I'm indecisive and a suck-up so I'm gonna answer two prompts and whoever reading this is not going to complain.
I think the trade-offs for graduate school are as clear as the average summer day in California, so I'm not gonna waste my word count on rehashing them. The thing is, if grad school is meant for you, the trade-offs balance themselves out.
I want to go into research. I want to spend my days living the unglamorous life that is trying and failing and persevering and failing again. It sounds awful, I do agree, but to me the rewards are greater than what an alternative life path would yield. Research gives me time to explore why things happen the way they do, how I can manipulate the beautiful entanglement of math, logic, and trivial computation to create complex and intricate systems and tools that embody human thought. But more importantly, research also gives me the chance to give my life meaning. The constant struggle to invent and explore gives me energy to wake up each day and do work, even when times get hard. It pushes me to better myself and allows me to live for myself whilst also living for others. I have a problem where I think about things for too long and too abstractly, and life comes up as a topic quite often. Sometimes it scares me because there's a lot we don't know about life, like what it all means, and sometimes it makes me feel so despondent and lost. Research and teaching are the only jobs that I can invision adding meaning to my life and giving me something personally to live for.
In a typical software engineering or software development role, I think I'd lose myself. When I conjure up a scenario where I'm in those types of roles, I'm only able to see myself being unhappy with my work. I think it's quite selfish of me, and honestly a problem I should work on, but if I'm not happy or passionate about the work I'm doing, I go into an exponential downward spiral that my history proves to be very true. Luckily, my environment changes all the time at this point of my life, so it's been relatively easy (still difficult) to bounce back. However, in the real world things don't really work that way, and I am terrified of what would happen to me if I do go into industry and I do lose myself. Yes, this fear weighs heavily in my decision to go to grad school. Sure, I shouldn't choose to go to grad school out of fear. But the reason I don't see this being a problem is that research makes me happy, and I'm confident that it will continue to make me happy. I think I could even capitalize on this happiness a bit more by becoming a professor and teaching others about the things that give my life meaning, but this isn't a requirement for my happiness (which also relieves me from a bit of anxiety). Even if I didn't have an intense fear of losing myself in industry, I still think research would make me more happy. It's an environment that I thrive in.
This topic really gives me the feels. Having a family is something I've always imagined doing and it's hard for me to imagine not having kids in the future. It's almost as hard as trying to imagine not having dogs in the future. So pretty fucking hard.
The thing is, I need a career, just like Anne-Marie Slaughter. It all goes back to that whole 'losing myself' thing I mentioned before. If I'm not busy or intellectually engaged, it's really easy for me to lose myself. I really wish this wasn't the case and I don't know what's wrong with me (*cough* anxiety), but that's just how it is. It tears me up on the inside. How am I supposed to have a family? Odds are, I'm going to marry a man who also has a career. What are we supposed to do? I don't think it would be possible to have it all, for both of us to have consistently fulfilling careers while also being good parents. Where do you find the time to work a full time job and also be a full time parent, especially when your spouse is trying to do the same? Something's gonna have to give.
The bright side of being in the computing industry is that it's possible and quite easy to work remotely. Once I have a family, I know I'd rather be working from home than spending the day at the office, so I would definitely take advantage of this. However, if I am lucky enough to get a professorship, WTF AM I GONNA DO. I'll have to go into work most days. What if my future spouse is also a professor? WTF ARE WE GONNA DO.
The thing that terrifies me even more is what's going to happen when I get pregnant. I don't think there will ever be a 'right time' for me to have kids. Can I have a baby in grad school? I mean, I'm sure I could, but would I want to? I'd have to worry about continuing to make decent progress on my research, continuing to publish, continuing to network, all in order to not limit my opportunities when I get my degree. There will be no time to worry about carrying another human inside my body, and after nine months, caring for a brand new baby. After grad school, there's still an issue: if I'm a brand new professor, I'll still have to worry about researching, publishing, networking, but also teaching on top of it all. So wait until all that's over, you say? No, because by then I'll probably be too old. On top of all of this, I still hear horror stories about the way women are treated in STEM fields when they have babies. All over Reddit, Quora, etc., you can find the awful ways in which having a baby (and sometimes, even the idea of one day possibly having a baby) limits your opportunities and decreases your legitimacy as a scientist. I don't want that. But I want kids, and I want a career in computer science. I will never win.