If someone asked me “Should I do a PhD?” here’s what I’d answer.

“If you have to ask me, the answer is no.”

This was spurred by a post on LinkedIn where the author wrote about all the different considerations one would have to think about. Apparently he frequently gets that question a lot in various private messages and emails.

I think it’s a reasonable question to wonder about, but not the right one to ask (me). The right question to ask me is “Do you think I’m capable of doing a PhD?” And answering that would require some diagnostics on my part. Hopefully the person asking that is a current/prior student of mine where I’ve had a chance to observe their behaviour and attitude, and ideally we’d have a back-and-forth conversation instead of through an asynchronous medium. But I digress.

Why would my answer to such a question be so blunt and flippant?

To me, ideally, doing a PhD shouldn’t be something where benefits vs. consequences are a deciding factor. It’s one of those things where if someone wanted to do it, they shouldn’t need to ask for permission or approval from anyone else to do so, and my above blunt and flippant answer wouldn’t deter them anyway.

But such a take is definitely a bit privileged, I can’t deny that. I think for all practical intents and purposes it’s fair to acknowledge that currently, the cost of living is rising and a PhD stipend here in Australia would really not be enough to live on without additional support.

In my case, working for 10-12 years after finishing my Masters gave me the chance to build up some capital, purchase my own place, and put away enough savings so that when my PhD opportunity came by, I had enough of a monetary safety net to fall back on. It also means with my hearing loss and neurodivergent tendencies I had time to figure out my quirks and experiment with what works and what doesn’t, so that I had fewer personal issues going into my PhD.

I can tell what drives me is a desire to do something useful for humanity and the environment, and to contribute to a base of knowledge that is larger, more eternal and lasting than humanity will ever be. Mathematics just happens to be the current tool of choice that I have the expertise to wield in order to contribute to that knowledge.

And ideally any student of mine who I have a discussion with over this topic, also possess similar strong internal values.