If I was smarter, I'd have gotten the bag.

The worst? I stopped to do research after my PhD and now, I forgot everything. Dumb as a rock AND without any useful knowledge of my very peculiar subject.

But I still have the paper, yay!

OI DO YOU ‘AVE A SCIENCE LICENSE?
- *Soience loicense

But surely everyone greets you by saying "Dr. Fossilesque, I presume?".

That alone has got to be worth the overqualification issues.

Finishing up my thesis but, god I hope not. Those people are insufferable.
- I called an associate professor by a common nickname derived from his actual name, thing is that it draws the thought to some drug addict from the 70’s. When I got my phd, he took to calling me by my title as a revenge.
- Better than people who insist on being called "Dr."
- What will you be doctoring?

The more PhDs I know and the closer I am to grad school, the more it feels like getting a PhD is about being stubborn than it is about being smarter than everyone in the room.

Yes.
In my experience it's being stubborn or possessing a robust resiliency to mental health damage. Being smart, or better yet from a family that is wealthy enough to support you just makes everything a fair bit easier.

Also, making friends with your advisors doesn't hurt either.

And a lot of debt, usually. Don't forget that one.

I got paid for the PhD. Not as much as I would have earned as a computer button pusher, but enough to live on.
If you have to pay to get a PhD then you were fleeced and probably deserve to lose that money
- Yeah, I got paid to do gradschool. Not much cuz I didn’t shop around and just stayed where I did undergrad, but yeah, once you’re doing research, they should be paying you.
- pls no bully yanks
  
  yanks are fren not food
- According to the NCES, in 2015-16 the average PhD graduate had about $100k student debt
  
  https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_tub.pdf

If I were* smarter

When using be in an if clause for an unreal conditional sentence, always conjugate it as were, no matter what the subject is. Even if the subject is first-person singular (I) or third-person singular (he, she, or it), still use were with an if clause in unreal conditional sentences.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/conditional-sentences-was-instead-of-were/

TIL: This is an artefact of my regional dialect. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-variation-and-change/article/abs/new-role-for-an-ancient-variable-in-appalachia-paradigm-leveling-and-standardization-in-west-virginia/3F069F1A76FBFFB75566131FB9D955C9 Apparently, the leveled was is a thing.

I honestly believe that the usefulness of a specific piece of knowledge resembles the logarithmic curve, the higher your education already is.

I do not regret not going to grad school