Having a Ph.D is not all it seems. I would warn you about getting one in order to teach. Teaching college students is fun and rewarding, but it grows tiresome after a few years. (You hear the same excuses, the same begging for extra credit and extra points. Teaching small class were you know all the students is great, but until you get tenure you'll most like be teaching large sections where the sheer volume of requests for special attention rapidly becomes overwhelming.)

You need a degree that is flexible so that if you get tired of teaching or can't find a job teaching, which could be possible depending on your area, you can do something else. I chose clinical psychology primarily because I wanted to do clinical research, which I can do in a number of settings. I also like to teach (just not every semester for the rest of my life) and I can do clinical work or develop manualized treatments for specific disorders based on research findings. So, my degree is flexible, so I can change if the economy changes or my interests change. You don't want to invest all that time and money in your education and wind up not being able to use it.

Be sure you NEED a Ph.D to do what you want. I need a Ph.D to see clients, so I HAD to get one. If you want to teach at the university level, you will need one,too. If you want to teach at the community college level (which is very rewarding and a much more personal experience than university teaching), get a master's degree. Don't get more education that you need. Trust me, it isn't worth it. Graduate school is NOT like college, it isn't fun. It's one of the most frustrating, expensive and insane experiences life has to offer. Get in and get out as soon as you can.

As for the fetish stuff, are you kidding? Essentially, everything on the internet lasts forever. I don't know what the future hold for you and at 25, neither do you. Would you want your mother to see that? Your kids? Your tenure committee? Unless you are going into fine arts or creative writing or some field where such behavior would be seen as suitably "expressive," this is career doom. Don't do it.

Finally, did you know that most decent graduate programs provide stipends and pay your tuition? It's usually not a lot of money ($10,000-12,000)but you won't be broke. In addition, you can borrow up to $18,000 a YEAR for educational expenses with student loans as a graduate student. You'll be in debt when you graduate, but you won't be a former sex worker.

Good luck to you, whatever you decide to do

Ok, so the LW is not talking about actually having sex for money, but still I ask: why do attractive women in need of money (reluctantly) do porn when they can make more money as high grade call girls, and leave no video trail?

The only people who should do porn are those who actively want to be seen doing porn. They should be naturally, and unapologetically, exhibitionistic. But if you don't want to be known for porn, then you really shouldn't do it. Because if you do, then you'll be forever worried about someone you know stumbling across the video. And who needs that anxiety?

But why not consider doing sex work in private instead? The money is excellent, and no one ever has to know.

Though she never admitted it outright, I'm pretty certain she sold her body too.

She wound up with a great career and an irreparably damaged head. She was ashamed and disgusted by her past, couldn't shake it, constantly raised it, despite my hourly protestations that it didn't matter to me -- and it really didn't. As I got to know her over a few months, she became a paranoid, jealous, guilty, self-loathing, pain-in-the-ass nutter who, when I finally broke up with her because of all the dramas, hung around my apartment grounds, tragically calling out my name for hours. She was a tae kwan do black belt holder too, so I was somewhat nervous she'd show me my spinal chord before departing me from my life.

With sex work of any kind, if you're a bright and decent person who's doing it only because you're backed into a corner, it sticks to you forever in the nastiest of ways (excluding being seen by people who know you, which is reason enough not to). That's not the kind of thing you need if you're already struggling.

Better to just work your eight legit MacJobs, no matter how demeaning, pay your dues and one day poke your head above the miasma of drudgery and mediocrity that fed you, and charge onward. You can recover from that in no time. But sex work, unless you're too stupid or ignorant to have it affect you, will stain your brain forever and likely make it impossible to maintain a relationship.

"Very few people find porn or fetish economically empowering. It is designed to use people up for the lowest anount of money. A few have converted it into good money, but most don't."

That applies to almost every job in every industry. It's called capitalism -- keeping overhead low means keeping wages low which means keeping seniority low. And from what I hear academia is not much of an exception: a small group with little worry over losing their job use a fresh crop of free grad students every year to keep their own position secure.

Why the hell do people spend years and tens of thousands of dollars on degrees that make them unemployable? Did they not research their choice first? Did they not ask any of the millions of the bitter college grad Xerox jockeys who didn't major in Mundane & Mind-Numbing? Or did you just go ahead with your degree plan thinking surely you'd be that rare exception and find work directly related to your field of study?

I'm not saying people should not pursue their passions but for pete's sake have a plan to support yourself and a backup plan to that.