Quitting my PhD was one the BEST decisions I ever made in my life. I’ve never been happier since. But, why would someone leave a PhD in pure mathematics? I mean, isn’t it the pinnacle of knowledge and prestige? I’m gonna share 3 reasons for why I did it, and my hunch tells me that many of you who are watching this video will be able to relate very strongly to me.
In 2014 I started my bachelor’s in physics, and like most people, I expected to have a very long career in academia and eventually win the Nobel Prize. By my second year, my dream changed to just finishing my bachelor’s degree and surviving for the next 3 years. Anyway, in 2019 I completed the bachelor’s in physics and I ended up doing a Master’s in Pure Mathematics, and finally got accepted into a PhD program to study Analysis. But, then, I got disillusioned. I finally ended up getting to the point that I’ve always dreamed of, but it was not at all what I expected. And these are the three reasons why:
- Freedom
I started this whole journey because I truly love learning. And at first, a PhD sounded like the ideal setup to keep feeding my curiosity. You’re surrounded by smart people, you’re digging into hard problems, and it’s supposed to be this intellectual playground, right? But I quickly realized that research, in that environment, is not the same thing as learning freely.
There’s this great moment in one of Carlo Rovelli’s books, “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics”, where he mentions that as a student, he actually looked forward to university vacations. Why? Because only then he could actually study, on his own terms. No assignments, no scheduled lectures. Just time to think, and understand deeply.
In a PhD program, there’s very little space for that kind of individual pacing. You’re inside a rigid box, where the expectations are clear, and very narrow. You have one problem, often chosen within a very specific subfield. You’re supposed to spend 3, 4, 5 years digging into it. That’s it. And yes this depth does sound noble, but unfortunately it often comes at the cost of everything else that made learning exciting in the first place.
But when I put myself outside of that structure, and gave myself permission to fish around, to explore topics broadly, and to follow my own curiosity across disciplines, I figured out that I often ended up learning faster, and even better. So, you become more resourceful. You ask better questions, because that’s something you actually care about, something you actually want to know.
I believe that the freedom to look for answers anywhere can make you a better researcher than following a predefined path. But in a PhD program, that freedom doesn’t exist. You’re in a box. It’s a very well-respected box. But it’s still a box.
This is just one of the reasons. Just listen to the next one, and tell me if you can relate to it. I’m very confident that this one will resonate with many of you.
- Diversity
Like I said, the structure of a PhD today is extremely narrow. And I do understand why the concept of specialisation exists. I absolutely see why it has to be that way. The reason why is that you’re supposed to go deep into a specific problem, and contribute something new to the field. But some people, like me, want to learn more than just an edge case of a subset of a tiny subject, that only, like 5 people in the whole world know about.
I love math, and yes I have my preferred areas, but I still want to explore other angles, and other fields, and see connections between them. Staying locked into one tiny piece of knowledge for years just kills my motivation.
And historically, that kind of wide-ranging curiosity was very common.
Look at the greatest minds we admire today. Take Euler for example, probably the broadest, and arguably greatest mathematician ever. He didn’t just revolutionize calculus. He made major contributions in number theory, graph theory, fluid dynamics, mechanics, astronomy, optics, and even music theory. He was not really a specialist in a tiny little field in any sense. Then we have Hilbert. He was one of the people who laid the ground of modern mathematics, but who also made influential contributions to the early development of both general relativity and quantum mechanics. Paul Dirac helped create quantum mechanics and predicted antimatter, but also worked on general relativity and even statistical theory. Poincaré practically founded topology, contributed to celestial mechanics, and laid the groundwork for chaos theory. Von Neumann? He was into everything: set theory, quantum mechanics, game theory, economics, computing. Then Feynman: quantum electrodynamics, sure, but also superfluidity, computing, nanotechnology, and physics education. And of course we don’t only have to take the older examples, from decades ago. The greatest mathematician alive today, Terrence Tao, is also very unusually broad, being known for his contributions in various distinct mathematical fields.
And, I’m not the only one who shares this opinion. Mathematician Freeman Dyson said exactly that in an interview. The quote is a bit long, but trust me it’s worth it.
“The whole PhD system to me is an abomination. I don’t have a PhD myself, I feel myself very lucky I didn’t have to go through it. I think it’s a gross distortion of the educational process. What happens when I’m responsible for a PhD student, the student is condemned to work on a single problem in order to write a thesis, for maybe two or three years. But my attention span is much shorter than that. I like to work on something intensively for maybe one year or less, get it done with and then go on to something else…all the PhD students had these same constraints imposed on them, which I basically disapprove of. I just don’t like the system. I think it is an evil system and it has ruined many lives. ”
Now, I’m not comparing myself to them, obviously, but I think a lot of mathematicians in general share that same kind of curiosity. We love math in general. Not just topology, not just PDEs, and so on.
Yeah, specialization is inevitable to some extent, because you can’t seriously study everything at once. But the magic, for me, happens between fields. Learning how one area interacts with another. These connections are super satisfying, at least for me.
Most of you who watch our YouTube videos probably do not come to our channel for one narrow topic only. You come because you enjoy math as a whole.
To be very honest, even with all these negative points, I would have probably just sucked it up and finished my PhD anyway. But the last point, the one that really pushed me over the edge, was the career reality.
- Career
Honestly, this is what convinced me that the system is just broken.
Being a full-time researcher or professor today is nothing like the idealized version we often imagine when we first get into math or physics. It’s not a stable, respected position where you’re given space to think and create. It’s become more like a game of survival: “publish or perish.”
It’s not a matter of publishing only quality research, it’s more about trying to stay afloat and vomit out papers so that the university stays happy with you.
There are just way too many brilliant, and passionate people all competing for the same handful of permanent positions. And as a result, people spend years (sometimes more than a decade) bouncing between short-term contracts. I’m talking about one-year, two-year post-docs. Moving from country to country, from city to city. No financial security and no long-term plan.
And what’s worse, these are often some of the smartest minds on the planet. We are talking about very talented researchers. People with the potential to really push human knowledge forward. And instead of being supported, they’re stuck applying for grants, and fighting for low-paying positions.
I mean, this is just basic economics. Too much supply, not enough demand. When that happens, compensation drops. And there is no stability. All you can do is hope that you’re the one who finally lands a tenure-track position before you burn out, or run out of money to support you and your family, and that’s if you even have the time to build a family.
After I quit my PhD, I had to get a part-time job as a waiter. I made more money in this part-time job, than in my PhD. Actually, the other day I saw a pizza delivery guy and guess who it was? It was a guy who entered the math PhD program with me at the same time 3 years ago.
Talk about not being appreciated…
That’s a huge loss, in my opinion. Not just for them, but for society.
I’m not saying I have a solution to all of this. But I looked at that system and thought: this is not the kind of life I want for me and for my family. The cost is way too high.
Academia needs to realize the problem and do something about it, because the situation is getting out of hand.
And these are the 3 reasons why I quit my PhD. Let me know your thoughts about it, especially if you guys can relate to me, or if you disagree.
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Thank you for that!
DiBeos 
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