Being in school is nice. Even if a person is doing very exciting things at work, they can't share it with their friends, because it involves proprietary information.  On the other hand, a person can tell everyone every single detail about their thesis work, because universities encourage completely free exchange of information and ideas. Of course, once a person gets over the initial excitement of realizing they can describe their PhD work in detail to everybody, they come to the realization that nobody wants to hear all the details.  Haha - catch-22, eh?