Funk it, we quit!

Desk Reject: der PhD-Cast

or why we didn't and you should

Each host has thought about it, some of them still do, but none of the hosts had the guts to do it: Quitting our PhD. With a lot of talk on Twitter and articles documenting the mental health issues of early career academics (see e.g. Hazell, 2020 in "Systematic Reviews", Hazell, 2022 in the LSE blog), the question arises as to why people do or don't quit. So the hosts of the desk reject podcast thought it high time to discuss the topic of quitting: Both in relation to observations they have made over their time as a grad student, as well as to discuss when or why thoughts about quitting became salient for them. One thing that the hosts can agree upon - grad students should be quitting more readily than they are at the moment. Among other things, in this episode the hosts talk about:

• reasons why they have thought about quitting
• why it is so hard for grad students to consider quitting
• ideas on what factors should be part of the decision process of quitting
• the best time (not) to quit
• what the hosts would be doing if they quit their PhD right now And much more - buckle up, it's a long one.

This episode was recorded in Vienna at the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Music for the intro and outro was provided by: Blue Dot Session

The Logo for our Podcast was designed by: Stephan Kardos (Creative Prism)

This episode was recorded and produced by: Alexander Staub

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Kapitel

1. Start (00:00:00)

2. Guesstimation Question (00:00:01)

3. Intro (00:01:45)

4. Why are the hosts still here? (00:01:59)

5. Cycles of bad time (00:02:42)

6. What are factors that influence thoughts of quitting? (00:04:51)

7. The quitting-train has left the station (00:06:22)

8. When are good points to quit? (00:07:30)

9. Is it harder to quit as a grad student? (00:08:19)

10. Quitting a PhD vs quitting academia (00:11:52)

11. Find reasons to quit (00:14:02)

12. There are no positive incentives by design in a phd (00:22:09)

13. Can you be the dumbest person in the room for ever? (00:25:10)

14. Or do you want to be an expert all the time? (00:27:29)

15. Best advice - quit (00:35:24)

16. Why you should quit (00:37:18)

17. The decision to quit is highly personal - and nobody cares (00:38:24)

18. Quitting is the most corageous thing you can do (00:39:57)

19. What would the hosts be doing if they quit? (00:46:00)

20. The most important segment (00:50:12)

21. Guesstimation solution (00:51:54)

22. Outro (00:53:45)

23. Bonus (00:54:58)