Reply to what should I do after a phd and staying at home for two years? Advice needed.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]i honestly cannot imagine investing all this time in getting a PhD in a field like genetics and then throwing it all away. You say that you don't like research. Would you consider teaching?

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Have you ever worked 80 hour weeks for 30K a year? Screamed at by your boss? Hard work stolen by a competitor? Yeah science is a real fun roller coaster.[/quote]

No, I got a PhD from a top school in a field that I still love (economics) and make over 300k. But my sister got a PhD in bioinformatics and slaved as a post-doc for an insane advisor for 3 years. That said, she loves her work (cancer research) and just started her first job in a start-up. So I do know a thing or two about perseverance.

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Econ PhDs are in a different universe; no comparison.  Anyway as an economist you are no doubt familiar with the idea of a "sunk cost."   If you've already spent N years getting a PhD in a field you no longer like...what's the point in "perseverance" and throwing more good years away in order to make the N years useful?

I was a science PhD too.  I made it to being a professor, only to find that it sucked.  The longer I went on the more I hated it.  It got to the point where I hated getting up in the morning knowing that--if I got "lucky" and got tenure, there were decades of this ahead of me.

A ton of my friends felt the same way.  They sucked it up and invested a few years in retraining--law school, whatever, and now are quite happy doing other things.  I myself switched into policy.  I don't like it that much, but it enabled me to marry, have a family, and live near civilization, and all of that is worth a whole lot more to me than putting my PhD to use.
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