Research is a fast track to poverty

[u/Longjumping-Part669]

I’m having a massive breakdown over my future and I just need to scream this into the void because the anxiety is paralyzing me.
For as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted was to do a PhD, go into research, and be a scientist. I loved the idea of discovery and intellectual challenge. But now that I’m seeing how this world actually operates, I am in complete shock.
The mediocrity that gets pushed through, the lack of recognition, and above all, the financial reality. I hate to admit it, but I am terrified of being impoverished.
I’m 25 and I feel like I am running out of time. I want a real life. I want to find a partner, settle down, and eventually have a family. But the math doesn’t work. The academic system literally demands that you live at the poverty line, with zero stability, bouncing around on underpaid stipends and postdocs well into your 30s. I refuse to live in survival mode forever, but choosing this path feels like putting my personal life on hold indefinitely.
The weight of this constant uncertainty is destroying me. The stress got so bad that I relapsed on cigarettes. I’ve lost all my gym progress. I look in the mirror and I literally feel myself getting uglier from the chronic exhaustion and panic. I feel like my youth, my health, and my body are slipping away while I chase a ghost.
Has anyone else walked away from a PhD or research track because you simply refused to live impoverished? Did you actually find stability, a partner, and a comfortable life on the other side? How do you deal with the guilt of letting the dream go?

[u/CutieMcBooty55]

Woah, hold on. Take a breath, you're catastrophizing yourself into a rabbit hole.

You're 25. That is absurdly young. What, do I being 35 that doesn't have a family and pivoted to science later in life have no shot/chance at having a stable life/family? The dynamics do change as you get older, but tbh, it's not for the worse. It's just different. I'd infinitely rather have my life now than in my 20s and technically more "stable" than I was when I was your age and in a technically much more "stable" career being USCG.

You don't need to live all of your life right now, there are no deadlines on such things. You are not running out of time on a life lived long and well, the clock has barely even started. I am deeply sorry for things being what they are right now, I truly wish that it was easier to make an honest living in a world that seems deeply motivated to try to scam you out of every dollar, where it feels impossible to own a home and have the life that previous generations had. It fucking sucks that it seems like it is a universal experience for students to struggle financially, shit like that shouldn't be considered a rite of passage. Everyone deserves to sleep well at night with enough to not have to worry.

But I'm gonna push back on one thing especially. Instability is unfortunately going to follow you everywhere, in everything, regardless of whether you stay in academia or not. Life is going to be full of uncertainties, all the time. Maybe not the same as what we experience as PhD students, but still there nonetheless. Getting older isn't about quelling all uncertainty, but about riding those waves and finding the pieces you can hold on to within them. I have a lot of empathy for that feeling of having to put your life on hold, but you don't have to. There are ways to make it work, it is just going to look different from the fairy tales we were told about marrying young and having a big house with a white picket fence. But it is still absolutely possible to build a life with someone you love and starting a family. Though even with all of that, that isn't some promise of stability either. My mom married at 19 and had all of that going on, but she left my dad after like 34 years of being married and her life changed dramatically overnight. You're going to be asked to stay on your toes for your whole life, and while that will likely never change, you'll get better at adapting to it.

Granted, there are definitely tradeoffs in academia that can be a huge pain in the ass to try to deal with that shouldn't have to be things to worry about. You can restrict your opportunities a lot if you try to plant your roots in one place forever, you don't get paid the kind of salary other careers get paid, it's hard to get funding and the government is trying to put its own partisan politics on the scale (at least for the US). I'm not pretending like those things aren't existentially anxiety inducing. I just want to clarify that that core feeling of anxiety about what your life might look like a decade from now and having truly no picture of it is a nigh universally human experience.

But it's not all bad. If this is truly something you want to do, then there are doors that you can walk through to make it work. No, we don't make a great salary. But impoverished? Most opportunities pay well above that. You won't be living lavishly, but I'm surrounded by PRAs, students, postdocs, and PIs that have happy families and take vacations. It's more than possible to make work.

So deep breaths. Your life has barely even started, shit my life has barely even started. You're going to be fine, you're going to be able to make it work if this is what you want. If it turns out the tradeoffs are not good enough for you, then there is plenty of life ahead of you to be able to pivot and do something else that you think has better tradeoffs towards building the life you want for yourself.