I am not depressed, but I definitely feel a lot of what this video from Andy Stapleton discusses:
I have certainly experienced the odd stutter-step ending of the program, which never brings a single day or moment when you are really done. There is such a moment, but it is mundane, private, and undramatic — probably the last time you make a formatting correction for the unknown administrator who reviews your dissertation for conformity to writing standards like which page numbers in the front matter are Roman numerals. That creates an odd sense of the thing being unfinished, even when there is nothing left to do.
The points about needing to prove yourself in the job market after finishing, as well as anxiety about whether a PhD was necessary, are also familiar from my recent thinking.
I wouldn’t say the video provides any useful and non-obvious advice, but reading within the broad category of writing by current and recent PhD students actually has immense psychological value by demonstrating the reality of shared experience and shared struggle, engaging about all the things we didn’t known when we began and (even more juicily and importantly) all the things your university will lie to you about to keep their business model going. A post by Bret Devereaux is a fine example of the genre, and was discussed here before.
The PhD employment crisis is systemic
Universities must recognize their role in the crisis, but in the short term, governments must help PhDs to integrate into the job market
“Each year more than 7,000 of the brightest and most determined minds in Canada are awarded PhDs. As of 2015, there were 208,480 PhD holders in Canada. However, only 20 percent of PhDs will work as university professors, and 2 percent of jobs in the country require a PhD. Getting a first job after these studies is just the beginning of an arduous battle to secure work that matches PhD graduates’ hard-won expertise. The most fortunate among them usually begin with a postdoc position earning about the same as the national average secretarial salary, less than $45,000 per year, but without any employment benefits (like pensions and health plans).
Most face serious challenges transitioning to careers outside the academic world. Their professional skills and networks are underdeveloped, and employers are often reluctant to hire them. As a consequence, the majority of PhDs end up employed or — to be more accurate — underemployed in nonacademic positions. Living in a precarious economic situation with an average debt of $41,100, the highest debt level among categories of college or university graduates, many PhDs experience critical mental health issues that include depression and stress, which in some instances lead to suicide.”