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TheBruceHimself 15 hours ago

Really depends on the country (I did my PhD in the UK), but I don't know of any PhD student writing grants, and TAing doesn't generally take up more than a day a week (I think I did no more than a couple of hours a week). In the US, you sometimes need to take classes for PhD study (I think this is terrible, BTW, but that's a somewhat separate thing), but for me, I did research, I'd say, 75% of the time.

A PhD is a waste of time if you're in terms of improving your income. It's just an apprenticeship in research, so it's only good if you want to do that as a career. In terms of enjoyment, I think a PhD is really tied to how much joy you can derive from research, much of which is months and months of work to just prove one or two incredibly minor things (which, honestly, are going to be of little interest to anyone and basically will serve only to show you can do research, not that what you were researching was in any way noteworthy). For me, I loved my time as a PhD student because what I was researching involved learning and using a lot of cool stuff, and I really liked the academic community "feel" and culture (for all its many, many faults).