Just before I submitted my master's thesis, my academic supervisor told me that it could form the bulk of a PhD. And that if I worked for an extra 1.5 years and added those results to the 2 years of work that I had already done, then I could get a PhD. So in some cases, the only difference between a PhD and a master's can be the amount of time spent on it. The level and quality of the work for the first 2 years can be identical, regardless of whether it is going to be a PhD or a master's degree in the end. Moreover, the master's was also more brutal than if I had directly signed up for a PhD programme, because the PhD would have been fully funded for years, whereas my master's was only funded for 1 year. So I had to work multiple jobs to fund my 2nd year, despite still working more than full time hours on my master's. I worked all day virtually every day, 7 days a week, that year, and I remember leaving the university at 11pm one day and genuinely thinking, "wow, I'm leaving early today," before realising how ridiculous that thought was. In any case, I hope things worked out ok for you, and that you managed to overcome the difficulties that you were facing with your master's degree.

In Canada they allow international students to take leave of absences just the same as domestic students

excellent question! from these interviews and sample size, it seems largely to come from academics but I'm sure it varies. as for your experience, was that in having to leave a PhD program?

​@@NotesByNiba And for yourself? Honestly, I'm of the opinion that anybody that is shaming someone for making a big life choice like this, especially in cases like yours, should be removed from the life of the other person. Until you walk in the same shoes, just be supportive and leave it at that. As for myself, no, I was undergrad. I just didn't study. I had senioritis my freshman year of HS. Never had to study throughout HS and that didn't cut it once I got to college. Plus, like you, I went out of state and so had no support like I had the rest of my life. My own fault and I wish I had done it differently. Really, my parents wish they had held me back a year for starting school originally because I was a July birthday and always matured a little slower. So the extra year might have helped. But they didn't, and I didn't work harder and so things are different than they might have been. But worse or better? No way of knowing. Anyway, I am truly sorry for your experiences and the experiences of the people you interviewed. Life can be very difficult and it is so much worse when people cut you down when you need support the most. Thankfully it sounds like you did have some support from close friends and family which allowed you to survive and keep going. Thank you for sharing your story and letting others hear a "success" during those terrible times. They are not over, but you clearly will get through them stronger.

oof right! It's specific to doctoral students (i.e. not masters, med school, etc)

I'm male and going through this. I think men maybe less likely to open up about these things because of toxic masculinity expectations that "men just have to be tough and shouldn't be vulnerable". But it's certainly happening to all of us, although in different ways.

@@FaV1 that's a really wonderful perspective you have given me. Thank you.

@@nadiabednarczuk9516 I don't think that sex/gender is that much of a factor in terms of experiencing general difficulties during a PhD. The only exceptions are likely to be specific gender related issues, such as gender based discrimination, or sexual harassment. I am male, and personally I experienced quite a few problems during my PhD. So much so, that I wanted to quit most days for the 7 years that I spent working on it. Like Fabio says, men also experience many of the same problems that women do, but are often less likely to talk about them. I know a number of guys who either quit or failed their PhD programmes, and a number of others who completed their PhDs but had a really tough time. A quick summary of a few of the problems that I faced during my Masters and PhD are as follows: 1) Working from morning till night most days, including most weekends, but still experiencing little to no useful progress for years, and then slow progress for the following years because I was essentially stumbling around in the dark and having to find my own way most of the time. 2) Extreme stress, trouble sleeping, isolation, lack of social interaction, degradation of personal relationships, self doubt, and a general feeling of depression, due to working too hard but still not feeling like I was making sufficient progress. 3) Long delays in receiving essential materials, and significant wait times to access specific equipment. Including having to work nights for long periods of time in order to use equipment that was heavily booked during the daytime. Plus a number of instances of equipment failure that wasted many months of work. 4) Feeling like I was being judged as a failure for years, due to the aforementioned lack of progress. This was partially alleviated when I achieved the highest grades in the department on my first few PhD level courses/exams, but it never fully went away. 5) Multiple sports injuries, including a bad knee injury from football, where I could hardly walk for 6 months. Plus an operation. 6) An allergic reaction to antibiotics and anaphylactic shock, that caused 3-4 months of headaches and illness that required many different hospital visits. 7) Both parents being diagnosed with cancer. Although at this point, all of my problems were nothing compared to theirs. 8) Losing most of my life savings of over $100k in a financial market crash. 9) Having to work on my PhD, unpaid, pretty much full time for 3 more years after my funding ran out. 10) Having to choose between quitting my PhD or selling all of my remaining financial investments for the future at relatively low prices in order to pay my living expenses for the final 3 years required to finish it. 11) Watching said financial assets massively increase in value after I had sold them, such that the value of the assets sacrificed to complete my PhD grew into the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars shortly after my graduation. I had wanted to reinvest at this time, but I had no money left. So I could only watch from the sidelines with my PhD certificate, as everything that I had previously owned rocketed up in value into the hundreds of thousands of dollars without me. There were also a number of other issues and problems that I'm not going to go in to here, but those are the brief highlights.

There were a few men who left that I spoke to, but I decided to focus the video on US-only and PhD-only. There were definitely fewer men who responded to my request for stories leaving grad school, but whether thats because fewer men leave or men don’t want to discuss why they left publicly, I can’t say for sure.

Getting a PhD isn't only dependent on the personal qualities of the individual PhD student either though. It is also highly dependant on the particular advisor or project. The same student who completes one specific PhD, may not have completed a different one, and vice-versa. PhDs are very variable, and some are much harder than others. For example, I know some people who quit one PhD programme and then went on to complete a different one. So abandoning a specific PhD doesn't necessarily mean that the individual isn't cut out for a PhD in general.

That's not always true in every case, as the difficulty of a PhD, and the financial burden faced, often depends on the specific project, rather than whether the individual is good with money or whether they are good at their work. For example, I know some people who were far better than average at their PhDs who just happened to have a tougher project or examiner, and were therefore forced to work for an extra year or more without pay in order to to complete their PhD, as they exceeded their funding period through no fault of their own. And then I also know some pretty average students who had easier projects and had no problem completing their PhD within time and budget. Sometimes it's down to the individual, but other times it can heavily depend on external circumstances that are out of the individual's control. The best student in my lab produced a complete engineering research project on high temperature materials for jet engines, on time and on budget. Their academic advisors were happy with their work, and a major blue chip jet engine company also started using the models that they developed to improve their manufacturing processes. However, that student encountered a particularly awkward examiner who wouldn't accept their results, because of the software programme that they used, despite that software being pretty well accepted generally, and their models and software already being accepted by their advisors, and also being used by a major company. So the student then had to work for an extra year without pay to repeat all of their calculations and simulations using different software to satisfy this examiner and get their PhD. And when they completed this work, the results turned out almost exactly the same as before. So that individual faced a far more difficult obstacle and financial burden than most other PhD students through no particular fault of their own. I also know of a few others who went over their funding period for various reasons, and simply had to quit and get jobs. Some of them are still highly qualified professional engineers right now, so it's not like they have issues fitting into society or anything. They just happened to experience more financial difficulties than others at critical times during their PhDs, so they had to leave to find work.