Why (not) going on a PhD journey ?

A year from now, I’ve started my PhD journey with a LOT of enthusiasm, I was enough convinced that my motivations are solid enough to take me straight to my goal. I found a PhD subject that fits my personal and professional perspectives and I felt so blessed at the time to finally work freely on something I judge enough relevant to dedicate my three incoming years to achieve. After one year, I can come up with a bunch of pros and cons of this experience, here is a list of what I think should be known before getting into this journey:

Pros (Positivity first):

• Synthesizing skills : while reading articles, you will be in many reading modes depending on what is the main goal behind your reading, the time and investment is highly crescent is the following examples; discovering if the topic is matching your subject, presenting the article topic, reproducing experimentation, referencing as a starting point on your research.
• Communication skills: You will be attending group work presentations, conferences, poster sessions and committees, where you will be invited to talk about your research topic and your contributions.
• Writing skills: writing articles is part of the process, this will let you develop factual writing skills with clear demonstrations.
• Data Analysis skills: regarding the generation of your own data, you will be in the process of analyzing these data, keeping all results and justifying either or not these results match your hypothesis or not and Why.
• Teaching skills : You will be invited to give lectures at the University you are attached to. This probably will give you a taste of what could be your career in academia later. If you are into sharing knowledge and giving classes you will enjoy your time.

Cons (Very Personal):

• Work loneliness: you will be facing this feeling all the time of your research, none of your colleagues or either your supervisors have a deeper knowledge on your study topic. This feeling is emphasized by the fact that the project is hold and conducted by you all the time.
• Impostor syndrome: mostly the more you get deeper on your research the more you are reevaluating your progress in daily basis, and see that you are not making any extraordinary things as you expected. And this is completely wrong. Better reevaluate all this in a bigger picture.
• Academia disillusionment: making a free research is not what to expect. You will be under many pressures; article publications and communications, seeking funding, project deliverables and so on.
• Depression: it’s part of the process. You can go on an endless depression because of results not matching your hypothesis, for paper rejection, endless paper revision or less likely because of the relationships you maintain with your supervisors.
• Funding: Less than average or average in most countries.