‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis
After 5 years of work, I finally decided to take the jump and live the dream of earning a Masters degree from a prestitious university in The Netherlands. Being a non-EU citizen I had shell euro 15000&#x2F;year but it still seemed cheaper than US counterparts.<p>Couple months into the semester I realized the pressure kicking in my program. The planned 40 hour load required atleast 80 hours of work. I could sense stress and depression all around. None of my classmates seemed to have any weekends to travel around or play a sport. Friends needed smoke breaks every couple hours during group assignments. The fact that the program didn&#x27;t offer the quality that one would expect made matters worse. I spent 6 months doing things that I did not enjoy. At the same time, my 5 years of work experience taught me enough to understand that what I was spending most of time on did not prepare me intellecually with regards to what to expect once I am back in the industry. The only preparation I was getting was the ability to absorb stress; and I was sucking at it. Dark thoughts started haunting me; I pushed through one semester and came back home to evaluate the ROI of this whole ordeal.<p>I quit after going back in order change my program to something better; but time to switch and forth coming costs weren&#x27;t motivating enough.<p>UPDATE: I would honestly attribute most of the ordeal part to the program I selected. I looked forward to a couple professors to work with; both of them ended up either leaving the university or reducing their focus on my program. I saw students in other programs go along really well. At this point in academia I would consider it critical to visit the university personally (even if you are an international) to evaluate the environment you would be studying in and understand from fellow students how the program is being driven.