I also started my PhD last week and honestly from my talks with the people there thus far I'm much more optimistic than the general HN view of PhDs. You still have to be realistic however. Best of luck!
Great! The view of almost anything hard is gloomy online, probably because the conversation is dominated by those who either wish they'd tried and now have a chip on their shoulder or who made the wrong choice for them and are self-therapising by writing about it. Those who thrived in a PhD programme likely don't have a reason to bang on about their experience in quite so many words.
> You still have to be realistic
I'm expecting it to be very challenging. But that's the point — isn't it?
