<p>On a serious note, one thing about PhD’s is if you find something really significant you don’t have to stay the usual amount of time (if this was the result of your own original ideas.) An example is Claude Shannon, who first applied Boolean logic to circuits. It was his master’s thesis at MIT, but they just gave him the PhD too and sent him on his way. </p>
<p>Sometimes, really significant projects aren’t necessarily time intensive.</p>
<p>Of course, synthesis is usually an exception to this rule, proving once again that we are all insignificant meat-piles (especially DoinSchool.)</p>