Wombat, today another person told me I should pursue a PhD, and this time it was only tempting for a few minutes because I thought about all of the things you have said about it. My conclusion is that, sure, in a world where I had infinite time and money I would love to do it. I think maybe if I discovered I never had to do a job again that would be the first thing I did. But only in that condition-- one where I could walk away at any time.
I do not want to dedicate the rest of my life to doing one thing. And I sure as heck don't want to spend the rest of my days in some college town.
Today I did research for this giant, enormous, many-year long project they want me to do some super-preliminary research for. I spent all day reading schedules of public meetings and summaries of citizen complaints. Damn, people are crazy. My favorites:
1. Why are you relying on building better subway stations and roadways, when you could build a trolley system?
2. Obviously any market-rate housing built is going to be luxury, because that's all you can build in Manhattan anymore. But (this was in 2008) the market is going down, isn't it true that no one will buy it? Won't they just build that fancy housing and fail to sell it?
3. The public school curriculum in Harlem needs to stay the same, I don't care what you people say!
4. You need to pass a law that all real estate transactions must be approved by city council, or by the neighborhood board
5. you need to pass a law that guarantees jobs to people in my neighborhood
The answer to almost all of these was "ma'am/sir this meeting is about height restrictions on apartment buildings." So yes, real life is just like Parks and Recreation.
#2 is especially perfect, because I was trying to explain to some friends the other day how weird some people's ideas are about how real estate works.