I wish I could say the same thing. I wish I could say that I would rather do science for the sake of science, but life just sucks because I need money to survive. Which I cannot get. I would love to produce something out of my own research that could support my other endeavors (and even feed me) so that I would not have to rely on someone else for handouts all the time.
Is this a common idea?
I don’t WANT to need money, but I don’t WANT to be someone’s slave my entire life, and the cycle has already begun–grad school is not a job, but they control whether I live or die, in essence.
Whether you live or ide?
I don’t think it’s that serious. I hope not, anyway!
If you hate it so much, I’d say get out now. Start looking for a job that pays you what you need to be paid.
Seriously. Think about what it would mean to you to quit now. If it makes you feel relieved, if it makes you feel defeated, if you think you’d regret it. You can’t know what it would mean if you really did it, or what would happen. But you can be honest with yourself about how you feel about your life right now.
If you died tomorrow, which would you regret more? Staying or going?
Get a job on the side so you can earn a little extra cash for snacks. No sense in starving!
Another option- get some fellow students together and demand better pay, benefits, etc. There are unions for grad students. Go on strike. What have you got to lose?
If you go around letting yourself be controlled by fear of unemployment, you’ll be miserable. Believe me, I’ve thought about this A LOT.
I always try to look at the grad school and postdoc years as TEMPORARY, just some of the hurdles on the racetrack to having my own lab.
I don’t want to be someone’s bitch my entire life, either. But guess what- I can be pretty bitchy myself.
Hang in there. You sound like my kinda person, and I managed to get a PhD despite quite a few hurdles. Ask yourself what is the degree for, what will it get you, how much farther will you have to go to get a job you really enjoy? I hate being a postdoc, but it’s a necessary evil to get me where I want to be. Sometimes I think seriously about quitting, but usually something happens to remind me why I like what I do, what I’m doing it all for.
If that’s not enough- GET OUT NOW. Otherwise, look at it this way: If it were easy and fun, they wouldn’t call it work. This is a career we’re talking about, not a bed of rose petals. Most of them are not easy.