<p>Nice and detailed explanation for difficulties faced in PhD-life. Which aspect did you find difficulty in your 3rd or 4th? Or what difficulties did you face?</p>
<p>Are individuals with mental health issues eligible/admissible for PhD?</p>
<p>Yes, but it’s going to make the degree more challenging, and you really need to have things under control to make it work.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s actually illegal to discriminate against you in admissions because of mental health issues. Although I wouldn’t disclose it because unconscious biases can arise on the part of the admissions committee - plus, there’s no need for you to unless it’s impacted your work to date, and then you can just say you had medical issues. I actually have had depressive episodes before graduate school (which caused a really bad semester in college, hence my 3.4 GPA) but I had a better handle on it when I started graduate school.</p>
<p>Usually year 3 marks the transition to independence for doctoral students. Your first 2 years are essentially like undergrad on steroids - you’re taking graduate level classes, but you are still doing most of the same tasks you did as an undergrad - going to class, writing papers, sometimes taking exams. You also may be working as a research assistant, but you’re not really expected to have independent projects yet, so you’re often doing higher-level versions of the same tasks you were doing as a senior undergrad. So there’s not a lot of role mismatch for you - you do the same things you are used to.</p>
<p>However, by year 3 or 4 you usually have finished most or all of your coursework. That’s when you start taking qualifying exams, and when you are expected to be more independent in your research - maybe starting your own independent projects, collecting data for your dissertation, writing a proposal, presenting at national conferences, etc. If you’ve never really worked independently before - and especially if you are coming directly from undergrad, like I did - it can be a system shock even if you think you are expecting it. You have to manage your own time now - nobody’s managing it for you.</p>
<p>It can be very solitary and isolating, especially when you are studying for quals. Studying for qualifying exams (also know as comprehensives or comps) can be brutal, depending on your department; mine weren’t so bad, but they still took a LOT of time. And all of it is unstructured - it’s up to you to schedule it yourself, and if you aren’t used to scheduling your own time - and I mean ALL of your own time - it can be daunting. The semesters in which I took my writtens and orals I had no classes or I was only TAing one class, so the rest of the days I had to decide when I was going to study, when I was going to prep the classes I was teaching and when I was going to relax. It’s hard to do that when you haven’t before, and inevitably grad students schedule too much work and not enough leisure time. It can lead to feeling overwhelmed and depressed and/or anxious. It gets easier once you learn how to do it.</p>
<p>Also, years 3 and 4 is when you start thinking about your future, building your CV for an academic or research position, and checking out the job market. I went through a period in those years when I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. What I thought I wanted changed and morphed a lot in my second and third years - I came in thinking I absolutely did not want to be an academic and then I started liking it a bit more than I expected. I thought I would hate teaching and I actually really like it. So I was really confused, and trying to figure out my life. I was also just burned out - I had already done 4 years of undergrad and now 2 years of grad school and I was tired! I just wanted to be finished.</p>
<p>So you’re dealing with all this at once - the transition to independence, scheduling your own time, trying to figure out research you want to spend the next 7ish years of your life on (usually your tenure-track research grows from your dissertation research), studying for your qualifying exams, and trying to figure out what you want to do with your life. You also may be TAing a class or even teaching your own section of a lab or intro class, which always takes much more time than you expect (they say 15-20 hours a week but that is a lie, at least at first when you are just learning. I’ve spent 4-5 hours just preparing a single 2-hour lecture, although now I’m much faster). And usually you aren’t taking enough time for yourself - you’re trying to work around the clock to get all of this stuff done in the 24 hours you have each day, and the days seem to pass faster and faster the less you get done. No wonder so many grad students have a break down!</p>
<p>By the beginning of year 5 I had a come-to-Jesus moment and realized that I was running myself ragged and I needed to slow down, so I decided to take an extra year to finish (6 instead of 5) and I slowed down considerably. I started making more time for myself; I began to say no to things I didn’t really want to do; I made more time to spend with my friends and my husband; I started reading books for pleasure again; and some days I literally lay in bed and stare at the ceiling for a half hour because I want to do absolutely nothing. I also started exercising and going to bed at midnight no matter what I had to do (and sometimes earlier). It made a tremendous, tremendous difference in my mental health and my desire to continue in the field, and not only was I a lot happier, I realized that I really loved my research and liked academia a lot. It reconnected me with why I wanted to be a researcher in the first place. And slow down doesn’t mean I did nothing - I won a second fellowship, defended my dissertation proposal and worked on two papers (1 first-authored) in my 5th year. I got the same amount of work done, I just reorganized my life differently and I was far more productive!</p>
<p>Haha, so now you all know my life story. The moral is: don’t lose yourself in grad school, and don’t lose sight of the reason you’re doing it in the first place.</p>
<p>But my point is that all that stuff absolutely would NOT have been worth it if I didn’t love my research and really want to be a researcher in my field. The only thing that kept me from quitting in my third year, and again in my fourth, is that I really really really love my field, love my research and wanted to do jobs that required a PhD more than anything else. Once you get to year 3 or 4 and you hit that wall, if you don’t need to do the PhD you’re going to start wondering why you are torturing yourself this way. And then, it’s emotionally difficult to leave because you’ve invested so much of yourself into the program. Even if you do manage to leave, you wonder why you spent 3 or 4 year being unhappy when you could’ve done something else.</p>
<p>I should write a book, lol!</p>
<p>As a seventh year finally scheduling his defense I can second all of what juillet’s saying. :)</p>
<p>(Although I’d say my depression years lasted more from the first through my seventh, lol.)</p>
<p>Thanks Juillet! That response will soon be printed and hung up somewhere! (even the part swaying me away 
)</p>
<p>@juillet
so looong! It surprises me how patient you are to write at length!! Honestly, I have to gain strength in going thru it. Reading actually pains me. But I do for the fields of importance to me. [I have cognitive issues]. Well, 3.4 GPA out of?</p>
<p>As you say PhD research may exacerbate mental health issues, but I wish to research on solving my mental health issues; hunting labs or libraries for substances(material) or literature(knowledge). I heard in the US college students take Ritalin sort of things. Some say they finished an year’s curriculum in 10 days(immense concentration). </p>
<p>As for my story goes, I would rather say if anyone was in my position s/he would have committed suicide. Still, I have grudge against the people who have done to me. Because, whatever they’ve done cant AT ALL be justified. I loved the subject, I thought they (the school IIT Delhi)will be a resource to give boost to my pursuits. But, alas, they shattered my expectations. Either they were stupid/ignorant(because some were assigned topics to teach that were not the area they specialize), cruelly oversmart to torture, or lazy to teach. In pursuit of claiming my (lost) power, I am aiming doing this sort of research, to get hold of a ‘miracle’ substance by studying deeply working of brain.</p>
<p>As I had told earlier “I showed promising signs in research”, “I realized I should be doing research”, also an UG lecturer, told “I don’t know how he will fare in exams but …in research…” much earlier in my UG 1st or 2nd, in 3rd I definitely wanted to settle with math, “do PhD in math from Delhi and go and work in the US as researcher.” Situations took a worse turn. In my UG 3rd fall I fell prey to OCD, due to working a lot amidst lot of stress. I was greatly worried how I’ll be proceeding further in studies in PG after getting selected in IIT Delhi for MSc. But, miraculously medications(Prozac, Klonopin) worked and that depression and OCD went away instead that gave a hypomanic switch. Earlier too I had brief hypomanic episode before OCD, that can be due to asthma medications(fexofenadine, theophyllin is a stimulant?), I believe but doctors don’t, but this time stronger hypomania. But that hypomania was like a boon to me – can read several pages in a go on computer screen, fast processing, superb working memory, during critical, demanding times of PG but it is vilified by physicians. But, there were also some undesirable effects like hyper-sexuality, SMS-ing classmates, dominating, disobedience, great confidence, less need for sleep, ok. They gave me powerful antipsychotics, anti-maniacs causing cognitive issues(failing attention, concentration, working/ short-term memory, processing speed, executive function, language functioning, no motivation), that are far more disabling and debilitating. As a result I was experiencing so much agony due to drop in GPA. I was juggling thru mental health forums where American students reported their grades dropped from A- or B to D, E, etc being on these antipsychotics. Thing is I performed mostly well in minors (I think it is 20 marks each); manytimes I passed with the PMT(pre-major total) score itself, but my performance was always bad in major(it is tougher, lengthy, more syllabus, also no gap to study). *#&, classes(daily from morning till evening) and exams(after every month) were incessant. Unfortunately, in my 2nd onward semester PG medications causing cognitive issues as well as the instructors were benignant(an irony), brought about great misery. I just want to finish the game once for all, bringing to book all those people responsible for my situation. </p>
<p>I know my classmates, contemporaries, and even juniors have completed PhD, I have no strong wish to have a ‘PhD’ title other than just to solve my personal problem; why would I change my field? I would love to do research, but I hate the coursework, exam treadmill. Since my UG years I lost my belief in classrooms, teachers, instead I believed in libraries, [though I got first division>70% cumulative score,I believe had my conditions been fine set, I would have performed well in PG however much brutal was the dept.], (now laboratories as in math we didn’t have labs.) I have a notion one can be as knowledgeable by studying texts, literature, as who has graduated from classroom. I want to go straight and do my work instead of crossing all these bullish formalities. </p>
<p>At the moment, I don’t aim at how my area will be fetching me in job market. I just want to do for my needs. Given my research aptitude I realized, I want to build upon it, my research skills I need to solve my problem. </p>
<p>Certainly, in one’s life no one can help than himself. I believe no one can be dedicated to us other than ourselves. I think one should have a great deal of preplanning, beforehand information of future course. </p>
<p>Yes in academia there is not one lie but 1000 lies. From the scheme you rank schools, programs to the scheme they use for evaluating candidates, lots of loopholes. You have to examine each one minutely, you will find. </p>
<p>You say you reorganized. But I don’t believe in psychology sort of thing. I believe in matter, nature, 5 elements, as being very powerful. The material knowledge and material have made the US superpower. A counselor wont adjust your time or prepare a schedule for you. I believe the US has very hitech labs, if my problem is not (completely) solved in PhD, I will come to the US for postdoc and continue that work.</p>