The best advice and the worst advice I’ve ever gotten were three words long.

The best advice was “avoid the treadmill”. It was 2003. I was coming to the end of a master’s degree in a subject (political philosophy) and a city (London) I was ready to leave. I was 22 years old.

Rebecca was the advisor at the community college student newspaper where I worked between and after classes three years earlier, and we had—pre-Facebook!—stayed in touch through undergrad and now grad school. She was visiting London and invited me to dinner.

I had two months left until I completed my master’s and my visa expired. I had no idea what I was going to do, or even what I wanted to. There was the prudent thing, moving back to the States, getting a job, starting a career, buying a house, leasing a Camry, nothing wrong with that.

There was also, however, something I had come across two weeks earlier while drinking wine and Googling Nordic underwear models: Universities in Scandinavia are free.

I told Rebecca all this (minus the wine), and that I had found a program in Aarhus, Denmark—a master’s degree that as soon as I said it out loud I realized sounded even vaguer and more destitution-promoting than the master’s I already had.

“European studies!” I said.

Rebecca asked if I had ever been to Denmark, and what my logic was for considering this an option. I admitted I had none, it just sounded cool and I wanted to try it.

“So I have to decide,” I said. “Prudent, or Denmark.”

“Mike,” she said. “This is an easy one: Avoid the treadmill.”

I knew what she meant, but I asked her to elaborate anyway.

“You have a whole life of working ahead of you. Going home is easy. Getting a job is easy. Going to, whatever country this is, Denmark, making an impulsive decision and living with it for two whole years, that’s hard. This is what your twenties are for. As you get older, the hard stuff only gets harder.”

“And the easy stuff gets easier?” I said.

“No,” she said. “That gets harder too.”

The way stress works is, when you’re presented with a threat, your body produces adrenaline, a kind of internal crystal meth, that gives you the energy to escape or fight or defend yourself or pull an all-nighter or whatever you need to do to neutralize the threat. While the adrenaline is pumping, other functions—sleep, appetite, afternoon horniness—shut down while your body gives you enough energy to deal with the crisis at hand.

This makes sense, right? If you’re living in an environment where every once in awhile you need to run away from a lion, chase a gazelle, defend your village from the next tribe over, you need a system that takes precedence over everything else. You can’t be stalking a mammoth and suddenly be overcome with the urge to pee.

The problem, of course, is that stress isn’t something that only gets activated by extreme, once-a-month stressors. It’s something you activate yourself, something that reacts not to the objective threat level but to what you perceive as a threat.

These days, we don’t get hunted by lions all that often, but we do get hunted by bosses, partners, deadlines, bills, kids, early closing hours, late public transport, insomnia, status, proliferating Netflix queues. Since our bodies can’t differentiate between a lion and an overdue car payment, adrenaline becomes a kind of routine. We coast on it 9-to-5, deadline to deadline, and squeeze the tube even more over the weekend to get us through the neighborhood barbecue, the water park outing with the kids, the difficult conversation with the wife.

Like everything else that’s good for you once a month, adrenaline when you use it every day is a kind of poison. They do autopsies on people who were constantly stressed out and their pituitary gland is the size of a turkey baster. Constantly suppressing your immune system, ignoring your appetite, boosting your heart rate, these things are like fast-forwarding the aging process. People who are constantly stressed out are more likely to get cancer and strokes. Stressed out kids end up shorter as adults. When you turn off everything but your emergency generator, the normal stuff rusts and brittles.

Robert Sapolsky, the guy who I’m basically stealing all these insights from, studies stress in baboons in the wild. He says he can tell the difference between short-lifespan baboons and long-lifespan baboons by one thing: How do they act when they see a lion 200 feet away?

Short-lifespan baboons, the ones that that use adrenaline the way we use drip coffee, see the lion in the distance and immediately activate their stress response. A lion! Shit! What am I going to do?!

The un-stressed baboons—the ones eating fresh berries and complaining about the morals of the next generation of baboons into their twilight years—they see the same lion and go “meh, he’s 200 feet away. He’s yawning, grooming, he doesn’t seem all that interested in me” and they stay calm. No adrenaline, no panic. They keep an eye on the lion—they’re baboons, they’re not stupid—but they don’t get all adrenaliney until there’s a genuine threat.

We all know that refrigerator-magnet phrase, “Give me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” or however it goes. For me, it’s never been the courage that’s hard, it’s the serenity.

In 2004, I applied to the master’s program in Denmark. I filled out the application, photocopied my old diplomas, wrote my admissions essay, mailed them off. Two months later, a letter came saying I was accepted. And then I started freaking out.

I don’t speak Danish. I don’t know anyone in the whole country. Where am I going to live? What am I going to do for living expenses? All of a sudden, the treadmill started looking pretty good.

It was five months since my conversation with Rebecca, and three months since my U.K. visa expired and I had moved back home to Seattle. I was working (OK, temping) at Microsoft as a copy editor, and living with my parents.

Steve was my boss at Microsoft. Former journalist, weekend kickball player, suburban dad, never missed a day of work or a misspelled word or a subordinate’s birthday. Totally a long-lifespan baboon.

And he gave me the worst advice I’ve ever gotten: “Trust your gut.”

He said it after I went into his office and told him everything I just told you: I was accepted to this program in Denmark and I had no criteria by which to judge whether this was a good idea.

“You don’t need criteria for these sorts of decisions,” he said. “It’s all about doing what feels right.”

It may not have been obvious to Steve, but I am firmly the first baboon. I see a lion—an unpaid bill, an unread e-mail, an uncalled acquaintance—not even 200 feet away, a mile away, on the horizon, barely visible to the naked eye, and my adrenaline spikes. The year I was living in London, I couldn’t get to sleep one night because I suddenly remembered I had forgotten to book a flight home for Christmas. It was May.

Like every American, I heard this stock advice—“Trust your gut”, “Be true to yourself”, “Follow your instincts”—all the time growing up, variations on the same Hollywood catechism, the pledge of allegiance to individuality we get installed on first bootup.

And the thing is, this advice isn’t necessarily bullshit. There are probably people out there whose instincts are all kindness and extroversion, whispering directives of generosity and serenity into their ear. Some people, I imagine, search their innermost desires and find the charm of a CEO, the selflessness of a Mormon.

I search mine and find the pessimism of an amputee, the selfishness of a marauder. I am constantly at war with my instincts, trying to project-manage away the anxiety, the me-firstism, the adrenaline they send me. Trusting my gut, really doing what I felt, would mean curling up into a ball until all my obligations—jobs, friends, family, personal hygiene—gave up and disappeared.

For Steve, trusting his gut would have meant doing the right thing. For me, it would have meant doing nothing at all.

After my meeting with Steve, I came home and I made a list: Stuff to Sort Out Before You Move To Denmark. Spend one hour every morning before work studying Danish. Post concerns on university message boards. Find potential friends in Aarhus on social media (OK, gay personals sites), talk to them on IM. Find out what “European studies” means.

It was work, but it worked. Six months later, I moved to Demark and started my program. Two years later, I graduated and got a job in Copenhagen. Four years after that, I moved to Berlin. Two years after that, I’m still here.

And yes, I’m still anxious. I still have to remind myself that my gut is cruel and manipulative, and should not be trusted with any decisions that affect us both. But just as amazingly, I still feel like I’m avoiding the treadmill. I work at an NGO that sends me to weird conferences and exotic countries. Back home, I rent, I bike, and don’t own anything I need to insure.

Moving to Denmark is the best thing I ever did. Not because I loved everything about it, or because it made me a less anxious person, or because I assimilated into it like a mermaid to a fairy tale. I didn’t.

It’s the best thing I ever did because for me, it was more awesome than staying in my hometown, moving commas around for a living, commuting in that Camry.

And that’s it, that’s my own three-word advice: Do awesome stuff.

Maybe it’s not moving to Europe, maybe it’s learning to play the piano, speaking Esperanto, writing a novel, becoming a professional wrestler, who cares. Find things you will someday want to brag about, things that would impress you if someone else did them, and do them.

If you’re like me, the furrowed-brow baboon worrying about his pension in his early 20s, find out what your awesome is and make a plan for doing it. Rules, lists, indicators, push notifications, whatever helps you pull rank on the lies your gut tells you.

If you’re not like me, if you’re the baboon polishing an apple and smoking a cigarette while the lion in the distance walks steadily you-ward, ignore me. I have no idea how your brain works. Just stop telling the rest of us to listen to ours.

Maybe I’m supposed to say that it’s really about being able to tell how far away the lion is, shrinking your pituitary gland through meditation or Pilates or multivitamins or whatever. But nothing I’ve done has made me any less anxious, no achievement has led me to that serenity I read on the bumper stickers. With stress inevitable, anxiety unavoidable and awesomeness finite, all I can do is work on tapping the one I might be running out of.

And if I’m in the middle of doing so and someone tells me to be myself, trust my gut, follow my heart, I have a built-in answer: “I can do better than that.”

Michael Hobbes lives in Berlin. He blogs at rottenindenmark.wordpress.com. Photo: David Berkowitz

RA: Looking back, is there anything you would change about your experiences in graduate school? Anything that you think should be done differently about how we train and teach graduate students?

SK: Graduate students live in constant fear. Some of this fear is justified, like the fear of not finding a job. But the fear of unemployment leads to a host of other fears, and you end up with a climate of conformity, timidity, and sycophantic emulation. Intellectual inquiry is suppressed as “unmarketable”, interdisciplinary research is marked as disloyal, public engagement is decried as “unserious”, and critical views are written anonymously lest a search committee find them. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the Academic Jobs Wiki.

Savage Minds interviewed Sarah Kendzior (who wrote about the U.N.’s unpaid internship the other week) about her experience in graduate school while earning a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology. It’s very good.

Our pals at Planet Money asked a bunch of economists to give some graduation advice to the batch of college graduates who will be applying for jobs and entering the workforce soon. Much of the advice is pretty solid. Justin Wolfers:

This pattern of hopping between jobs while young, before settling down, is in remarkably common. And it makes sense, too. Romantic success never follows from trying to improve your partner; it follows from moving on and finding a better match. The same is true in the world of work.

Some other advice I’m too sure about. Kenneth French: “And if things don’t turn out so well, you can always change jobs or, better yet, go to business school.” Tim Harford: “A year’s delay would do no harm—might I suggest signing up for a master’s degree?”

As we’ve been cautioned, graduate school should be what people choose after careful consideration—especially if it results in taking on student loans. Godspeed Class of 2013!

Photo: COD newsroom

Mysterious and/or hilarious purchases I made during the 1996-97 academic year, as preserved in my Quicken files:

• 8/22/96: Groceries, $18.51. I moved to California and started keeping track of my finances in Quicken in mid-August, and this appears to be the first money I spent on food. Since it’s such a small sum, I have to assume that in fact my mother, who flew out with me to help me get settled, paid for my first big trip to the grocery store, which sort of shatters the story in my head that arriving in Berkeley was the beginning of my financial independence.

• 8/31/96: Baseball tickets, $7. Gather ’round, kids, and let grandpa tell you about how you used to be able to see a major league baseball game for only seven bucks! I mean, it was the A’s, but still.

• 9/9/96: Writer’s Market, $24.24. Aw, that’s cute, 22-year-old me already had dreams of being a writer, even as I was just starting my doomed stab at becoming an academic! (Today, I use the 2003 edition of Writer’s Market to keep the cat’s food dish elevated, so it doesn’t attract bugs.)

• 9/20/96: Keg, $2. Have to assume that this means “beer from a keg.” Also have to assume that despite my mental picture I was having at least some contact with fun during this period.

• 9/21/96: Telephone and answering machine, $108.21. Answering machines, remember those things? You might have thought that by 1996 we were all using voice mail, but apparently I was still clinging to the old ways. Two points of interest here: (a) I had lived in that apartment for six weeks already, so I’m sort of puzzled about what I was doing for phone calls and/or message taking up to this point, and (b) I was living on about $13,000 a year and paying $600 a month in rent, so this dumb phone was a substantial portion of my disposable income for the month.

• 10/2/96: Medea Tickets, $70.75. Since Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself wouldn’t premier for another three years, I have to assume that I went to see an actual stage performance of the Euripides play in another spendy move for a poor grad student. Was this a date? Was I attempting to woo another hapless victim of my ancient history program by taking her to see a play that would ostensibly dovetail with our academic interests? I remember nothing about it, so it must not have worked.

• 10/8/96: Utility bill, $12.97. I lived in an apartment building for grad students that was run like a dorm—you paid for rent and long distance calls on your bursar bill, and there was even an R.A.—with the exception that you had to pay your own utility bill. As you’d expect with a sub-300-square-foot apartment with no air conditioning in temperate climates, these bills were ridiculously tiny, leaving you to wonder what the point was, exactly.

• 10/8/96: Stamps, $1.56, categorized under “Writing expenses”. Oh, God, I actually was sending some writing out, like, in the mail. I’ve blocked out what literary genius I was trying to foist on readers, probably for good reason.

• 11/5/96, 1/10/97, 1/31/97, 4/11/97, 4/26/97, 5/31/97: Money From NFO, varying amounts received between $1 and $5. What—or who—is represented by these mysterious initials? Since these transactions are all categorized under “Payment for services,” what services did I undertake for them? Why was it worth my while to keep coming back for these small amounts? What power did they hold over me?

• 11/29/96: Judy’s Hat, $12.99. Who is Judy and why was I buying her a hat? I think this was my stepbrother’s then girlfriend, who I guess was around long enough to be included in the family gift exchange? And I guess we had a gift exchange, in 1996? Maybe? Anyway, whoever she was, I hope she liked her hat.

• 12/31/96: Champagne and pizza, $16.90. Someone had a classy New Year’s Eve!

• 4/25/97: Pants, $48.81. Let it not be said I was going around California pantsless.

• 5/3/97: Party supplies, $10.15. Like, streamers and hats and stuff? Balloons, maybe? I’m sure this was a swell party, with its $10 worth of supplies.

• 5/17/97, 5/28/97, 6/20/97, 7/30/97, 9/5/97, 9/8/97: Skillet’s, $9.36. You’d think that if I liked a restaurant well enough to go there six times in four months and order the exact same thing every time, I’d have at least a vague memory of where it was or what kind of food it served. You’d be wrong, though.

• 8/5/97: Curtain rods, $13.81; Curtain fabric, $56.02. If you had asked me what 23-year-old Josh was likely to drop 70 bucks on, “window treatments” would’ve been low on the list. I’m also intrigued and disturbed by the fact that I specifically noted this was for curtain fabric. Did I actually make my own curtains? They must have been hideous.

Josh Fruhlinger eventually started just recording the name of the store in Quicken, rather than what he bought there. You can follow him on Tumblr and Twitter.

Old City, Philadelphia, Pa., August 2003 – July 2005, $1,450/month (split with a roommate)
My college roommate found our first adult apartment, an unbelievable duplex, in Center City. It was perfect in many ways—dishwasher, washer/dryer in the bathroom, elegant spiral staircase, directly above an independent bookstore. The building was actually two buildings that had been oddly fused together, so my bedroom had a long hallway inside of it with windows you could see into from the stairwell (my then-boyfriend did not find it as charming as I did). Since we were in Philly’s historic district, public transportation was abundant and I often passed Ben Franklin on my way to work. Later, the Real World Philadelphia would move in down the street.

The downside was that Old City was not a developed residential neighborhood, and it lacked a grocery store, dry cleaners, and other residential amenities. In the two years I lived there, I managed to fracture my foot twice, which made the spiral staircase a massive annoyance. My roommate left after the first year, and I found a random guy on a roommate website to take her place. He was in Philly for a nine-month master’s program, and we got along pretty well considering he wasn’t the cleanest. Nor was he the most considerate: He sublet his room for the summer, then disappeared and told his subletter to throw out his furniture at the end of the lease. He stopped responding to my emails and calls asking for his share of the utilities, then sent me a message via Friendster six months later that simply said, “How R U?”

Howe Street, New Haven, Conn., August 2005 – January 2007, $600-625/month
I moved to New Haven to be a poor, broke grad student, and found just the apartment for it: a tiny box of a studio just two blocks from school. This was my first experience living alone, which I prepared for by watching a ton of Law & Order: SVU. This show left me so terrified that I slept with the lights on for a full week. How I managed for almost two years with nothing but a dorm fridge is still a mystery. The best thing about this apartment was the walk-in closet. The worst was when I heard my classmate, with whom I shared a wall, get in a loud screaming and sobbing match with his girlfriend—and then seeing him in school the next day.

Tyler Street, Berkeley, Calif., February 2007 – May 2007, $800/month
Grad school sent me to Berkeley for a semester-long internship, though I had to find my own housing. I rented a room in a house from a laid-back couple in their thirties with a two-year-old daughter and two dogs. It was the full Berkeley experience, and I loved it. I ate pizza from Arizmendi, chard from the backyard, and tamales from the farmers’ market. Sundays my landlords/roommates often pushed their speakers into the window for musical accompaniment while we all read and played in the backyard. I referred to this arrangement as “Reggae Sunday” after I overhead this conversation between one of the parents and the two-year-old:

“Ask me if I like reggae.”

“Do you like reggae?”

“No, I don’t like reggae… I love it!”

I learned a lot about the Bay area, travel, reggae, and parenting from this experience. Had I designed my perfect living arrangement, it probably would have looked a lot more like a tiny studio apartment, but I wouldn’t have changed this setup for the world.

Howe Street, New Haven, Conn., May – July 2007, $625/month
I returned to New Haven for my last summer before starting business school. I knew I was moving out of this apartment and into a bigger one on the other side of campus, so these few months were spent packing, acquiring more furniture, and figuring out where exactly my subletter had stored my teaspoons while I was gone.

Eld Street, New Haven, Conn., August 2007 – June 2008, $800-850/month
This is one of my all-time favorite apartments. The old house looked haunted from the outside, but had been beautifully renovated by a university staff member and his students. It had lots of fun quirks, like a hallway behind my bedroom and an old-fashioned call box. My apartment was technically a junior one-bedroom, with French doors separating the bedroom and the rest of the apartment.

There were five apartments in the house, and everyone knew each other—apartments were handed down from friend to friend. We had a massive backyard that I once used to throw a party for my entire business school class. My friend on the first floor had my extra keys, and one time when I locked myself out, he instructed me over the phone to climb into his kitchen window by standing on a garbage can, and remove my keys from the pegboard in his kitchen, which was in plain sight of the window. It’s amazing that we didn’t get robbed more often.

Morristown, N.J., June 2008 – August 2008, $0/month
My summer internship gave me free corporate housing. Everything about it was so sterile—white sheets, beige couch, tan blinds—that when I walked in for the first time, I burst into tears. Morristown itself was equally boring and bland, save for the Century 21 down the street. I tried to spend as little time in New Jersey as possible, driving to Philadelphia nearly every weekend. I bought some plants to liven up the apartment, which I became fond of and later delivered to my then-boyfriend’s house. He let the plants die, then tried to dispose of them without me noticing. Our relationship followed a similar trajectory. Never was I so relieved to return to New Haven.

Eld Street, New Haven, Conn., August 2008 – July 2009, $850/month
My friend moved into the other apartment on my floor, which was wonderful for late night gab sessions, and she let me use her dishwasher when I entertained. I spent my last year of grad school here, then graduated and sublet my place to an incoming student for the summer. I came up to grab a few things in the middle of her tenancy and found that she was using every available horizontal surface for storage. Her clothes, makeup, hair barrettes—everything was out on a countertop or dresser or table. She stored nothing in the cabinets or drawers, and instead had opened up the ironing board for more surface space. This behavior puzzled me, but aside from that, she was a great tenant!

Potomac, Md., July 2009 – September 2009, $0/month
I graduated, travelled for a month, sold all my furniture in New Haven, and moved in with my aunt and uncle in Potomac. They were incredibly generous and let me stay in their basement bedroom with my own bathroom. I hung out at the pool club down the street, had dinner with the family, and commuted to my job in northern Virginia. And oh, the snacks! There were two teenage boys and a multitude of salty and sugary treats in the house at all times. But then school started, and my 15-year-old cousin suddenly had better things to do than go to the movies with me on Friday nights. It was time to move to D.C. and find my own place.

Foggy Bottom, Washington, DC, October 2009 – October 2010, $1600/month
This gigantic one-bedroom was where I learned the nuances of D.C. tenant law. My landlord was a condo owner posted with the State Department in Ethiopia, but assured me that her brother-in-law managed the apartment and would tend to any concerns. It was a learning experience for both of us; I did not know that I could send so many emails with the words “I spoke to a lawyer at the Office of the DC Tenant Advocate,” and she apparently did not know that landlords must pay to have refrigerators, garbage disposals, dishwashers, and toilets in proper working order.

The location, right next to the Metro, was ideal for commuting, and adjacent to lovely biking and running trails. I tried to remember that when dealing with the horrendous, erratic noise coming from either the fraternity next door or the backup generator next to my bedroom window (and sometimes both!).

I left after a series of tense emails, including one in which my landlord wrote, “feel free to take legal action against me.” I lost many tearful nights to the stress of fighting with her, although in the end I got almost all of my security deposit back. Special shout out to the D.C. Office of the Tenant Advocate for being awesome, helpful, and responsive. I highly recommend you contact them if your landlord is being shady and/or threatens to sue you for libel.

Logan Circle, DC, October 2010 – present
I’m very happy in my current apartment. I only pursued listings from management companies to get this one.

Rebecca Rindler would like to have a dishwasher again.

This summer, I lived with a revolving cast of roommates, one of whom was going to go to law school in September. One night, my roommate mentioned that he was going to go through law school so he could “meet the right people,” and then he said he’d apply to med school because that was his real passion. I may have choked a bit when he said that. I was in college for seven years because I did a master’s program in English literature, followed by a Master of Library and Information Studies.

I’m not going to say that I’ve made better choices about grad school than he has (because he’s probably going to be a millionaire lawyer/doctor, and I may have to fight for funding forever), but I definitely worry about his reasoning and wished I had brought it up with him in the moment. A lot of people have talked to me while they’re applying for grad school, or when they’re considering dropping out. Here are my suggestions for people thinking about going back to school:

Have a goal before you consider more education.
It can be vague (“figure out what I want to do with my life”), or it can be specific (“get the required skills and degree to work as a lawyer”), but it has to exist. It may change with time, but you need to have a yardstick to compare reality with, and a carrot-and-stick to encourage you when you’re in school—especially when it gets overwhelming (it will get overwhelming).

When I applied for my master’s program in English lit, I was fairly sure I wanted to teach high school English and math, but I was also encouraged by a lot of people, including professors, to consider teaching in higher education. So I applied to both teachers college and a master’s of English imagining that I wouldn’t get into my master’s program (and not be able go on to get a Ph.D)—thereby shutting down the dream of teaching in a university. I ended up being accepted into both programs, which made me recognize that I still was dreaming about being a professor, and that an M.A. would help me if I decided that I’d rather teach at the high school level. Pursuing a master’s degree would allow me to keep my options open—especially since it was going to be completely free, which leads to the second point.

Decide what route will best help you with that goal.
Grad school is not always the answer. Sometimes, what you should do is get more experience (in life or work), or get a certificate that allows you to specialize in something. Do your research, and if you have a specific career goal in mind, talk to people who have the job that interests you and find out how they got there. Ask about their day-to-day, their least and most favorite parts of their jobs, and what they would recommend to people who are considering their career. They might suggest a completely different experience/education route than what you were imagining, or you might discover that you’re not cut out for the job.

At least 15 people dropped out of the library program in the first month, and although some people probably left because of personal circumstances, others left when they discovered that being a librarian wasn’t what they thought it would be. If they had done their research, they could have discovered all of this before and saved themselves a ton of time and money.

If you do decide you are going to go back to school, here are some things to think about:

Find a program that will work for you and your goals.
Try to contact students in the program (there is usually an official student contact, but I went with a friend of a friend) and become familiar with the program’s expectations and culture. Being privy to the idea that a lot of assignments were done in groups, and that most people are on the executive of a student committee prepared me for the culture shock of going from a mostly solitary English program to Library Land where everyone has to talk about everything at least 20 times to get things done.

Be prepared for disappointments.
On my first day of my English program, I was informed (along with everyone else in the Welcome meeting) that I was on “a sinking ship.” Three weeks later, we were told that “academia is a life of monastic devotion.” Honestly, within two days of starting my program, I realized that I was never going to be a professor, and that I really didn’t want to be one. I didn’t have the right mind frame to be one, and I never would. It was troubling to have that bubble burst, and have a career possibility taken away from me, but it was also freeing.

Be open to possibilities (and maybe new goals).
The summer before my English M.A. program, I met a librarian who worked at the hospital in my home town who was really open to talking to me. After that meeting, I kept running into librarians all over the place, and since I now knew I was never going to be a professor, I was open to considering how being a librarian would fit with within my goals. Librarians teach people (how to use technology, how to do research), help people, and encourage learning, which really matched what appealed to me about teaching. Ultimately, I decided I would be a better librarian than teacher.

Remember your goals (even if they change along the way).
Grad school eats up your free time, and it can be very stressful. I have met a few people who didn’t have a real reason to be in various post-grad programs, and whose goals did not fit with where they were. I definitely encouraged those people to consider leaving programs that weren’t the right fit for them. Your time should be spent in ways that make you better, and it shouldn’t be wasted just because you feel that you need to finish everything you start. Assess where you are and where you want to be. If there is a real disconnect then leave the program, try to figure out what will work for you and then make your next move.

And always remember: Experience is the most important thing you can get.
If your goal is to figure out what you should be doing with your life, chase down every chance available to you. Volunteer, get on committees, do internships or practicums, organize events, and look for opportunities to work. At the very least, experience lets you know where you don’t want to be. Sometimes it even helps you figure out where you belong, and it helps you make the connections you need for the future.

Even if you are overwhelmed by academic life, try to do one non-school related thing. If nothing else, it will make you keep to a schedule, which will help in the non-academic world. I also met a lot of amazing people through my experiences which included a practicum, being the treasurer and external liaison for a student committee, a part-time job and a lot of volunteering. These experiences were a big factor in why I was considered for the position I currently have. One of my best decisions was to try to get a part-time job as a library assistant. Since I was able to keep the job after I graduated, I was then able to cover my living expenses for the four months it took to get a librarian position.

I don’t regret the route I took at all, but I also understood and was prepared for the education commitment and career expectations. My M.A. will definitely help me if I decide to go into academic librarianship, and my MLIS is required for most positions I am interested in. I feel like I made the right choice, and I hope that other people feel the same way about their post-undergraduate choices, because they can be really costly in terms of time and money.

Ciara O’Shea lives in a big Canadian city but works in small towns.

After my post on law school the other day, one of you sent me this video, which I thought was funny. Obviously, not all of us think grad school was a scam, because some of us loved the experience and benefited from it. I also enjoyed my grad school experience, and I can honestly say I wouldn’t be here writing to you today if I hadn’t gone. If you’re going to go, my advice is to get as much money as you can.

Tone – Although it’s impossible to be unbiased, I try to maintain a balanced tone throughout The Ph.D. Grind. In contrast, many people who write Ph.D.-related articles, books, or comics are either:

successful professors or research scientists who pontificate stately advice, adopting the tone of “grad school is tough, but it’s a delectable intellectual journey that you should enjoy and make the most of … because I sure did!”

or bitter Ph.D. graduates/dropouts who have been traumatized by their experiences, adopting a melodramatic, disillusioned, self-loathing tone of “ahhh my world was a living hell, what did I do with my life?!?”

Stately advice can motivate some students, and bitter whining might help distressed students to commiserate, but a general audience will probably not be receptive to either extreme.

Philip J. Guo recently completed a Ph.D. program in Computer Science at Stanford, and now works for Google. He also wrote a 115-page ebook about his experience that you can read for free (or you can skip to the end and read the epilogue, which lists the most memorable things he learned, like I did.) Maybe he’ll talk you out of doing a Ph.D. and save you six years—or perhaps he’ll convince you to do it!

Student loans come into your life so easily—just sign on the dotted line, and you’ve got money. And then you graduate, and have to get a job so you can pay back the money you borrowed and spent for the past two or 11 years. How do people do it? And why didn’t I know?

These statistics from the New York Times don’t show how student loans affect the average borrower. What does a collective $1 trillion mean when broken down to individuals? I decided to ask around.

N: 24, B.A. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and halfway through the M.A./PH.D. program at the same medium-sized public university in Ohio.

Markee: Do you know how much student loan debt you have?

N: About $20,000, which is pretty good considering one year of tuition at my school costs $20,000.

Markee: And the rest was supplemented by working/parents/scholarships?

N: Working and scholarships. I didn’t receive help from my parents. 

Markee: Was it the cheapest option for you? Did the cost factor into your decision about where to go to school? (Both for undergrad and your Ph.D. program.)

N: I only applied to this school. I decided to be a biomedical engineer, and they had a great program. I also think location had something to do with it—to stay near my family. Now, I have a graduate assistantship for graduate school, so my tuition is covered by the University and I receive a yearly stipend. My only expense is “fees” which is between $300-500 a semester.

Markee: So your debt is from undergrad?

N: Yes, half of it is from my first year because I lived in the dorms. Once I moved off campus, I didn’t need nearly as much in loans.

Markee: Did your loans, or paying them off, factor into your decision to get a Ph.D. at all?

N: No, I knew I would need to get a Ph.D. to be the most successful in my field. Once I changed majors and decided to go into Industrial/Organizational Psychology, I knew I had to go to graduate school to do anything with myself. The Graduate Assistantship offer at my school, and its ranking in the top 10 for I/O Psychology were my reasons for choosing it. Most Ph.D. programs in I/O Psychology fully fund their students.

Markee: Do your student loans influence how you look at your future? Do you think that owing that money has changed anything for you in your career (yet)? Do you know the starting salaries of the kind of job you want after you graduate?

N: My fiance and I have talked about finances a lot. He has no student loan debt (his parents paid for his undergrad), and he has a full-time, well paying job. I think it is important to take responsibility for my own debt and pay it off with the money I personally own, and I do not expect him to pay any of my prior debts. We agreed that my first year’s salary will be committed to my student loans, a down payment for a home, and probably a new car. I expect to start at no less than $75,000, but I should be expecting closer to $85,000-$95,000 depending on location.

Luckily, I hate academia, and want to work in the business world :) So I will be contributing the same amount I make now to our marriage the first year I work, so I’ll still be contributing, but also paying my own debts.

Markee: First, I applaud you for having had these financial discussions already!

N: I’ve always had to provide for myself, so money means a lot to me. I choose to be responsible with it, so I think it is important to talk about it.

Markee: So, do you often think about your student loans? Or because you have a plan on how to deal with them, you can kind of put them out of your mind?

N: Since I have a plan to pay them back within a year of graduating, I do not worry about them. I like to take pride in being able to make it through the last six years of my life on my own, and only have 20 grand in school debt. I managed to do it all myself without drowning in debts I will never be able to pay back.

Markee: Yeah, it really is something to be proud of.

B: 24, B.A. in English from a medium-sized public university in the Ohio. Currently employed at a property management firm, and bartending in D.C.

Markee: Do you know how much you owe currently in student loans?

B: Wow, it’s so sad that I don’t know the exact number. I have never thought about that. Probably around $23,000? I’m actually considering going back to school too, just to see how much more I can owe. Haha.

Markee: Did cost factor in to making your decision about where you were going to go to college?

B: It did factor in. I knew I couldn’t go just anywhere—that it would probably have to be in Ohio, or at least at a place where we could get cheap tuition. But my laziness meant I wasn’t actively applying for scholarships, so I went with [a state university], because in-state tuition was cheap.

Markee: Were there other state schools that you applied to? Did the “prestige” or value of education factor at all? On that same note, do you feel like you got a worthwhile education?

B: I only applied to [a state university]. I knew I wanted to go to a respected four-year institution, so I feel that I received what I paid for, in a sense. It was an okay education in an okay program at an okay college, but if I could go back and do it all over, I’m not sure I would go to college if I had to take out loans. I think I would have either found a way to pay for it, or hopped trains and disappeared into the Alaskan wilderness.

Markee: By found a way to pay for it, do you mean work while going to school? Or lived at home? Or applied to more scholarships?

B: Applied to more scholarships—probably lived at home. I was pretty caught up in the idea that I had to go to college. I think the only thing that my college education has helped me with is that I currently work in a property management office because I have a bachelor’s degree, but where it was from, and what it was in, were both irrelevant. So, going back, I may have majored in something i could actually use. Wow. Sounds so grim saying it like this.

Markee: Debt is grim.

B: Tru nuf.

Markee: What is the useful thing you would have majored in?

B: I would have majored in library sciences. It’s part being organized, part being really knowledgeable about very specific things, and part REALLY sociable, because you need to know where to find things, how to look for them, and how to figure out what someone is actually looking for. Totally awesome! So yeah, I feel that maybe that 23K wouldn’t be such a waste if I had majored in library sciences. This is the most entitled shit I’ve ever said by the way.

Markee: But an MLS is a masters degree, so you could do that!

B: Yeah, but I’m not on the right track. I might do it. I have actually have looked into a couple programs in the area. It actually would be a good thing. Interesting story: My parents picked up the first two years on their credit card.

Markee: OMG.

B: I only had to pay for the second two years. But yeah, I can’t believe my mom did that.

Markee: Yeah, that’s cray. What is your repayment plan like?

B: I pay $350 a month for the next 25 years. We chose a long term one so that the rate would be low. The idea is to pay it off before then, right?

Markee: By paying over the minimum. Do you do that ever?

B: Not once. I just…I need or want the money too badly to pay over the minimum.

Markee: How much of your monthly income is $350?

B: Hold on. [A few minutes of calculations] About a tenth, maybe a little less.

Markee: So do you know if you’ve paid off any part of the principle of the loan?

B: A few months ago, I finally started biting into the principle.

Markee: Woo congrats!

B: I drank a beer when it happened.

Markee: So you mentioned that you’d like to go back to school. How does your student loan debt factor into thinking about this next life choice?

B: If I went back to school, I wouldn’t have to pay student loans, and I could actually take extra loans to pay my rent so I could quit one job. That would make my life awesome, because I’d be a master’s student and a server, which would instantly mean more babes in my life. (That last part is a joke.) Once I finally get my master’s, I’d start making a ton of money, and would therefore be able to pay off all my student loans no problem!

Markee: Do librarians make a lot more money than you make now? I mean, you currently are making over $40K—which is a lot for a single, childless person in their early twenties.

B: Yeah, sometimes I don’t remember that I’ve actually got a lot going for me.

Markee: :-(

B: It’s kind of tough to think of yourself as really worthy, when you’re tied down to debt, ya know? I need to have a good job so that I can pay my student debt and rent, but the only good job that I am currently qualified for is suffocating and not creative. Sorry, kind of venting now.

Markee: No! That’s the point of me asking.

K: 26, B.A. in English from a small liberal arts college in Ohio, an M.A. from a medium-sized public university in Ohio, and currently working on a Ph.D. at a medium-sized public university in New York.

Markee: How much student debt do you have currently?

K: I have honestly pretty much never looked at the number. Maybe once or twice I have glanced at it. I accidentally saw it the other day when I was accepting summer loans, and it seems as though I have somewhere around $50,000 in debt (yikes?).

Markee: And from which parts of your education did it come from?

K: I probably had this amount of debt after getting my B.A., but my parents paid those loans off within a year(ish), and I am forever grateful to them. With a balance of $0, I felt it was okay to take federal subsidized loans out to supplement my M.A. stipend (which, admittedly, was plenty to live off by itself). I took loans for both of those years (no summer). I’m about to enter my third year of study in my current program. I’ve taken out the maximum amount of federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans for my first two years. These I justify because my 1st year stipend was $15,000 before taxes, and this is New York. I plan to take the max out again this year (obvi).

Markee: So do you have an idea of how much debt you’ll have when it’s all over? Also, do they affect how you think about your future job?

K: Ideally, I’d like to stop taking out loans after this upcoming year. I don’t know if that’s realistic according to my life history. If I am able to turn off the spigot, I’ll have like $70K and change. If not, it would top out around $100K. I don’t think the debt will affect my job prospects, so much as my quality of life. If I don’t get a tenure-track job within five years of graduating, I would need to reassess my job future AKA downsize my dreams to teaching high school or something. At this point, I am realizing during this conversation, I am delaying a certain inevitable. I’m living like a middle class person while in school and all, but guaranteeing that I’ll be living like a grad student once I’m out of school. Unless I marry a millionaire.

Markee: Right. So, are you aware that Public Service Loan Forgiveness exists for those who work in public service and nonprofits?

K: I do. That is another possibility that hangs in the back of my mind. However, I do not have much faith that the program will still exist/be solvent by the time I would be able to take advantage of it. (If it were there, though, I would most likely look into it what with my bleeding heart and debt situation.)

Markee: Do you feel like taking out loans has affected your life in any way?

K: Well, if I think about what I could/would have done in that year after my parents paid off those loans, I don’t know that I would have done anything differently. This was in 2007/8 and while shit was real with the economy then, it wasn’t like it is now. I am still at this point, whether delusional or not, glad that I am so far into grad school and not someone who is just beginning (and using it as a refuge from the real world). What could I do with a B.A. in English? Stay in the Midwest and teach high school? Ultimately, I would end up making the same amount of money. I have never been interested in being a home, or car owner. The only advantage I could see in not continuing my education would be getting a jump start on saving for those things. I am also not interested in marriage, or children. Therefore, I don’t feel like what debt I have is that strangling because I don’t have to budget the cost of a wedding, or children into my future. Additionally, because I don’t have any loans from private companies, and because the interest rates for government loans are low, I am not too worried about the size of repayment. Finally, I believed then, as I do now, that student debt is far more valuable (or, less personally damaging) than consumer debt. I have a negligible amount of consumer debt which helps me to rationalize my other debt.

[5 minutes later]

K: If I am going to be honest, I am making a secret bet with myself that my dad will end up helping me again with these loans. I would be embarrassed to take the help (I’ll be 30 years old), but not so much to say no. When my mom died, she left a serious amount of money for her kids, which we are not allowed to have right now (for obvious reasons), and I am really betting on the fact that that money will be going to wiping out a large part of my debt. It’s a big risk, but one I’m clearly taking. I would feel terrible about this except for the fact that this is kind of how my family operates. Man, I just told you a deep secret!

Markee Speyer is a graduate student herself, and would like to know about how you financed your education, if you’ll tell her. Photo: Shutterstock/Robert Asento

That more of us have turned to tertiary education in the face of an anemic job market has been well documented … The Educational Testing Service reports that in 2011, 800,000 people took the GREs, a 13 percent increase from 2010 and a record high. In a recession-plagued economy (and careerist society), Grad School stands for hope.

—Katy Waldman is obsessed with grad school admissions and the forums where applicants gather to trade hopes, dreams, and admissions news. Perhaps you can relate! Or perhaps you never want to go back to school or anything that resembles school, ever. (Also a fine option.)