# Xiangya Medical College Doctoral Student Driven to Suicide by Advisor

As someone who has pursued graduate studies, I deeply understand the inequality between advisors and students in China's academic system, especially for direct PhD students in medicine—giving up means losing over a decade of effort, with everything reset to zero.

My time in graduate school was painful😖My advisor experienced the Cultural Revolution and carried trauma from it; every meeting he'd recount those stories, and it drove me crazy.

When I graduated, I hadn't decided whether to pursue overseas studies or work, so I chose to work first. At the time, I thought studying abroad wasn't urgent—I could do it in a year anyway.

But one day I suddenly realized I hated writing papers just for the sake of publishing. Right at the final stage of applying for a PhD program in the US, I told my study abroad consultant that I wasn't going to pursue overseas education.

I always thought I'd become a scholar—that was my family's expectation too. I started publishing academic papers during my undergraduate years, published 3 papers as first author in Peking University core journals during graduate school and 2 SCI papers. But I suddenly realized I didn't want to do it, didn't want to produce academic garbage. So I quit.

My first job was at a 985 university in Beijing, my second at a Class-A hospital in Jiangsu managing research affairs... I lasted a year at the university and five months at the hospital before resigning...

During this period, I had conflicts with my family. But for me, sunk costs don't factor into major decisions—I just do what makes me happy, think it through, and accept the consequences.

Kind people always turn the blade on themselves. No bad person deserves our sacrifice of life.

Camus once said, "Besides pointless physical suicide and spiritual escape, the third suicidal attitude is persistent struggle, resisting life's absurdity." For Camus, only suicide is the sole philosophical proposition. Every compromise and weakness within us is our plague. The only way to fight the plague is honesty. This is the heroism of life—striving upward is inherently beautiful, at least it keeps you from growing accustomed to despair.