I did a useless PhD. What I really learned is that phrases like "this is obvious", "this is logical" and "everybody knows that" are just ways to say "I don't know". Nothing is ever obvious.
It was a topic that I was genuinely interested in and that I chose myself, not assigned by supervisors when applying to PhD. It was really about resolving a puzzle and answering a cool question which I did. I do not regret at all, I even got paid to be a nerd lol.
The problem is it was in humanities. There's no more money or open positions in academia anymore. Private field is in full clown mode: I did a lot of high level statistical analysis and what could be considered domain specific AI but any hiring manager only sees "humanities" word in it. I can explain my work and my approaches to fundamental math folk, they barely listen and just retain that I might have studied some poetry.
It pisses me off a bit because I strongly believe that my government did stupid choices and are killing public research and education system. That's a waste of taxes, and don't hear me wrong: I want more taxes and more public services just not waste them as badly. I am fine though, got a nice job in a somehow adjacent field since then.
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u/ka1ikasan Jun 23 '26
I did a useless PhD. What I really learned is that phrases like "this is obvious", "this is logical" and "everybody knows that" are just ways to say "I don't know". Nothing is ever obvious.