The Opportunity Cost of My PhD—And How I Made Peace with It
Delayed gratification, hard lessons, and why I still believe it was worth it
Disclaimer: I am speaking in my personal capacity and this does not reflect the views of my employer. Also this is a long essay, so I put headings and subheadings.
Why are you writing about your Ph.D. experience, you have not accomplished anything substantive yet?
I by no means see myself as someone with all the answers, but I view my Ph.D. experience as a net positive. Because of this, I wanted to write a blog to reflect a bit on my experience and why I think I was able to make it to the end.
I first spoke to my dissertation chair and Ph.D. advisor when I was a rising junior in undergraduate at Dartmouth College in the summer of 2019. One of the things he told me in this phone call is generally only a third of the PhD students who enter a program finish and receive their degree. He asserted that a third cannot handle the coursework, a third cannot finish the dissertation, and the final third get their degree. While I am unsure if these proportions are entirely accurate and reflect today’s graduation rates, I think the sentiment about milestones where you can slip up are accurate. On that call and throughout my application process, he reinforced how important it is that I convey a level of clarity and understanding of why I want to pursue a Ph.D. that would put me in a position to make it through the big bottlenecks of a Ph.D. program. Now on the other side of it, I am incredibly grateful for his insight on this. The initial clarity around why I want to pursue a Ph.D. provided a reference for me during points when it was difficult to be motivated to complete an assignment or I was rejected from something. Rejection even for the most successful scholars is a universal experience, so having clarity in the source of my desire helped maintain my fortitude. My advisor emphasized the importance of clearly articulating my motivations for pursuing a Ph.D., believing it’s crucial for reviewers to understand if those desires aligned with the training program and resources available. However, I firmly believe that my own comfort and conviction in this decision were even more important. Pursuing a Ph.D. is inherently challenging and lacks immediate rewards, and it is essential to understand why you want to pursue one.
There is a lot of rhetoric about a Ph.D. being an enormous opportunity cost for individuals (and their families if they have them). Conventionally, this is true. Opportunity cost permeates throughout so many spheres of life. Some choices you make in your personal life stick with you and how you are perceived. Like your personal habits, who you spend time together with, if you decide to have a family, when you decide to have a family if that is something you desire, and more. Some choices will prevent you from being able to accomplish or see things that you want in the short term. Delayed gratification is a big part of choices on opportunity cost. I am not frugal, I am not really depriving myself of a ton, but I also have a realistic view of things that I want long term. By choosing to pursue a Ph.D. there is a ton of inherent delayed gratification in that choice. I think that for most people a Ph.D. is a very overrated pursuit. A lot of people choose this path to impress their parents and peers. Some people pursue a Ph.D. when what they really need is the level of respect, knowledge, and domain expertise that comes with working in an industry for 10 years. For some people, a Ph.D. makes a ton of sense and the sometimes unquantifiable returns that experience will have for you are spectacular and unique to that path.
I will break this blog post into 3 overarching sections. First, I will speak about the good. This section will overview highlights of my Ph.D. experience, which I think provide context but are not worth over-analyzing. Second, I will speak about the bad experiences. Whether that be for unintentional missteps or choices I thought would be good but were not (this is probably the most important section). People who are candid about what they did wrong in a measured way are both self-reflective and often secure enough to desire you to learn from their mistakes. Finally, I will speak to a part of my experience which was not a focal point but I believe it is important to continue to work on. In each of these sections I will also provide some resources I think were relevant for my experience, helped me make it through, and could possibly help you. This is by no means an exhaustive list. I plan to point people here as a starting point when they ask me for advice (again which you should always take cautiously).
The Good
Grants
This is probably the most (relative) impressive part of my CV, and in many ways I think only 10-20% of this success is just attributed to me. My first grant was an NIH Diversity Supplement which is a program which no longer exists. It was tremendously impactful for me by giving me protected time (time to pursue research and training that I was the primary designer and leader for), but the proposal writing process was fairly straight forward given I set aside around 6 months to write it and I had a clear idea of a research question that fit in the scope of my Mentor’s project.
Description of Diversity Supplements from the (Old) NIH:
“Funding Opportunity Description
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hereby notify all Program Director(s)/Principal Investigator(s) (PD(s)/PI(s)) holding research grants with activity codes listed in “Part 1 Overview Information” that funds are available for administrative supplements to recruit and support high school, undergraduate and graduate/clinical students, postdoctorates (including health professionals), and eligible investigators. Administrative supplements must support work within the scope of the original project…
This administrative supplement is designed to provide support for research experiences for individuals from diverse backgrounds throughout the continuum from high school to the faculty level. Continuation of this program in the future will depend on the evaluation of the career outcomes of the supported individuals as well as continuing assessments of the diversity of the scientific workforce.
In all cases, the proposed research experience must be an integral part of the approved, ongoing research of the parent award, and it must have the potential to contribute significantly to the research career development of the candidate.
Receiving a Diversity Supplement was great for me because it also provided me the chance to pursue a topic that was related to health equity. A misconception of the Diversity Supplement program was that people only pursue topics under this umbrella. The stated intent of the program was:
From (Old) NIH:
“Enhancing Diversity
Fostering diversity in the scientific research workforce is a key component of the NIH strategy to identify, develop, support and maintain the quality of our scientific human capital NOT-OD-20-031.
Every facet of the United States scientific research enterprise from basic laboratory research to clinical and translational research to policy formation requires superior intellect, creativity and a wide range of skill sets and viewpoints. NIH’s ability to help ensure that the nation remains a global leader in scientific discovery and innovation is dependent upon a pool of highly talented scientists from diverse backgrounds, including those from underrepresented groups, who will help to further NIH’s mission.
NIH’s ability to help ensure that the nation remains a global leader in scientific discovery and innovation is dependent upon a pool of highly talented scientists including those from underrepresented groups, and others who will help to diversify the workforce to help further NIH’s mission.
Research shows that diverse teams working together and capitalizing on innovative ideas and distinct perspectives outperform homogenous teams. Scientists and trainees from diverse backgrounds and life experiences bring different perspectives, creativity, and individual enterprise to address complex scientific problems. There are many benefits that flow from a diverse NIH-supported scientific workforce, including: fostering scientific innovation, enhancing global competitiveness, contributing to robust learning environments, improving the quality of the research, advancing the likelihood that underserved or health disparity populations participate in, and benefit from health research, and enhancing public trust…”
I noted the purpose of the program because I want to emphasize that the program itself did not force individuals to pursue a topic that was related to their lived experience. Diversity in the topics that people selected is different from diversifying the workforce. One of my more provocative opinions is the backlash against DEI and other programs targeted at improving the diversity of workforces, education, etc. are successfully being dismantled because in many ways they funded work and people who were forced to fit into the same systems and structures that opposed people and created inequity to begin with. As a result, the trainees and early career scholars who were told that their new perspectives were valued must rapidly pivot in a world where them simply existing and following instructions now comes with a label that their work “has less merit”. I mourn the loss of these programs, but I also want to see a future where new programs are put in place that not only find diverse voices but uplift them in a way so that their disruptive ideas can make more change.
My second grant was an National Institute of Aging/National Institute of Health F99/K00 pre and post-doctoral fellowship award “Transition to Aging Research for Predoctoral Student” which was far more complicated to write. Part of the reason I said it is only 10-20% my own success I attribute to receiving these grants is because NIH fellowship awards depend so much on the institutional environment (e.g. which university you go to, and to some degree what department), your mentor (having a successful mentor is good on paper, but not all mentors are incredibly supportive and transparent like mine was), are you perceived as successful (even if you have a great idea, does your publication record and coursework signal someone who is impressive but also needs more training), and of course skilled writing (are the reviewers going to deem your proposal worthy of a vote and high impact score). Now my CV reads as someone who had 4 consecutive years of NIH extramural funding which is impressive for a predoctoral student, but in practice I was also incredibly lucky. The core interest for why I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. is one of the banned words amorphous health equity topics. I like many others have been asked to renegotiate my award terms and am grateful to still have a little autonomy in what I do because of extramural NIH support. Many were not lucky and lost their awards in an abrupt, unprecedented, and cruel fashion which is awful and consequential for their careers and sometimes their day-to-day finances. Especially if you are in a school of public health or medicine, grants are essential to funding the operation. I am curious how that changes in the future, but from my understanding of what that looks like today with new rules and general instability at the NIH, researchers are casting a net even wider for where they receive funding. Nevertheless grants were important for me because it first provided me time to think for myself while at the same time having structured time with my mentor. They also provided me a way to signal that I have good ideas because my proposal was scored high enough to receive the grant. Who knows if that is a real indicator of future success, but previous analysis shows that getting grants increases your likelihood to receive more funding in the future. Time will tell if that holds.
Resources: There was not a magic guide that I can attribute directly to my grant success. Things are changing as I noted above. What I do not think is changing is the value of taking time to carefully craft a proposal and conveying your ideas to multiple people to see if your ideas make sense. Have a good idea, read the directions of the grant, reach out to the decision makers after reading the directions thoroughly if they allow you to contact them, and give yourself time to work on the proposal. A lot of people have requested me walk through my writing process for my fellowship. Once the second part of my F99/K00 award is approved I plan on doing a deep dive on my writing for those for whom it will be helpful.
Mike Lauer, the former Deputy Director of Extramural research at the NIH recently won the Quality of Care and Outcomes Research (QCOR) Council Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award at the American Heart Association (Disclosure: I am a member of the early career committee of QCOR) and he delivered a great lecture at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions about chaos on the infrastructure that supports research alongside general mistrust of science. He has a forthcoming book on his time at the NIH, and I think it could be interesting read for thinking about the direction that supporting research could go.
Analytics
In my program, we have a methods sequence which overviewed many of the different type of analysis we would encounter. After that overview, I made the most growth working alongside my mentor to execute the type of analysis that was relevant for both the questions that I was interested and the data at my disposal. I gained proficiency in group-based trajectory modeling, survival analysis, and mixed-models. These are all prospective analysis techniques I never executed or really understood prior to entering my program. Connecting my analytic toolbox to the questions that I wanted to ask were important because it stretched me as a scientist. It keeps my gears turning about how my analytic toolbox could help me answer questions and inform solutions on what I want to change in the future. It is great to get knowledge from coursework, but application of the techniques has been most fruitful for me.
Resource: I think that enrolling in methods courses are helpful and finding a good instructor through word of mouth is also critical. At the same time doing things like workshops at your school can also be a great use of your time and allow you to get an overview of a topic thematically. For example, this summer I went to the Duke Health AI – Machine Learning Summer School which had intensive sessions on neural networks and clinical prediction models that expanded my thinking about future applications.
Networking
One of the underrated parts of being in a Ph.D. program is the protected networking time. Being a student is a drag because you are not at the level where you can lead a large national lab or whatever other operation you consider large scale impact. At the same time, as a trainee you can approach people from the perspective of being a learner in an environment where the core missions are generating and teaching ideas. For me, being in this position has led to many great collaborations and mentors. At the same time, there are many people who never respond or meetings go poorly. Take these instances as learning opportunities, but at the same time do not take them personally
Resource: I highly recommend listening to Dr. Kemi Doll’s podcast episode (Spotify and Apple Music) on how to properly reach out to people for informational interviews. Even though I am an early-career researcher, over the past couple of years I have started getting an overwhelming number of requests for advice and guidance. Some are more appropriate requests than others, and I endorse Dr. Doll’s advice on how to make a “cold call” style email more productive than others.
Traditional Academic Productivity
When I applied to Ph.D. programs 5 years ago in November 2020, I had 1 publication (which was a first author original research manuscript) and had received two research awards to support my time as a research assistant. I also applied for a grant to support my anthropology honors thesis. Often, publication record alone is emphasized as a way to signal potential as a Ph.D. student. At the time of applying to programs I had “enough” to be a compelling candidate, but “what is enough?” is an unfair question because the content of your CV and what resources are available to you dramatically vary by applicant. I applied to MPH and Ph.D. programs and was admitted everywhere I applied. I selected my program because the stipend was highest, because of cost of living the dollar would stretch even more, and I felt I would have the best mentorship fit. Lastly, the program was new and I was told that they would be flexible with me. Many people speak poorly about their Ph.D. program and experiences. Unfortunately I rarely have heard someone refer to their Ph.D. program as a great time in their life. This can be compounded by poor mentorship fit or unclear expectations, which is why program culture matters as much as prestige. Also want to reiterate how my mentor was incredibly generous with his time, expertise, and resources.
At the time of graduating, I have 13 published manuscripts, 11 under review at various stages from 1st submissions to 2nd revisions, and 3 in preparation that I hope to get under review in a month or so. 9 of those are lead author manuscripts and 2 are senior author manuscripts. When I applied to the program, there were a ton of people who had more productivity than me and a ton with less, this still applies to my post grad status. Publishing timelines are incredibly different across disciplines. Some places you need to collect all your data and in others, having one paper under review by the end of your PhD is impressive. And in some disciplines you would be lucky to get a job with under 30 papers. I left this section last because if you are pursuing a Ph.D., you do not need me to tell you publishing is important. That is clear through the composition of the faculty and how they filter through prospective candidates on the job market, but the former 3 sections I think were far more critical to my own development and what I think was valuable from my experience.
Resources: “Writing Science” by Joshua Schimel is a book that I read for a scientific writing class in undergrad. It was incredibly helpful and helps a lot with how I think about conveying ideas to scientific audiences. I took two scientific writing classes in undergrad and also a class on data visualization in grad school. Although I am nowhere near an expert, I have found that the time spent working on both writing and visualization have been incredibly helpful for my comfort with my work for academic audiences.
The Bad
Personal struggles
Like almost any 4–5-year period in your life you are bound to have personal struggles. I think that being in open dialogue with your friends and family members about mental health is important. In the low moments of my program, I had a great network of people who picked me up and did not judge me when I failed. At the same time, it is important to note that it is hard to have a village if you are not also working on maintaining relationships. So when you are having good moments, try to show up for your people. That does not necessarily mean trying to keep score or create IOUs, but relationships and friendships are a beautiful thing and it is one of the things that makes life worth living and gives you some purpose outside of your career.
Resource: “Rest” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang was a great book I read the weekend of my 25th birthday at the end of my 3rd year of my program. It was a great way to kick off my quarter life crisis.
The unpredictable nature of the world
This year has been rough for a lot of people pursuing academic research. During the COVID-era when I felt everyone would say times are “unprecedented” the attitude around the nature of change was entirely different. The pandemic was acute in terms of the lives lost, the measures taken to mitigate the spread of illness, and the way it impacted our health physically and socially. The current attacks on higher education, academic freedom, and our overall research enterprise have forced many of us to reconsider what security means in academic careers and how to build resilience beyond any single institution or research sponsor. I feel I would be unwise to guess the future and tell you what exactly will be the next great crisis moment. Because of this uncertainty, it is incredibly important to remain grounded and do what you can do with the resources at your disposal.
Resources: For academic commentary, I have enjoyed Professor Don Taylor’s Substack blog.
Another book on my reading list is “The Uncontrollability of the world” by Hartmut Rosa which is about this topic. We often are very good at attributing our successes and failures to things that are within our control. Sometimes this is the case where our reality is based on our effort, but often it is a combination of our actions and circumstances.
I think it is important to get your news from journalists who cover the topics you care about. This year, I subscribed to STAT News because they investigate topics I care about (student discounts are found here). I would also recommend reading and supporting your local news sources while also seeking out other media platforms. A healthy news diet can keep you informed on what is happening in your space, and instead of falling into dread it has kept me sober about the reality of what is and is not in my control right now. There is a lot of information noise, and finding a way to focus on what will directly impact your decision making is crucial.
Interpersonal professional conflicts
Disagreement, questioning, and feedback are all core tenets of the scientific process. If there was 100% consensus on an idea, there would not be a point in investigating it. While now I think a lot of ideas that are close to a strong majority and have been well tested that are being opened for debate, I am amenable to a lot of the scientific process being a process where people must justify their assertion (even to bad faith actors). As I mentioned earlier, I was in the first cohort of my program and we did not have a handbook or structure that applied to our different milestones consistently every year. There are benefits and drawbacks to this. In practice, Ph.D. programs should have a degree of flexibility because it is not a cookie cutter degree. At the same time, it is difficult to have clear guidelines for mentees and advisors to know what adequate completion of various milestones. This is especially true in an interdisciplinary program where the mentees have different goals and the mentors trained at a different time. Throughout the process, I have felt some general animosity that I had to learn not to take personally when someone belittled me, demeaned my work, or criticized my motives. I have an affinity and appreciation for many of the people from my program. Even in points of friction, I try to give people I disagree with the benefit of the doubt. Despite this, it is imperative that students are responsive to feedback and transparency in standards continue to be a core part of the process. With potentially more stressors coming for academia in the United States of America, understanding what is expected of you and how to demonstrate that is a two-way street.
Resource: Taking a deep breath and not taking anything too personally. Remain aware of disrespect but try not to let it derail what you set out to do.
Future Direction
Scientist-Citizen Training
Health communication is something I think is at odds with Ph.D. training. We are hammered to learn about the limitations of our work and methods. As a scientist that is important because your words and claims have consequences and different standards than non-experts. We live in a landscape where the barrier to entry to communicate ideas is cheaper than ever. Creating a social media account, blog, or YouTube channel is as simple as a few clicks. Speaking in a tone that is like an expert is also a few clicks away with the proliferation of free and/or cheap AI tools. It is becoming easier by the day to appear as an expert but effective communication in the hands of well-intentioned scientists can be empowering. Speech is even more democratized in terms of access, but the quality and filtering that is possible through normal gate-keeping mechanisms is harder. I say all this collectively because I think I was the least prepared in my program was around science communication (this is not a program specific issue in my view, rather a systemic one). At a recent conference, one of the plenary speakers said everyone should become more of a Scientist-Citizen, which is a play on words for “Citizen-Scientist”. We need to take Scientist-Citizenship seriously. That means encouraging researchers to think about how their work connects to the communities they serve, and it means promoting people who do this well. Universities talk constantly about broader impacts and public engagement, but the incentive structures rarely support scientists spending paid time on this as a part of their research responsibilities. If we believe knowledge production serves the public good, then communicating that knowledge should be a core part of the academic mission, not a nice-to-have.
This is a stand-alone section because I think that not everyone should be a science communicator in public spaces, and from observations the people who do this the best do so through their own journey. While effectively communicating ideas can be bolstered with tools, coursework, and coaching, I think that a good amount of the competency that people can get comes from being authentic. Authenticity comes from an understanding of oneself and conveying authenticity includes a lot of time listening. Instead of feeling the need to comment on any and everything, if you understand yourself, you will know what is worth your voice and what is not.
While it is important to communicate effectively regardless of who you are, and every scientist needs to be able to disseminate their work through journals and the venues for your job. What happens when you give someone who is not approachable, relatable, or measured in their speech a microphone? I think people must learn how to navigate non-academic communication channels, and the individuals who are trained and talented in this must be adequately compensated and promoted accordingly.
For example, if a scientist gets a paper in Nature, Cell, the New England Journal of Medicine, etc. that will stand out very clearly on their CV and recognition is more simply quantified and valued. In the same sense, if someone is speaking on a podcast that has national recognition, I think the value of their communication skill could also be recognized. The path towards being a nationally recognized science communicator involves many dud podcast appearances and media appearances which garner tens of views instead of thousands or millions. Similar to how early scientific experiments are not Nobel Prize winning work, talent in Scientist-Citizen tasks is developed through iteration. The cynical take is that the public has already made up its mind about scientists and no amount of thoughtful communication will change that. I do not think apathy is a good enough reason to abandon the effort to promote the value of being a Scientist-Citizen. I also do not think that people are static in their value of expertise and good information, they often have for one reason or another not understood the value of aspects of the scientific process. Even if the impact of emphasizing being a better Scientist-Citizen is smaller than we hope, the alternative—ceding the conversation entirely to people who speak confidently but inaccurately—seems worse.
What’s next
I started this blog in January 2025, and this is my 13th post of the year. I planned to write 10 posts this first year so I am ecstatic to have made it past my goal. Next year I hope to double that goal and complete 20 blogs. As the blog currently exists I want to keep it free, but I am curious about opening options in 2027 to produce paid content so that I could explore more cool science communication avenues. Despite that, I think that viewing the content should be free and the part that will eventually be limited is personal access (e.g. via comments and chats), that way I can be hands on with moderation of discourse while still allowing those who value these blogs to read them. To improve as a “Scientist-Citizen”, I am going to try to work on disseminating work through my various social media channels at least once a week in 2026.
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Appreciate your follows and support as always!
-Michael D. Green, Ph.D.