Realization my dream goal is not realistic for me anymore. Need to vent but open to advice.
I've (31M) been posting for quite some time now. I need to note that I do feel better now compared to where I was last night in case you all saw that post before it got locked in this case. Long story short, I graduated with my PhD last Thursday. However, I'm not happy and I'm just plain upset because I fell into the sunk-cost fallacy big time and kept going in my education when it was clear that this wasn't the path for me based on how I failed on all possible levels of graduate school (Master's and PhD alike).
For those wondering how I bombed graduate school in every conceivable way (skip if you don't care): I have 3rd percentile processing speed that affects just about everything I've done (I also have ASD level 1, ADHD-I, and motor dysgraphia). I also have generalized anxiety, social anxiety, PTSD, and major depressive disorder - moderate - recurrent. I'm also the only person I've known with this sort of speed who got a PhD in anything in my case. The PhD also didn't go well for me in every way imaginable. Not that there's a need to read it, but feel free to see my post in the PhDStress subreddit for more detail. The gist though is that I couldn't have made it through graduate school (this includes my terminal Master's program, separate from my PhD) without a ton of concessions throughout the process, such as only working on one research project at a time, working with others who understood the material faster than me, being the only one in my cohort who didn't TA or get another 10 hours of assistantship funding the second year of my Master's when everyone else did, and more. I also only made it through undergrad since I had a life coach for all four years who helped me as well. There's been tons of other academics who've told me to just figure out shortcuts or push through it, but it's not that simple at all given how easily I can go into autistic burnout and more.
Now, for the more relevant part, here's the trigger point: Knowing I need to do what I can possibly do and having to let go of my dreams out of necessity is just plain defeating. I wish I never did my field at all and I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I wanted to be a scientist ever since I was a kid, but now that dream is one I realize is unrealistic for me due to all of my conditions and lack of compromises for anyone who would employ me. I'm trying to cope with leaving my dream behind me. I know people switch careers often, but I'm the only PhD I know who's been suggested hospital medical records jobs that probably don't even require so much as a Bachelor's degree in this case. To be clear, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with those jobs based on "status" or "it's shameful that a PhD has X job." It's just that a fair amount of them don't pay well and I'll probably be stuck in my parent's house or living with someone else for the rest of my life due to how low they pay. Given that I also got four cavities earlier today and that's going to be a $1.1k bill and possibly more in the future given how I messed up my teeth when I was younger... I drained my parents with how much they helped me. I also irked other students dislike me in my PhD program when I leaked the clinical psychology PhD program getting cut after I heard it walking past a meeting (even though I thought I did the right thing at the time) and now I'm draining myself with the thought how much more income I could've got by just going straight to work in any of the linear jobs I'm getting suggested right now. I also want to reiterate that it would've been one thing if this was common, but it's not. I'm the only one I know who's got too much education, underskilled, and their only realistic options are low paying slow jobs.
To top it off, Beyond the Professorate and other resources like it aren't applicable for me. The main advice boils down to something like instead of saying "taught X classes," change it to taught "taught X classes and received a teaching distinction award" or something similar like that. However, I don't have anything like that at all and have the opposite of all of that in this case. In other words, nothing going for me outside of the bare minimum and just being present when I needed to be and getting the little I could get done as well. The worst part is that, even if I was eligible for post PhD jobs, I couldn't have done them because the expectations get higher and higher because there's assumed mastery over the previously studied content, which doesn't automatically come to me since habits are hard to form due to my neurodivergent conditions (mostly dysgraphia) in this case. For example, I learned recently that dysgraphia makes it so that skills that should be "automatic" don't exactly come automatically that easily, or never at all sometimes.
I'm open to advice on what else I could pursue and/or just do to handle my situation from a health perspective too. Medical billing was a good suggestion I got a while ago. I should note that I did consider clinical research positions for a long time, but I've been pushed out of that because of how fast paced that work is for most, including neurotypical individuals, which means it would be 100% worse for me.
Posted Aug 14, 2025, 12:29 AM UTC