@ D: My PE was caused by awesome-bad genetics, but you’re right that smoking + hormonal anything is a bad combination.

@ sf: Glad to hear your defense went well! Your committee didn’t ask anything horrible, did they?

@ Quirkybook: mixed emotions is exactly the right phrase. My sister-in-law wanted to stop her Ph.D program around the same time you actually did, but continued on anyways, which is something I think she regrets now that she’s tired of that field entirely. Maybe she should have studied more economics…

@ CaliforniaTransplant: you’re doing an academic job search AND planning a wedding at the same time? My hat’s off.

@ Q: stop kicking people and maybe your ACL will be better. Just kidding. Sorry to hear you’re not doing so great, but you’ve still got the lovely LA weather. We’ll visit when we can.

@ rabbit: what sort of company are you working on? Globalization and its related fields (international trade & development) are what got me interested in economics in the first place.

@ Arun: It’s not actually my project or hypothesis, per se – I’m just working under a development economist doing the data cleaning. I’m not sure what sort of data the economist I’m working for is using for the credit markets, so I’m not sure whether your “lower interest rate” hypothesis can be tested. Anyways, we’re not anywhere at that stage yet, but hopefully will be before the summer’s out. Re: Shore temple – I think that was Aditya commenting.

Interesting economic project regarding access to credits and suicides;
I thought one of the reasons farmers were committing suicide was, they were already in a lot of debt (accessed credit, perhaps at higher interest rates) and no way to repay. Could you be fine tuning your hypothesis to suggest that farmers have access to not just credit, but ‘lower interest rate’ credit?

Came here from your comment regarding the Shore temple – can you explain your query further? (with pics if possible); I will be posting my Shore temple pics in a few weeks.

best,
Arun

i’m glad you feel you’ve made the right decision in dropping out and entering the real world
this is something i’ve pondered as i stare down the difficult road of a phd student. but it seems like your life is right on track–consulting work modeling energy demands sounds like an awesome job. do you get to travel a lot? you and “Aditya” should come visit me back in LA sometime. ill take you for a ride on my motorcycle

Having gone through the whole deciding-to-leave-the-PhD thing recently myself, I empathize completely with the mixed emotions you must be going through. It must be a great relief, I think, to just make the decision and go ahead with the rest of your life! I, personally, felt some guilt about investing three-and-a-half years into grad school without actually getting the degree, but ultimately realized that I was making the classic mistake of taking into account sunk costs in my decision process. (So there, my limited economics training DID come into some use, after all!)

It sounds like the future holds a lot of adventures for you — best of luck as you go ahead and tackle them!

I’m sorry to hear about the health issues – these things are always scary, even when they turn out not to have been “life threatening” at any point. I hope the recovery continues apace!

Leaving the PhD program for a (totally awesome sounding!) job you’re excited about sounds like a somewhat scary but also massive step forward! Having just finished my own PhD work, I have to say the chunk of your youth that you give up in graduate school is larger than I’d really understood when I signed on, and life now that I’m out and working with and for real people is so exciting and fulfilling… yeah. It sounds like you’re really poised to go just where you want to go. Congrats on the big leap!

And, I *very* much look forward to hearing about how the extended visit goes!