The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

He glared, but she was starting to not take that too
seriously. “I might have been worse, actually.”
“I bet.” There was a brief, comfortable silence as she sat
back and began to tackle her bag of chips. It was all she’d ever
wanted from a vending machine snack. “So does it get better?”
“What?”
“This.” She gestured inchoately around herself.
“Academia. Does it get better, after grad school? Once you
have tenure?”
“No. God, no.” He looked so horrified by the assumption,
she had to laugh.
“Why do you stick around, then?”
“Unclear.” There was a flash of something in his eyes that
Olive couldn’t quite interpret, but—nothing surprising about
that. There was a lot about Adam Carlsen she didn’t know. He
was an ass, but with unexpected depths. “There’s an element
of sunk-cost fallacy, probably—hard to step away, when
you’ve invested so much time and energy. But the science
makes it worth it. When it works, anyway.”
She hummed, considering his words, and remembered The
Guy in the bathroom. He’d said that academia was a lot of
bucks for little bang, and that one needed a good reason to
stick around. Olive wondered where he was now. If he’d
managed to graduate. If he knew that he’d helped someone
make one of the hardest decisions of their life. If he had any
idea that there was a girl, somewhere in the world, who
thought about their random encounter surprisingly often.
Doubtful.
“I know grad school is supposed to be miserable for
everyone, but it’s depressing to see tenured faculty here on a
Friday night, instead of, I don’t know, watching Netflix in bed,
or getting dinner with their girlfriend—”