Graham, L. et al.

After nailing her doctorate presentation and finishing the edits on her 187-page thesis, PhD student Erika Williams finally achieved her lifelong dream; forking over a ton of money to write something with a lower readership than her teenage diary.



“I come from the lower-middle class, so I knew academia was my path to getting six figures,” said Williams, “I just thought it would be in salary.”

Currently, Williams is in six figures of crushing, non-dischargeable debt.



But don’t worry, she is already looking for a job and boasts that she has a leg up in the job market.

“Due to grad school and funding cuts [1], I’m used to the current economic model of working past your limit just to get to the poverty line.”



Still, she is happy with her decision to spend the past [“please don’t publish how long”] years writing about a subject so niche that no more than 20 other eggheads will ever skim it for keywords.



Though hopeful that her publications could be used to advance health or halt climate change, Williams cannot shake the lingering fear that her contribution to science may not have been worth the 11,371 non-biodegradable plastic pipettes she used to get it.



Now on the job hunt, she passes the months between interviews by gently telling people “no, not that type of doctor.”



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