I did quit my Phd

I quit my PhD a month ago, and somehow I am quite happy with the result. The project was already off to a bad start, deteriorated from there and finally I did quit what had become an ordeal. Looking back, there were many occasions where I could have stopped the decline, but all chances were squandered. So what is left for me is, to serve as a cautionary tale.

I pursued a PhD in physics and my project was to improve a simulation package and use it for something interesting. Unfortunately nobody had experience with software development on this scale and especially there was no experience of development without the help of the original authors. I had at that time a few credits in computer games, but had only worked on algorithms and prototypes. Somehow I had convinced myself that architecture is not important. None of my collaborators had much programming experience either. So we committed many mortal sins of software development, requirements were shifted, best practices ignored and neat features implemented. All of these came back to haunt us.

But the technical side is merely the stage of the story I want to tell, how failure breeds failure. I was never in a similar situation before, every time I cared about something I passed with flying colors. And if something did not work like planned, then it was always easy to walk away. For my PhD this was not a option, so I tweaked what had worked in good times. Sometimes it did work, but never well enough to rescue the PhD.

The software development part of my PhD did not start well, I had the feeling that everything took much much longer than expected and I was unhappy that I could not show off my talent during the grind to implement a few basic features. Then everybody started to worry about a potential weakness of the simulation, which I knew was not important. Nevertheless, this gave me the chance to push for a much altered algorithm for the simulations and the new algorithm did everything I hoped it would. Additionally it broke a lot of assumptions in the code. It took countless hours, days, weeks and even month to exorcise the problems I had summoned. One bug in particular proved elusive, so I tried to work harder. This meant I would only bang my head against the same wall more often. ( I found the way around as soon as I took a week off at the end of the year.)

After this episode I thought we would bring the code into shape for a publication, write the publication and I could move on to physics. Unfortunately in the time it took to debug, there where ideas for new features. I had the feeling that my PhD was in jeopardy and I was scared of not getting it. So I started to implement the new ideas, which would not bring me closer to the PhD, at the same time as I realized that I will not continue science and additionally there was a, entirely planned, change in my financing, that meant lower pay and felt like a punishment.

At this point I was making mistakes because I was afraid of walking the plank on a sinking ship. I should have taken the measure of my situation, judge what the right course of action is and find someone who can give me a honest opinion on the plan. Instead I did nothing, I just followed the same path into misery that got me into this situation. What followed was a long, slow decline during which the expected outcome would be less and less getting my PhD and getting back onto a promising path would be more and more difficult.

From now on my motivation declined. Which lead to low productivity. Which lead to panic. Which lead to bad judgment and failure. This in turn depressed my motivation. This cycle repeated with just enough variation that I did not realize its nature. I would sometimes almost break it, by finding a short term goal, so that I would pull myself together until a collaborator has his PhD, until some feature is finished or the last time until we release the program. But as soon as the intermediate goal was reached the cycle began anew.

A consequence was, that my interest in physics vanished. I was a physics nerd all my life and when I started my PhD I read unrelated papers as a hobby. This stopped, probably as a result of the general decline of my motivation. But I did get the causality wrong and wasted energy trying to rekindle my interest. This is just one example of bad judgment in a failing project. If a project is failing there are two possibilities: either it is failing because better judgment is ignored. Then all hell shall be raised. Or it is failing because of fundamentally flawed judgment. Then these flaws need to be corrected first. The only way out of this dilemma is asking for advise, this can be hard but it is necessary. At the very latest when one does not trust ones own judgment any longer. I took much too long, I only got help when my PhD was already dead. But getting help was the right choice, even if it only helped me to quit my PhD for good.

Finally we did release the simulation package last year. At that time, I suspected that things would go back to what I hoped would be normal. I would concentrate on physics and cruise to the end of my PhD just as I did cruise through school and university. A ridiculous delusion. I was no longer the physics nerd that had started the PhD and by now neither the title nor the subject interested me any longer. So the cruise control was no longer aligned with physics and just doing interesting things would lead me to hacking. Or I would think about metaphysics, through which I discovered that my interest in physics was misguided in the first place. ( I leave it to the reader to decide if this is just bitterness speaking.) But the interest in my thesis did not return. I realized that this was not going to work. I tried to pull myself together and start grinding out a PhD as I did grind through the programming part. And the stars aligned.

I did start working on physics again, and did move forward a little bit. A few weeks later I talked to two friends and the topic of my PhD came up and one of them asked why I did still pursue it. My revealing answer was: "I don't know." Which they fortunately realized. This and a few following conversations did kick me out of my cycle of self pity and panic fueled activism. So I tried to orient myself again, and came up with a plan. I would first try to get myself rolling again, then reinforce it and after that I would tackle my PhD. With this, I would waste a few month, but I had already wasted years.

To implement the plan, I took one of my crazier ideas and worked on it. For the first time since the very beginning I did pick up some momentum. When I had produced something, I tried to discuss it with my adviser. So I tried to explain my perceived situation the general plan and why this time is different. And I got the answer that I should resurrect one of the projects that where buried by the problems of software development. I can not really blame him, from his perspective my plan to build some momentum first probably looked like another panic fueled episode of activism. So I tried to work on the suggested project. I made a bit of progress but my momentum did vanish again. But this time I had decided that this would be my last attempt. So I did quit.

In hindsight I did probably learn a lot more from failure than I could have learned from success. Most important perhaps, the path forward is not clear and even after failure I live to fight another day.


Epilogue:
This text is curiously devoid of other people, this is by design, as to not excuse my errors by decisions of others. So while I think that on numerous occasions my adviser, collaborators or friends would have had a chance to help, I can hardly hold a grudge against any of them. The failure is mine and mine alone. Additionally I am very much of two minds about the last paragraph. It is not comprehensive but I feel that it is very true. It omits however the advice to get help in a bad situation, others where there before. To end commenting on Tolstoy - " Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - this is not true. It's just how it feels.

For everybody who read a anonymous essay for so long, thank you for your attention. If you have questions or feedback you can reach me at IquitMyPhd@gmx.de