To the people with whom I have been fortunate enough to interact here at Stanford and SLAC:

I would like to let you all know that I am leaving school, at least for the next year and, in all likelihood, forever. This may strike some of you as strange, or disappointing, or confusing, given that I seem to be near to the completion of my degree. If you feel this way, let me take a few moments to explain myself, both for my sake and for yours. If nothing else, I hope to convey that this is not a spur of the moment decision, but one that I have thought about for some time, and though you may not understand it, at least it is my decision and I am very comfortable that it is my best course of action. If it seems to come as a surprise, it is simply that I have avoided discussing it, for the obvious reasons, until I was sure of my decision.

I realized several years ago that I would not continue in physics after I got my PhD. There are many reasons for this, but I won't detail them here. Only a few of us do go on to make careers in this field, so I think this doesn't need too much explanation. I did think, however, that as I had come this far, finishing the degree might prove useful in my future.

Over the last year, however, I haven't accomplished much of note, and I don't think I am much closer now than I was 6 months ago to being done with this. This is, of course, my fault. I spent a long time beating myself up about my lack of drive, or motivation, or work ethic, or whatever you want to call it. I have come to accept it. I cannot motivate myself to do the rest of the work. It has no bearing on the rest of my life. Whatever I do in the future, it is not going to be related to what I have been trying to do for the past years, at least not directly. I asked myself over and over why I was doing work that I didn't care for, and I came up with several answers:

I. I wanted 3 letters after my name.

II. I wanted to live up to the expectations of others (my family, my friends, my advisor, my colleagues).

III. I had invested 3 (now 4) years in this.

IV. I had a responsibility to SLAC and the physics community to do the work.

V. It might help me in the future.

I have finally decided that those reasons are not enough. I is vain and egotistical, and not a reason for doing much of anything. II is not so bad, but when we try to live our lives to the standards others set for us, we run the risk of living their lives, not our own. I would rather make my own mistakes than those of others. (Of course, everyone at my age says this, but I don't think it makes it less true or important for me.) III is not a good reason for doing anything, the question one needs to ask is whether it is worth it at its current price. In other words, is it worth the remaining time that I need to put in to finish. Those 4 years I have already spent are gone, for good or for ill, I cannot get them back, and what I was doing during that time should not bear on my decision to continue.

IV is a better reason. For a while I felt that I should stay out of a responsibility to Lance and the department, both of whom have been incredibly nice, supportive, and helpful. In the end though, I have to do what is best for me, and my staying, in my current state, does not really help anyone. I am not doing useful work. I have not convinced myself that what I am doing is really that important in the scope of physics, and even if it were, I am not doing it well enough, or fast enough, to be of much use to anyone. I certainly do not think it is worth the sacrifice of another year of my life, and, without that feeling, I won't be good enough to do it. V was probably the best reason. However, I have realized that I am employable without a PhD. These years in grad school have damaged my self-confidence. I need to get that confidence back. I used to think that having a degree would open doors for me that might be harder to open without that degree. Well, I don't care anymore. I am good, smart, and, though my last few years don't show it, hard working. I can do anything. I don't need a degree from an unrelated field to open doors, I can do it myself. In fact, I need to do it myself.

Having thus dispatched all reasons to stay, I found that I should leave. I apologize to any (especially Lance) whom I have inconvenienced by hanging around too long, by not being decisive enough when I first thought about leaving, but this is the way things have turned out for me. In the end it is me that has lost the most time and effort to this, but I know I am not the only one who invested in my stock. All I can offer is my sincerest apology. Someone said to me that leaving academia, especially in this way, is very much like a religious conversion for me. I have never had a job outside of academia. Not only does my mother work in academia, with a PhD (and MD), but my grandparents had PhD's as well. It is, for me, almost like walking out on my family business, the one I had always assumed I would go into. This is not to say that it is their fault, or anything like that, but by way of explaining one of the reasons it took so long for me to see my way clearly.

I do wish to say that my physics education has been fun, and, I think, very useful in training my mind. I think physics itself, and high-energy theory in particular, has some problems, but none are major, and none have caused my decision. Physics, high-energy theory in particular, is a very beautiful subject, and very worthy of study. I will always be happy to have been involved with this community, however briefly. If I had left after 2 years, I think I would have been incredibly satisfied, but things began to drag out, on my part, and on the part of the work, and I couldn't sustain the effort. I do not feel driven away, in fact, I feel sad at going, but I would feel worse about staying. Everyone in the theory group at SLAC, and in the rest of the department has always seemed to me to be very reasonable and helpful. There are many who feel bitterness towards advisors, or other faculty, or other students, but not I. I hope my premature departure is not interpreted as a black mark against anybody at Stanford/SLAC.

Perhaps I should close with an analogy. In college I found physics as a fun major, that was easier for me than anything else. It was like being on a downhill slope, being carried irresistibly to the obvious destination. The path of least resistance is the direct one, and that is the one I took. My momentum emerging from college was high,, and it was still downhill. I never had to consider how much I wanted any of this; it came easily. Somewhere midway through grad school I reached the bottom. Now there was an uphill climb to finish the PhD, and get a postdoc, and then... Once it started getting hard, I started having to ask myself why I was here and why I wanted to make this climb. I love climbing hills, on my bike, on foot, on rock, as well as in the more metaphorical ways. I love climbing hills, but only when I find the journey rewarding, and the goal appealing. Here I found neither. As long as it was the easy path, why not follow it, but when it became hard, I realized that the only reason I was doing it was because it had been the easy way. My momentum has carried me as far upslope as it can, and rather than climb this because I am here, I am off to find something that I actually want to climb.

Thanks, for everything, and I’ll see you around,

Travis