Each host has thought about it, some of them still do, but none of the hosts had the guts to do it: Quitting our PhD. With a lot of talk on Twitter and articles documenting the mental health issues of early career academics (see e.g. Hazell, 2020 in "Systematic Reviews", Hazell, 2022 in the LSE blog), the question arises as to why people do or don't quit. So the hosts of the desk reject podcast thought it high time to discuss the topic of quitting: Both in relation to observations they have made over their time as a grad student, as well as to discuss when or why thoughts about quitting became salient for them. One thing that the hosts can agree upon - grad students should be quitting more readily than they are at the moment. Among other things, in this episode the hosts talk about:- reasons why they have thought about quitting- why it is so hard for grad students to consider quitting- ideas on what factors should be part of the decision process of quitting- the best time (not) to quit- what the hosts would be doing if they quit their PhD right nowAnd much more - buckle up, it's a long one.