If you follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn, you might already know that, since last week, I am officially a doctor (PhD)! And with that, my academic career comes to a close after almost 12 years at university. A good opportunity to reminisce about my experience in academia, and my reasons to not stay there.

Bachelor’s and Master’s

I started studying in 2011, after previously having worked as a web developer. Why did I leave my career as a web developer in the first place?1 Well, I wanted a new challenge, and since back then I used my lunch breaks to teach myself Swedish, I became really interested in linguistics, because I found observing cognates in Swedish, English and German really interesting. That’s why I decided to go to university to study English Studies and Linguistics.

My experience in academia has probably always been different from most students, since I was always ~10 years older than the vast majority of my fellow students. Most of them came straight from high school, while I had already finished an apprenticeship and worked for a few years. Therefore it was harder for me to make friends, but it was also much easier for me to study and manage my coursework, since at that time, I was used to having a 9 to 5 work day, and that’s basically what I did in my first couple of semesters. The Basic Modules were a piece of cake for me, and even later I barely had trouble completing any of my coursework. Honestly, doing a bachelor’s degree is super chill in Germany, which I realized even more so when I went abroad for a semester in Australia – there, the work load for each course was insane compared to what I was used to in Germany, and I barely managed to finish 3 courses in my semester there.

After I finished my bachelor’s degree, I briefly thought about whether I should leave academia and find a job, or whether I should also do a master’s degree. I decided to do the master’s degree, because most people told me that a master’s improves my job chances. So I started to do the master’s degree in English Studies (official title: “Comparative Studies in English and American Language, Literature and Culture”). I’m glad I did, because only during my master’s did I really realize what kinds of courses I’m really good at and what I enjoy most. This is when I truly started to focus on English linguistics, and this eventually led me to my PhD. During my master’s degree I also became a hardened presenter, because we had to give so many presentations that it became second nature to me (whereas during my bachelor’s I was always terrified of giving presentations). On a social level, I also made good friends during my master’s, a few of which I’m still friends with today. Finally, my master’s thesis was my first real project using serious statistical models, which would later be my day-to-day life during my PhD.

Starting my PhD

As I was finishing my master’s thesis, I again contemplated leaving academia and trying to find a job. But the supervisor of my master’s thesis enjoyed working with me and asked me whether I was interested in pursuing a PhD. I probably would have immediately said yes if my financial situation hadn’t been a bit dire at that point in my life, because I didn’t get any scholarships and financial aid anymore, and it meant working for another couple of months on student assistant pay. But eventually I decided to accept the offer.

And here, the long, long journey began. Doing a PhD is nothing like any bachelor’s or master’s student could ever imagine. It’s insane. If going from a bachelor’s to master’s is one step up, then going from a master’s to a PhD is going 100 steps up. All the memes are true. I thought I did pretty well in my master’s and finished it with great grades, but I was still utterly unprepared for what I encountered.

My PhD was perhaps unusual in that I was pretty much given a topic, though this is something that highly depends on the subject. In English Studies and Linguistics, I think you can usually have a lot of say in your your topic, but since mine was part of a planned research unit, I didn’t really have much say in it. Which I was perfectly fine with, because I saw it as a job that I worked in, with the added benefit of someday being able to show off with a fancy title2.

The Long Journey

During my PhD, I often felt like I had no idea what I was doing. Especially at the beginning, I think it took me about a year to really figure out and define my topic. Once that was settled, things became a bit more streamlined, but it was still very hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel sometimes. Altogether, I worked on 5 different studies, and my work day usually consisted of either fiddling around with datasets and analyzing them using statistical models, or planning experiments and eliciting data. I learned many different methods of research during this time, but one of the things that made all of this much, much easier, were my supervisor and my team members.

Having a great supervisor can make a huge difference in doing a PhD, and mine was always available and supportive when I needed him. I feel so sorry for the PhD students who have to deal with elusive or unorganized supervisors, and from what I’ve heard from other PhD students, that’s fairly common. I was double lucky in that I not only had a great supervisor, but an entire research unit to support me. Each semester we had weekly colloquia, where we presented the current state of our research. This was always very valuable for my progress.

And in addition to these, I was also part of a smaller group of members of this research unit who met regularly to advance our research. This group was an immense help during my PhD, and here we explored methods, types of analyses, and the literature needed for these. In addition to that, I was also part of another group that met weekly to talk about our progress. This group consisted of only 4 (later 3) PhD students from 2 different topic areas, and here we did not talk about the contents of our projects, but we just gave us weekly reports of what we did last week and what we’re planning to do next week – kinda like SCRUM or something. These progress meetings were a huge help for me in structuring my work week and in setting myself achievable goals. Without these, I think my progress wouldn’t have been as great as it was, and I’m glad that I was part of this.

At some point, however, all of my research was done and all that was left to do was write it all down. This process was one of the most daunting, especially if you need to write about stuff that you did 3 years ago and barely remember. Thankfully, I documented my stuff fairly well, so it wasn’t too hard to write about these things for me. My dissertation document had been prepared for a couple years, and occasionally I copy pasted keywords in there about the projects that I did. I also usually wrote down my methodology as I worked on my projects, because this is the part that is most important to document carefully. So when I started the final writing phase, it actually took me only about 4-5 months to finish writing everything, including revisions after feedback from my supervisor.

I handed in my dissertation at the end of March 2022, and due to some scheduling issues finally defended it only at the end of August 2022. After that I still had to publish it in order to be able to officially carry the title. I worked about 2 months on the publication (mostly by setting it to the publisher’s template), and it was published in January 2023. And now it’s finally done!

#LeavingAcademia

So why did I decide to leave academia after my PhD? Well, as fun as it was to do my PhD, especially with this amazing team, the circumstances in academia are abysmal. Especially in Germany, PhDs are underpaid – as was I, I worked full time on 65% part-time pay during most of my PhD3. This does not particularly change for postdocs. Postdocs get the same level of pay as PhD students, usually in varying constellations of 50% or 100% employment. Postdocs generally also only get limited contracts, usually for a semester, or if they’re (very) lucky for 2-4 semesters.

Postdocs in Germany also have time pressure to continue to qualify themselves, because if they wish to stay in academia, they have to do a ‘habilitation’, which is basically like doing yet another PhD, but on a more advanced level, less structured, and with less supervision. If they do not finish this within 6 years, then they are permanently expelled from academia. If they do manage to finish their habilitation, they have about a 3% chance to get a professorship. So to summarize, the conditions are horrible and the competitiveness is insane.

Underpayment is not a problem that is exclusive to Germany. The situation is very similar in other countries. In the US it is very extreme, as there you can easily make 100.000$ more in the industry when compared to academia. That’s why a lot of PhDs decide to leave academia, and there is a whole discussion about the systematic problems in academia highlighted by the hashtag #LeavingAcademia on LinkedIn, Mastodon and Twitter.

Getting into the industry

So I have a doctorate degree, it should be easy to find a job, right? Well, the vast majority of employers do not seem to value a PhD as much as they value actual industry experience, though personally I believe PhDs have proven an insane amount of resilience. I’ve been struggling with that for quite some time now, and presently I cannot say more about this experience. Perhaps in a couple of months I will be able to revisit this topic here.

However, I do not regret my decision to leave academia, as I believe that the industry is where I will be able to fulfill my passions. The two fields that I am primarily interested in are Conversation Design and User Experience Research, both would be an excellent fit for my skill set. As a linguist with a background in programming, shaping chat bots and voice bots would come natural to me. However, as a passionate researcher with a background in media design, I believe I would also be an excellent UX researcher. Possibly there is even a job out there that combines both, but only time will tell.