"Bright, funny, and well-read, Emily had dropped out of a Ph.D. program in history. She was single and working as a librarian. Tentatively I asked her, "But you are so bright and you have such a passion for history, why did you ever drop out of graduate school?"

Her response: "Early on, I realized that academe has no office culture. I know office culture is always seen as a joke but I realized that as a single person, I was going to need some interaction at work. Academe couldn't offer me that -- but a library could."

It took me a while to mull that one over: Librarians are more socially outgoing than academics? Admittedly, there was a little envy on my part, too: If I was so smart, how come I hadn't figured out, as Emily had early on in her graduate career, that I wasn't going to be spending large chunks of my academic career sipping sherry with my colleagues while we discussed a range of issues?"

A Ph.D in History who decided to leave academia, writing in the Chronicle of Higher education
http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/01/2005012601c.htm