Yes. I dropped out. I quit. I left… no matter how you want to say it.
I was one year into this journey, passionate and immersed in the world of research and academia. However, I still decided to take the leap and focus on my startup and other projects like my YouTube channel.
Don’t get me wrong; the Ph.D. was a significant chapter, and I think it is definitely worth it for many, yet my hope was that my story might resonate with your inner debates and questions like: is a Ph.D. the right path for you?
This is a very important video and decision for me, and it was a challenging one to take. I hope you like the final result and find the video helpful for your own future decisions.
Reasons for quitting the PhD:
- The desire to innovate and create was significantly growing.
- The love towards the startup world, and other projects like the YouTube channel.
- Enjoyment in fusing theoretical knowledge with real-world application.
- The urgency to create and the energy of startup culture became irresistible.
- Wanted to embark on a journey characterized by immediate innovation, rapid implementation, and seeing ideas transform into tangible solutions.
- The feeling of being drawn to quickly bringing ideas to life.
- The desire to fully own the work he was doing for motivation.
- The feeling of doing too much, yet not enough.
- The realization that most skills can be learned from the industry or personal projects/startups, thanks to talking with a dozen experts on my podcast.
- Stress. The Ph.D. was stressful, even if most of the stress was self-imposed.
- The feeling of doing two things halfway, juggling PhD with other projects.
- The desire to build AI models and work in the field, for which the PhD might not be worth the four years.
Who the PhD is for:
- Those in love with deep research.
- Individuals aspiring to be professors.
- Those dreaming about working on complex problems for a long time to solve them.
- People who want to work on a specific problem for a long period.
- People who love learning and teaching.
- People interested in gaining lots of invaluable skills for their life such as problem-solving, critical thinking, managing projects, structuring ideas and schedules, and self-motivation. Even though I (and many experts) am convinced they can be learned with a different path.
- Those who enjoy the whole process, enjoy learning, improving, sharing, and working on useful and long-term projects.
- Those looking to work at big companies like Google, Meta, etc., where having the "PhD" title has great value.
This is not a rent against the PhD, far from it. It is valuable to many people. It just wasn't for me.
Learn more in my recent video about it: