About two years ago I finally dropped out of university, and it was the best decision I ever made in my life.
I'd been in higher education for 8 years—9 really if you factor in my Thesis extension—and while it had its good points, I can safely say that it wasn't worth it. I now have two degrees which are essentially worthless as I never finished the PhD, and a fuck-load of student debt.
I chose to commit to sciences at the tender age of 16, because my gran died of cancer and I wanted to do my part to help end it.
Sounds niave huh? I had initially wanted to be a writer, but my parents drummed it into me that STEM degrees gave you good jobs, whereas writing for a living was an unrealistic fantasy.
Bowing to parental pressure, I took the right courses, I worked hard and achieved good grades. I got a place in a Russel Group university—the UK's equivalent of an Ivy League—and two degrees later I was actually doing it! A PhD position in a Cancer Research lab for a prominent university working on an underfunded and incurable cancer…
And it sucked.
PhD students are paid shit in the UK. They are only technically classed as students so you don't have to pay them mininum wage, sick pay, or treat them like human beings with needs. No one actually cared about helping people, it was all about getting your name in an important journal, and maybe getting summoned to talk about your work on the BBC, or getting a fancy position with an extra salary. PhD students were there to do grunt work, or explore avenues of research the actual scientists couldn't be arsed to waste their time on. I was expected to work insane hours, whilst putting up with my employers being openly homophobic, transphobic, and occasionally racist. I'm black, bi, and 99% of my friends are some flavour of LGBT+, so this was very hard for me to stomach. My bosses boss, was her husband, and my pastoral support supervisor was literally the godfather of their children.
Naievely, the bigotry was a total surprise to me as I had always assumed that university academic types were unilaterally left-wing and accepting.
Anyway I did the work and put up with all of these things even if it made me sick.
Writing up my actual thesis was an utter shit-show. Between the panic attacks, the depression, anxiety and total lack of care or consideration on the part of my supervisors, I crashed and burned, I “passed” by the skin of my teeth, which essentially meant I needed to re-write most of it, and resubmit the next year.
Then COVID hit, along with a surprise baby and I'm freaking out. My white peers, some of whom are struggling worse than me, are all fielding numerous job offers, whereas I'm stuck in an attick staring at a computer screen while it feels like the world is ending. We're survivng solely on my wife's income as an office temp at the time—also a shit-show but for other reasons, sing it with me *receptionists get sexually harrassed so much that accepting it should be listed in the job description as a requirement*—but with a baby on the way and our country refusing to lockdown at the time, she took unpaid sick-leave for the baby's sake. If there are any Brits reading, this was in the weeks leading up to furlough when Italy had 20k+ dead and we we're pretending COVID would never cross the channel.
I couldn't finish my PhD. If you've ever experienced total burnout you'll understand what I mean, but it was too much pressure and was making me really sick.
I didn't know what to do, it felt like my entire life had led up to this point and I was blowing it. I started reading articles about all the discrimination in the sciences, how many white people secretly think black folk are lazy/stupid, and once the algorithms caught me my phone funneled me another horror-story every day about how my dream was always an uphilll battle from the start.
So I retreated. I had a small nervous breakdown, where in a way I did what I'd been doing since I was an awkward teenager and I ran head first into reading. Except I was poor so I read web-novels online for free instead of paying for actual books. Once I'd read all the good ones, I realised that I might as well write one myself.
Fast forward to now, and I'm doing much better. I've written two books, one's self-published and is doing respectably in sales, and another is due out in a few months. I'm currently writing the third which is being well-recieved by my following on Patreon. These fans support me while my passive Amazon income grows—yes, I know Bezos is a dick, but he owns the book market. I'm still poor, buying a house is a pipe-dream, but shopping in a non-discount supermarket and clawing my way out of debt isn't too far away in the distance.
I know that I'm privileged to have had parents who could toss me a few hundred bucks now and again. That my wife is a saint for putting up with me, and that not everyone wants to be a writer, let alone one who writes about queer fantasy dragons like I do, but I've never been happier or mentally healthier in my life.
I co-parent my child, I love my wife, and I write. That's who I am now. I am 1000% creatively fulfilled and I wouldn't trade it for all the money in the world if it came with a 9-5.
I still have my low-moments—depression is for life not just for Christmas—but I can't get over how freeing it is to be my own boss when my work is something I literally fantasised about as a child. For all of its faults, the internet is an amazingly powerful thing, that has connected me with people who love my work.
It often strikes me, especially when reading this subreddit, how the weird way I live should be the norm. We should spend most of our time with family, or creating art that changes lives. And yes, it's weird, but my writing does change lives and I have the emails to prove it!
So yeah, I'm a PhD dropout. Almost a decade of university was completely wasted on me.
I dont really know how to end this? Follow your bliss if you can afford to? A little generational wealth goes a long way? Money isn't everything?
Like I really want to say something uplifting about following your dreams and telling the system to go fuck itself, but I honestly would have failed before I started if it wasn't for that tiny bit of parental cash. If my rent was higher, or the welfare state wasn't temporarily boosted by COVID, I'd probably be working in a supermarket right now, but instead I'm going to write an unsatisfying ending here and get back to work.
I have Patron's waiting.