD is the right thing to do. I will put here a summary of what I told them, just in case it can be useful for someone else.
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[Disclaimer: What follows are personal opinions based on STEM disciplines in Europe. So this is a partial and (by definition) incomplete picture.
Also, I am assuming you like the subject you want to do a PhD in, and that you can find a supervisor who is not a sociopath.]
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During a PhD you will tackle one or more problems/questions that no one has a answer for. This is dramatically different from what you have ever done at Uni, where all problems had a solution somewhere.
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Your supervisor probably has experience in the field, so might have some clue and have made some educated guesses. But they don& #39;t have an answer. They probably don& #39;t even truly understand the question. So this is going to be a learning experience for both of you.
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Nobody knows exactly what you should do to answer the question, so the vast majority of what you will try will turn out to be a dead end.
Doesn& #39;t matter how good/smart you are, you will spend the vast majority of your time failing to solve the problem.
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So the question you should ask yourself is: "do you like the process of learning from your mistakes?"
If you enjoy the process of discovery, then you are probably the right person for a PhD.
If failing frustrates the hell out of you, you are not.
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In the end it doesn& #39;t truly matter who you are, what your background is, how cool was the Uni you studied at etc.
If you have no problem accepting you don& #39;t know, and like learning a ton of new stuff from your failures, you are the right person for a PhD https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🙂" title="Leicht lächelndes Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Leicht lächelndes Gesicht">
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