Toxicity of Grad School

I've written before about how difficult it is to finish a PhD -- specifically, the middle portion is very depressing and it often difficult to summon the motivation to continue.

There's a whole long, boring back-story to this that I won't go into, but one of the regrets that I have about that era is that I declined a lot of wedding invitations. Because I was a single guy in my 20s with not a lot of social skills, I didn't think that it was a big deal. The weddings were in California, or Texas, or wherever. And I figured that the wedding party probably wouldn't even notice that I wasn't there, might even welcome not having to pay for my plate at the reception, or want to have a seat that they could fill with someone else. Now that I'm married and have a completely changed perspective on weddings, I realize how misguided my thinking was.

Looking back on my life when I was in grad school, though, I realize now that the real reason that I declined a lot of the invitations were because I was depressed and embarrassed about being in grad school. My perception of myself was that I was languishing away in grad school, while all of my peers were working in real jobs, getting married, having children, and getting on with their lives. Most people don't understand what the PhD process is like, or why you would even want to get one. Can you imagine being at a wedding and having this conversation?

"Terence, it's been a while! What have you been up to?"
"Uh, I'm working on a PhD right now."
"Wait, you didn't get enough school in college and want more?"
"Uh... something like that."
"You're almost 30 and you're still a student?"
"It's not really like I'm a student..."
"Well, are you almost done with your PhD?"
"Yeah, I'm probably about a year away from graduation."
"Wait, isn't that what you said last year? And the year before that?"
*sigh* "Yeah..."
"And you're not married?"
"Uh, no, but this conversation is making me think about using heroin."

By the way, I don't harbor any resentment towards people who didn't come to our wedding. By the time we got married, everyone had children and in-laws, limited vacation time, and all kinds of other complications. It wasn't like when I was in grad school, and could take off whenever I wanted to.