eOpicle

I didn’t start a PhD because I had a master plan. Nobody does, no matter how many carefully curated LinkedIn posts suggest otherwise. You don’t wake up one day and say, “You know what would really accelerate my career? A half-decade (minimum) of intellectual isolation, existential doubt, and becoming deeply, embarrassingly overqualified for conversations at dinner parties.” No. You start a PhD because you like thinking. Or because you’re good at school. Or because someone told you, “You’d be great at research,” which is the academic equivalent of being told you have “potential”—a compliment that doubles as a trap. But here’s the part nobody tells you loudly enough: a PhD opens more doors than researchers think. Not because academia suddenly becomes a land of endless opportunity—let’s not get delusional—but because the world outside academia quietly values what you’ve been conditioned to believe is useless. And that disconnect? That’s where things get interesting. The Cult of “There...